Null possessives in European Portuguese

The paper investigates the referential properties of so-called null possessives in
European Portuguese. The term refers to the phenomenon that the possessor argument
of relational nouns may be left unrealized. Structural diagnostics like locality
of binding and c-command, and interpretative diagnostics like readings under
ellipsis and in only-contexts, split antecedents, and binding by a quantifier are discussed.
The result of these tests is that a syntactic analysis in terms of movement or
agreement is not feasible in EP. Furthermore, a comparison of the referential properties
of simple and complex possessives is presented with the aim of outlining a
possible semantic analysis.