Núcleos funcionais e variação linguística o caso da Reestruturação

The idea that linguistic variation results from the properties of functional heads goes back to the 1980s (e.g. Borer 1984) and is particularly important within the generative model known as Minimalist Program. This paper intends to present more empirical evidence favouring this approach, considering the contrast between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as far as Restructuring is concerned (available in EP only). It is claimed that this contrast is not due neither to different temporal relations between the embedded and the matrix domains nor to the functional heads projecting in the former. Instead, the difference between the two varieties results from different properties of the embedded functional heads below T, namely Asp and vP: in EP, but not in BP, these heads may be defective for φ-features, which triggers the phenomena related to Restructuring, such as clitic climbing and long object movement to the matrix domain.