Chapter 18 Brazilian Portuguese null objects and Spanish differential object marking

Animacy features have been known to trigger syntactic phenomena. In this paper, I focus on differential object marking (DOM), and the null object in Brazilian Portuguese, where such features are relevant. I assume that animacy corresponds to a specification of Person features, and lack of animacy implies that no Person features are encoded in a DP. Furthermore, I propose that animacy is encoded in a dedicated functional head. Animate DPs (i.e. DOM in Spanish and animate objects in BP) move to Spec, FPanimacy, a projection above V, below v, to check a person feature. Crucially, inanimate DPs stay in situ. They are not DOM marked in Spanish and, by virtue of being low, they can be licensed as DP ellipsis in BP. This analysis may contribute to work seeking to grasp the role of referential hierarchies in syntax.