IL SOGGETTO NULLO NEL PROCESSO DI ACQUISIZIONE DEL PORTOGHESE BRASILIANO.

This paper is part of a research project - still at an early stage - on the process of acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese as a foreign language in the Italian university context. We present here the first data on the acquisition, by Italian-speaking learners (all students of the University of Salento), of morphosyntactic properties associated with the positive/negative value of the pro-drop parameter, also showing the pragmatic-discursive properties that can determine a distribution of null pronominal subjects in different contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]