Subspaces ofL p (G) spanned by characters: 0<p<1

LetG be an infinite compact abelian group,μ a Borel measure onG with spectrumE, and 0<p<1. We show that ifμ is not absolutely continuous with respect to Haar measure, thenL _E ^P (G), the closure inL ^p (G) of theE-trigonometric polynomials, does not have enough continuous linear functionals to separate points. Ifμ is actually singular, thenL _E ^p (G) does not have any nontrivial continuous linear functionals at all. Our methods recover the classical F. and M. Riesz theorem, and a related several variable result of Bochner; they reveal the existence of small sets of characters that spanL ^P (T), where T is the unit circle; and they show that theH ^p spaces of the “big disc algebra” have one-dimensional dual.