Exploring accessibility in direct object constructions in Santomean Portuguese

Null and pronominal direct objects have been extensively studied in both European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). We aim to characterize the properties and distribution of null/pronominal objects in STP, by comparing them with those of EP/BP. We assume that accessibility can be determined by the syntactic role, animacy and explicitness of the antecedent, as well as by the presence of other potential antecedents. The study, based on the PALMA-STP spoken corpus, shows that there are fewer pronominal objects than null objects in islands and non-islands. Regarding the syntactic function of the antecedent, structural parallelism is more relevant for null than for pronominal objects. In this respect, STP seems to be closer to BP than to EP. As for overtness of the antecedent and intervention effects, STP is less restrictive than EP/BP, allowing referential chains with several intervening null objects. Moreover, there appears to be a trend towards an extension of the null object along the Referential Hierarchy, as it may be less constrained by animacy than EP/BP. Hence, null objects in STP exhibit high productivity and are subject to fewer syntactic and semantic restrictions than in other varieties of Portuguese.