The null subject parameter in Brazilian Sign Language
Sujeito nulo; Morfologia Verbal; Línguas Brasileira de Sinais; Sintaxe Gerativa.
Natural languages are made up of principles, common and universal elements, and parameters, variable elements, of which one of the most common is the null subject parameter (NSP). Languages that present a null subject have the possibility of phonetically silencing the subject in the sentence. European Portuguese, Italian, ASL and Spanish are examples of languages in which a null subject occurs. This work aims to investigate, through acquisition and speech data from adult individuals, how the null subject manifests itself in Libras, in order to classify this language according to the type it belongs to in relation to the NSP. The data analyzed in this work are spontaneous speeches from deaf individuals, which come from two projects developed by the Federal University of Santa Catarina - UFSC, the Corpus de Libras Project and the Project Acquisition of syntax for Brazilian deaf children: repercussions of different forms of access to sign language. All sentences produced were selected and classified in relation to the null subject or its filling by an overt pronoun. For the acquisition data, it was possible to observe that the NSP in Libras behaves similarly to Brazilian Portuguese, a partial null subject language. The data findings with adult individuals showed evidence that Libras presents characteristics similar to partial null subject languages.