Resumo Este trabalho discute a realização de uma mesma forma pronominal em diferentes contextos sintáticos. De forma comparativa, desconstrói-se a ideia de caso com uma categoria determinante na distribuição pronominal. Uma geometria de caso para o português brasileiro Daniel Carvalho Revista Leitura v. 2, nº 59 -Maceió -Jul./Dez. Abstract This paper presents a mechanism to deal with the realization of the same pronominal form in different syntactic contexts. Data are presented comparatively in

more »

... ed comparatively in order to demonstrate the idea that case is a determining category in pronominal distribution. It demonstrates how a traditional case theory is insufficient to deal with such phenomenon. A decomposition of the case categories is suggested as the optimal solution for case configuration, taking into account evidence from languages such as English and Brazilian Portuguese, which show case difference only in their personal pronouns. Case, then, is treated from a feature hierarchy, following Harley and Ritter (2002). Thus, case categories for Brazilian Portuguese obey [C[OBL[GEN]]]. A value mechanism for those features is proposed and the different pronominal outputs are the result of such mechanism, which explains the actual pronominal paradigm in Portuguese.