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Towards a Cartography of Syntactic Positions
... Like all Romance languages, Italian and (Peninsular) Spanish belong to the group of SVO languages (Gutiérrez-Bravo, 2002;Cardinaletti, 2004;Lahousse & Lamiroy, 2012). Besides the canonical SVO word order, they have all the typical typological characteristics of SVO languages, such as having prepositions (instead of postpositions), postnominal genitives (instead of prenominal ones), and auxiliary-verb sequences (instead of verb-auxiliary sequences). ...
... Italian, however, is more restrictive in this sense. In addition to SOV, it also lacks VSO Cardinaletti, 2004;Lahousse & Lamiroy, 2012;Leonetti, 2017). 7 This difference is illustrated in the following example: (16) Italian: a. * Ha letto Gianni il giornale. ...
... 7 This difference is illustrated in the following example: (16) Italian: a. * Ha letto Gianni il giornale. (Cardinaletti, 2004: 118) has read John the newspaper 'John read the newspaper.' Peninsular Spanish: b. ...
In this paper, we investigate the effect of information structure on word order in Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives, and whether these two languages differ from each other. To this end, we conducted two empirical studies. In a parallel text corpus study, we compared the frequency of the word order patterns ‘why’SV and ‘why’VS, as well as the distribution of focal and non-focal subjects in the two languages. In order to get a deeper understanding of the impact of the information structural categories focus and givenness on word order in ‘why’-interrogatives, we conducted a forced-choice experiment. The results indicate that word order is affected by focus in Italian, while it is not determined by any information structural category in Peninsular Spanish. We show that Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives differ from each other in two ways. First, non-focal subjects occur preverbally in Italian, while they occupy the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish. Second, Italian reveals a lower level of optionality with respect to word order patterns. Even though we find a high preference for the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish, we argue that this limitation is related to a higher flexibility regarding word order in Peninsular Spanish than in Italian which does not allows for ‘why’VSO in contrast to Peninsular Spanish.
... 3 (SoP) (cf. Cardinaletti 2004), a topic requirement, and the ability of different languages to check these with a varying set of overt and covert constituents. ...
... As we will show, LIlike structures across Romance and Germanic vary considerably. Here we provide some background before introducing an approach in which we distinguish Subject of Predication (Cardinaletti 2004) from topichood, and present multiple and conspiratorial loci of LI. ...
... The status of the preverbal element is particularly controversial. When occurring preverbally, sentence-initial spatio-temporal expressions are analysable as either logical subjects of predication or aboutness topics, depending on the language involved (Pinto 1997;Fernandez Soriano 1999;Cardinaletti 1997Cardinaletti , 2004Lahousse 2007Lahousse , 2011Sheehan 2010;Corr 2016, Teixeira 2016. Following Cardinaletti (1997Cardinaletti ( , 2004 and Rizzi (2005Rizzi ( , 2018, we draw a distinction between aboutness topics and subject of predication (henceforth SoP); explicitly, SoP can be defined as [+Aboutness], while an aboutness topic comprises [+D-linking; +Aboutness] (Rizzi 2005: 212). ...
Author's own copy and pre proofs final version:
Sluckin, Benjamin L., Silvio Cruschina, and Fabienne Martin. 2021. “Locative inversion in Germanic and Romance: a conspiracy theory.” In Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance, edited by Sam Wolfe., & Christine Meklenborg, pp. 165-194. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
... A fim de verificar as posições de sujeito possíveis para dados do italiano, Cardinaletti (2004) parte do princípio de que tais posições são argumentais, diferentes das posições localizadas no domínio CP (posições A-barra). Assim, de acordo com a proposta cartográfica de Cardinaletti (2004), um constituinte, mesmo que não cheque traços-phi e Caso, pode ser o sujeito da predicação, como ocorre em sentenças do italiano com verbos psicológicos (08a), verbos inacusativos (08b) e, também, em sentenças copulares invertidas (08c). ...
... base em estudos cartográficos já realizados. Na última seção, tecemos as considerações finais.Conforme a abordagem cartográfica, Spec,TP é a posição mais baixa do domínio flexional, e está relacionada à questão estrutural, como, por exemplo, a satisfação de Caso nominativo e da concordância (Agree), podendo ser preenchida por um pronome expletivo(CARDINALETTI, 2004).Cabe destacar que, em algumas análises, essa posição aparece fundida à categoria Agr,SP.Segundo a abordagem criterial, o movimento do sujeito ocorre para satisfazer um critério: existe um núcleo criterial na parte mais alta do domínio flexional, Subj, que atrai um elemento nominal compatível com a propriedade interpretativa sujeito da predicação para o seu Spec. Essa propriedade corresponde àquela que o caracteriza como o constituinte a partir do qual se apresenta um evento (QUAREZEMIN, 2019). ...
... para o italiano e de Quarezemin e Cardinaletti (2017) e Reis (2017) para o PB. A possibilidade de o PPloc figurar em posição fronteada é disparada pela propriedade de ser osujeito da predicação(CARDINALETTI, 2004;). O PPloc é movido do domínio VP diretamente para a posição Spec,SubjP. ...
O Português Brasileiro licencia casos em que a primeira posição pode ser preenchida por sintagmas locativos não argumentais, como (1) Naquela loja do shopping vende/vendem roupas baratas. Dessa forma, o principal objetivo é investigar a estrutura sintática de construções com PP locativo e DP locativo pré-verbais, como (2) [Na escola]PPloc aceita/aceitam cartão de crédito e (3) [A escola]DPloc aceita cartão de crédito. Nossa hipótese é que os constituintes locativos em PB, PPloc e DPloc, ocupam a mesma posição no middlefield (domínio flexional), posição Spec,SubjP, embora a motivação para sua subida seja diferente, conforme mostrado em dados do italiano por Cardinaletti (2004). Quanto à metodologia, foi realizada uma análise de dados, retirados de estudos preliminares. Foi possível verificar que as construções com locativos, de fato, não apresentam a mesma estrutura sintática, embora ambos configurem como sujeitos da predicação na posição Spec,SubjP.
... In previous work (Bentley & Cruschina 2018) we characterized thetic broad focus as a subject inversion construction in which the verb and a postverbal, vP internal, DP encode an event that is predicated of a silent Subject of Predication (henceforth SoP). We claimed that, in Italian, the silent SoP takes Cardinaletti's (2004) SubjP position, thus satisfying Rizzi's (2005) Subject Criterion. Depending on the argument structure properties of the verb, the silent SoP can be a locative goal argument of the verb itself or, alternatively, a situational argument, which arises with the utterance. ...
... The structure in (13) poses the question of how subjecthood is satisfied. Bentley & Cruchina (2018) claim that thetic sentences do not lack a subject in subject position, in that the silent thematic or situational SoP activates and occupies Cardinaletti's (2004) SubjP position. The locative goal SoP is a thematic argument and, therefore, it moves to SubjP from its thematic position (cf. ...
... On the other hand, the presence of a SoP in SubjP is claimed by Bentley & Cruchina to be in principal orthogonal to the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) or the need to check Case and φ-features. The main evidence for this claim is the known fact that the constituent in SubjP does not necessarily control agreement (Cardinaletti 2004). This is the case with the experiencer argument of psych-verbs. ...
Building upon Bentley & Cruschina's (2018) analysis of thetic broad focus, this contribution examines the restrictions on the verb classes that occur in this construction in Italian and captures them in terms of the depth of semantic embedding of the postverbal DP. It is also claimed that the occurrence of passives in thetic broad focus follows from a demotion analysis which does not require externalization of the lower argument. While supporting the view that broad focus and theticity ought to be disentangled, the paper pursues the hypothesis that verbs have lexical properties which are reflected in the syntax of their arguments. The lexicalization of scalar change is the key property in the licensing of thetic broad focus.
... However, minimality fails to capture another relevant observation, namely that the degree of acceptability of these structures with multiple dependencies depends on the height of the base position associated with the Topic (Cardinaletti 2004;Barbosa 2006). Indeed, there is a clear contrast between high dative Experiencers (6) and lower datives (4b). ...
... There is one possible alternative that can rescue the minimality account. Cardinaletti (2004) argues that there is a SubjectP projection located below Topics and above TP. This position hosts lexical subjects and strong subject pronouns and may also host dative Experiencers in Italian. ...
... The ECP requires that traces must be properly head-governed. A trace in complement position is properly head-6 An alternative explanation to the subject/object asymmetry observed above could be proposed along the lines of Cardinaletti (2004), who argues that there is a SubjectP projection located below Topics and above TP. One could assume that subject DPs doubled by a clitic in French occupy SubjectP and reach that position by A-movement, in which case no minimality effects are expected to occur. ...
This study in experimental syntax investigates the factors affecting the acceptability of embedded clauses featuring a left-dislocated phrase below a fronted wh-phrase. Sixty native speakers of French took part in an on-line acceptability judgment task including 45 critical items (with an intervening XP) and 20 baseline items (including grammatical and ungrammatical sentences with an embedded wh-dependency). Using Random Forest and Ordinal Regression analyses we demonstrate that Clitic Left Dislocated (CLLD) objects yield stronger intervention effects (except when they are pronouns) than CLLDed subjects. We argue this is due to excessive processing demands incurred when a wh-dependency features a CLLD chain that is not fully within its scope. A processing account also explains why pronouns are not disruptive of wh-chains.
... Unbounded activities and states are generally incompatible with BFSI. As for the syntax of BFSI, following Cardinaletti (2004) (see also Rizzi 2005;Bianchi & Chesi 2014), we assume that SoPs occupy a designated position labelled SubjP, thus satisfying the Subject Criterion (Rizzi 2005). We extend this analysis to the silent SoP of BFSI, claiming that SubjP is activated regardless of whether the SoP is overt. ...
... Our in-depth analysis of BFSI and our typology of SoPs fit squarely, and indeed can help further refine, an existing syntactic notion of SoP. Following Cardinaletti (2004), we assume that the preverbal field comprises of several projections for subject elements, including a designated position for the SoP, labelled SubjP. Cardinaletti convincingly argues that SubjP is a proper subject position within the inflectional domain and that subjects occurring in this position must be kept distinct from left dislocated subjects sitting in higher (topic) projections within the complementizer domain. ...
... Among the types of XP, other than grammatical subjects, that can occur in SubjP are the dative experiencers of psych-verbs (Belletti & Rizzi 1988) and of other unaccusative verbs (see capitare in (13) above), locative PPs, and the fronted predicates of inverse copular sentences (in the sense of Moro 1997). According to Cardinaletti (2004), sentences with an overt SoP correspond to categorical judgements, whereas sentences in which no SoP is overtly realized in SubjP can either be categorical statements whose SoP is anaphorically construed in the semantic component on the basis of the SoP of the previous utterance or, alternatively, they can be thetic sentences (Cardinaletti 2004: 148). Similar observations have been made based on evidence from languages that are typologically different from Romance. ...
It is a commonly held view that, in the absence of an overt locative or temporal phrase, broad focus subject inversion in Romance requires a null locative in preverbal position, thus being comparable to locative inversion (Benincà 1988 and subsequent work). The (in)compatibility of a number of verbs and verb classes with this construction, however, has not yet received a principled explanation. Analysing the event structure of the predicates that occur in bare broad focus subject inversion in Italian, we argue that this construction requires a covert Subject of Predication, and this requirement can be satisfied by a thematic goal argument of the verb or a non-thematic situational argument that is inferred when a bounded eventuality is predicated. We explain which predicates take which type of Subject of Predication, and we make falsifiable predictions on the relative compatibility of different verb classes with the construction under investigation. Our predictions are cogent in the null-subject SVO languages that allow broad focus in VS order and rule it out in VOS/VSO order (Leonetti 2017). With our study, we shed light on the lexical-semantic underpinnings of this restriction. Following Bianchi (1993) and Bianchi & Chesi (2014), we propose that this is a thetic construction, in which the postverbal DP remains in its first-merged thematic position. In our analysis, the silent Subject of Predication takes Cardinaletti’s (2004) SubjP position, satisfying Rizzi’s (2005) Subject Criterion.
... The possibility of both SV and VS orders was initially ascribed to the positive setting of the Null Subject Parameter (Rizzi, 1982(Rizzi, , 1986Jaeggli & Safir, 1989). However, recent work on parameter theories and on the Null Subject Parameter has shown that the presence of null subjects is a necessary but not sufficient condition to allow for the VS order (e.g., Pinto, 1997;Belletti, 2001;Cardinaletti, 2004Cardinaletti, , 2018. Consequently, researchers have started looking for other factors responsible for the alternation between SV and VS orders. ...
... Following the Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter, 1978;Burzio, 1986), the possibility for the subject to follow the predicate depends on its first merge position, i.e., if the subject is the internal argument of the predicate as with unaccusatives, it can remain in situ and can thus follow the finite predicate. 1 At the syntax-discourse interface, the most relevant factor influencing the SV/VS orders is the informational focus of the sentence (Belletti, 2001(Belletti, , 2004Cardinaletti, 2004Cardinaletti, , 2018Bentley & Cruschina 2018). In our study, we distinguish between two types of foci: broad and narrow focus. ...
This paper investigates the Italian Word Order variation in the position of subjects (S) with respect to finite predicates (V) in two adult populations: L1-Italian speakers and L1-French L2-Italian speakers. We test how discourse focus (Belletti, 2001) and a decomposed approach to Unaccusativity, i.e., Unaccusativity Hierarchy (Sorace, 2000), determine the SV/VS variation in L1 and L2 populations. The results of a forced-choice preference task show that both factors constrain the Italian word order in L1 and L2 Italian speakers: the VS order was preferred in the narrow focus and with Change of Location unaccusative verbs in both populations, although with different proportions. Overall L2 speakers chose the SV order more consistently than L1 speakers but they did so mainly with the less-core unaccusative verbs of the Unaccusativity Hierarchy. We account for these findings suggesting a return to the original version of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2005), which predicts that interface phenomena, including those at the syntax-lexicon interface, represent a vulnerable domain in L2 acquisition.
... There are indeed empirical reasons to believe that both series of Trevisan NOM clitics are features activated iff relevant material is inserted in the Spec of the functional projection that they head. My core claim is that both series result from well-formed Spec-Head agreements within dedicated projections, which lead to the Spell-Out of φ-feature bundles in the head of said projections, as in (22): (22) NOM clitics as a spell out of φ-features Let us first examine the case of assertive NOM clitics which, as in Rizzi (2016), I take to be the morphological realisation of Cardinaletti's (2004) Subj • . Given the data overviewed in section 2, I argue that the clitic head is activated iff a lexical subject is moved to SpecSubjP, or pro is externallymerged therein, as in (23) (the symbol '»' means 'Spelled Out as'): ...
... Note that the Trevisan example suggests that in Italian the finite verb does not raise as high as the head of SubjP. This is in line with Samo's (2019) claim that the finite verb stops in Cardinaletti's (2004) Agr • . The settings of the movement parameters are as in The situation in the Trevisan Fin of interrogatives is slightly different, since here attraction of the verb is involved. ...
This paper focuses on the very specific linguistic domain of nom- inative (NOM) clitics of the ‘number’ class (Poletto 2000) in ‘non-redundant null-subject systems’ (Roberts 2010). Concretely, I adapt Roberts’ (2007) analysis of French NOM enclitics in ‘complex inversion’ structures to both the assertive and the interrogative NOM clitics of Trevisan, a Venetan di- alect. Number clitics, I claim, are not pronominal elements but an inflec- tional class that surfaces as a consequence of a positive setting of Rizzi’s (2017) Spell-Out parameter, i.e., an instruction to pronounce the criterial feature(s). This treatment of number clitics has three main theoretical ad- vantages: (i) it explains their morphosyntactic peculiarities wrt to non-NOM clitic pronouns; (ii) it accounts for the morphological variations and different distributions wrt the V of the assertive vs interrogative series; (iii) it explains their omission in ‘long-subject extraction’ environments, i.e., relatives and it-clefts (Rizzi & Shlonsky 2007, Bonan 2017).
... Let us first examine the case of assertive NOM clitics which, as in Rizzi (2016), I take to be the morphological realisation of Cardinaletti's (2004) Subj°. Given the data overviewed in §1, I argue that the clitic head is activated iff a lexical subject is moved to SpecSubjP, or pro is externally-merged therein, as in (23) I follow Rizzi (2016) in preferring the traditional analysis whereby in null-subject languages the EPP is satisfied by expletive pro, a non-referential occurrence of the null pronominal, over the alternative analysis in which nullsubject languages have no filler at all (according to which the EPP would be parametrised, and the notion of expletive pro becomes superfluous). ...
... Note that the Trevisan example suggests that in Italian the finite verb does not raise as high as the head of SubjP. This is in line with Samo's (2019) claim that the finite verb stops in Cardinaletti's (2004) Agr°. The settings of the movement parameters are as in The situation in the Trevisan Fin of interrogatives is slightly different, since here attraction of the verb is involved. ...
This paper focuses on the very specific linguistic domain of nominative (NOM) clitics of the ‘number’ class (Poletto 2000) in ‘non-redundant null-subject systems’ (Roberts 2010). Concretely, I adapt Roberts’ (2007) analysis of French NOM enclitics in ‘complex inversion’ structures to both the assertive and the interrogative NOM clitics of Trevisan, a Venetan dialect. Number clitics, I claim, are not pronominal elements but an inflectional class that surfaces as a consequence of a positive setting of Rizzi’s (2017) Spell-Out parameter, i.e., an instruction to pronounce the criterial feature(s). This treatment of number clitics has three main theoretical advantages: (i) it explains their morphosyntactic peculiarities wrt to non-NOM clitic pronouns; (ii) it accounts for the morphological variations and different distributions wrt the VERB of the assertive vs interrogative series; (iii) it explains their omission in ‘long-subject extraction’ environments, i.e., relatives and it-clefts (Shlonsky & Rizzi 2006, Bonan 2017).
... Quarezemin (2017a; e Quarezemin e Cardinaletti (2017) mostram que o sujeito pré-verbal, em PB, tem um comportamento distinto do tópico. Essa distinção já foi mostrada em italiano (CARDINALETTI, 1997(CARDINALETTI, , 2004RIZZI, 2005), em espanhol (SUÑER, 2003) e em português europeu (COSTA; DUARTE, 2002;COSTA, 2010), todas línguas de proeminência de sujeito, fato que nos leva a questionar a classificação do PB como uma língua de proeminência de tópico. ...
... Quando a duplicação do sujeito ocorre com o pronome fraco, o sujeito está na posição mais alta do domínio TP, em Spec,SubjP (cf. CARDINALETTI, 2004;RIZZI, 2006;SHLONSKY, 2006;2007). O redobro do sujeito não deve ser sempre identificado como uma estratégia de topicalização deste constituinte. ...
O objetivo principal desta pesquisa é investigar o comportamento do sujeito e do pronome resumptivo nas sentenças com redobro do sujeito em português brasileiro (PB). A partir de evidências sintáticas, semânticas e prosódicas, será possível verificar (i) se tais construções podem ser analisadas como casos de deslocamento à esquerda; (ii) se essas sentenças caracterizam o PB como uma língua tópico proeminente; (iii) se o sujeito pré-verbal se comporta como um tópico; (iv) se o sujeito tem o mesmo comportamento do objeto deslocado com retomada pronominal; (v) se o pronome resumptivo que retoma o sujeito pré-verbal nessas construções deve ser analisado como um clítico (um núcleo) ou como um pronome fraco, ocupando a posição de especificador. A hipótese deste trabalho é a de que o pronome resumptivo pode instanciar visivelmente o núcleo da projeção funcional SubjP (RIZZI, 2005), sendo a realização lexical de Subj, atrai um constituinte compatível com o traço “sujeito da predicação” (cf. CARDINALETTI, 1997, 2004).
... Lui verrà domani. Cardinaletti (1997Cardinaletti ( , 2004a osserva una netta specializzazione nella distribuzione dei tre pronomi: lui italiano e francese sono classificati come pronomi "forti" e il/egli come pronomi "deboli": ...
... Anche da un punto di vista sintattico si tratta di occorrenze perfettamente accettabili, in quanto il pronome debole egli/esso è preferito al pronome nullo come elemento di ripresa se il sintagma nominale a cui si riferisce non è prominente nel contesto che precede, oppure è considerato troppo lontano e necessita di essere menzionato di nuovo (Cardinaletti 2004a: 149-150) 16 . Fra gli esempi 16 Nell'italiano di registro colloquiale, egli è sostituito da lui e esso può essere sostituito da un dimostrativo (Cardinaletti 2004a: 149, da cui sono tratti i due esempi): ...
L’obiettivo di questo studio è indagare il fenomeno dell’interferenza sintattica nella traduzione dal francese verso l’italiano, verificando se alcune tipologie restano costanti, malgrado le differenze di genere testuale. Si è scelto di privilegiare un corpus recente e limitato nel tempo, optando per un romanzo e ventiquattro articoli di un periodico d’informazione, pubblicati nel corso del 2003 e tradotti fra il 2003 e il 2004. I risultati dell’analisi mostrano una certa permeabilità del testo tradotto rispetto alle strutture del testo d’origine, in quanto le traduzioni presentano alcune forme italiane del tutto desuete, o devianti. Si riscontra in effetti un certo numero di refusi di tipo morfologico-sintattico, nonché alcuni parallelismi sintattici che mettono bene in evidenza la forza del codice di partenza nell’atto della traduzione: calchi nella traduzione delle relative anaforiche (ce qui); calco strutturale della posizione del soggetto; impiego del pronome personale marcato in luogo del pronome nullo (per es. esso); accordo “francese” del participio passato; cambiamenti di registro linguistico nella negazione. Altre scelte traduttive invece mostrano l’intervento consapevole del traduttore nel restituire una sintassi più tipica dell’italiano contemporaneo, come l’impiego regolare del pronome il quale e la risoluzione delle frasi scisse. In conclusione, nel nostro corpus la lingua di partenza sembra filtrare nella lingua di arrivo non solo ad un livello sintattico, ma più in generale a livello morfosintattico: non sono rari, infatti, i casi in cui l’accordo fra elementi lessicali ricalca il testo francese, non rispettando la morfologia italiana. Le somiglianze strutturali fra l’italiano e il francese sembrano incoraggiare scelte traduttive che mantengono uno stretto parallelismo sintattico con il testo di arrivo, talvolta forzando l’uso italiano in maniera non appropriata al contesto linguistico. È necessario precisare che non sono state reperite anomalie sintattiche comuni a tutti i testi analizzati, segno dell’intervento consapevole del traduttore. D’altra parte, sono stati riscontrati fenomeni analoghi in testi appartenenti alle due diverse tipologie prese in esame, quella letteraria e quella giornalistica. Sembrano esistere davvero, quindi, dei punti più facilmente “permeabili” fra le lingue francese e italiana.
... Chomsky (1981Chomsky ( : 323 und 1982Chomsky ( , 1995b und andere (z.B. Rizzi (1982: 128-129, 133), Cardinaletti (2004) und Hornstein et al. (2005) nehmen an, dass pro Expl in Nullsubjektsprachen die Funktion übernimmt, die Expletiva in Nicht-Nullsubjektsprachen haben: Sie erfüllen das EPP. pro Expl ist dabei ebenso wie pro phonetisch leer und ebenso wie il und andere Expletiva semantisch leer. ...
... 3.3: Die Verwendung von pro Expl nach Remberger (2009: 533) Gründe für die Existenz von pro Expl allgemein nennen u.a. Chomsky (1981Chomsky ( , 1982, Rizzi (1982), Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998), Cardinaletti (2004) und Gabriel (2008. Sie führen z.B. an, dass durch pro Expl in Nullsubjektsprachen das Prinzip der Universalgrammatik erfüllt wird, demzufolge jeder Satz ein syntaktisches Subjekt habe (Chomsky 1981: 25, 27-28). ...
Ziel des Dissertationsprojekts ist eine Beschreibung des Linkingverhaltens französischer und spanischer Niederschlagsverben. Dazu wird zunächst ihre Aktionsart, anschließend ihre Subjekte und als drittes ihr Inakkusativitätsverhalten untersucht, da sich diese drei Aspekte auf das Linkingverhalten von Verben auswirken. Die Erkenntnisse werden im vierten Kapitel in einer Beschreibung des Linkingverhaltens zusammengeführt.
Die Untersuchung der Aktionsart zeigt, dass Niederschlagsverben Aktivitäten beschreiben, aber dabei keineswegs mit typischen Aktivitäten wie „laufen" oder „springen" gleichgesetzt werden können. In Bezug auf die Subjekte ergibt sich, dass Niederschlagsverben eine große Vielfalt an Subjekten zulassen und sowohl semantische als auch syntaktische Differenzen zwischen den Subjekten existieren. Diese wirken sich direkt auf das Inakkusativitätsverhalten aus, was dazu führt, dass Niederschlagsverben ein konstruktionsabhängiges Inakkusativitätsverhalten zeigen. Insbesondere ergeben sich auch Unterschiede zwischen dem Französischen und dem Spanischen, weil nur das Französische Expletivpronomen zulässt und dadurch eine größere Vielfalt an Konstruktionen ermöglicht als das Spanische. Diese Vielfalt wirkt sich auf die Beschreibung des Linkingprozesses aus, der entsprechend im Französischen komplexer ist als im Spanischen.
Die Datengrundlage bilden französische Sätze aus FRANTEXT und spanische aus CREA. Einen vorgegebenen theoretischen Rahmen gibt es nicht, weil das Ziel eine Beschreibung des Materials ist, sodass der Bezug auf eine Theorie eine Einschränkung darstellen würde. Für einzelne Aspekte wird jedoch u.a. auf die Generative Grammatik (Burzio 1986, Chomsky 1995) und auf die Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin und LaPolla 1997, Van Valin 2005, Bentley 2005, 2006, Kailuweit 2005, 2013) zurückgegriffen.
... We locate the verb with enclitic pronouns in Sanvalentinese at the border between IP and CP where the verb licenses a 'subject of predication', i.e. a non-grammatical subject (see Rizzi 2006;Rizzi -Shlonsky 2007;Cardinaletti 2004, Ledgeway 2010) ( 9 ). Following Rizzi's works, we therefore assume that in Sanvalentinese the verb may move to the head of that projection (called SubjP), crossing the clitic field in IP: ...
... prt= herself= them= has seen to.arrive at.the house to.the sudden 'Marijə saw them arrive home suddenly' Given the above distribution we can therefore suppose that this element is located at the IP/CP border, arguably in the position of the Subject of Predication introduced at the end of section 3, following Cardinaletti (2004), Rizzi (2006), Rizzi -Shlonsky (2007), Ledgeway (2010). In section 3 we concluded that that position is the target of verb movement in sentences with enclisis. ...
... Além disso, Belletti (2009) associa a posição do pronome forte nas construções duplicadas do italiano (SPD) às sentenças com deslocamento à direita (DR) do sintagma nominal. Segundo a autora, nos dois casos a posição de tópico na parte baixa da sentença está ativada, hospedando a expressão nominal, no caso de DR, e o pronome forte das construções SPD.A partir dos testes apresentados, da discussão sobre o comportamento do pronome de natureza forte e as propriedades interpretativas do pronome à direita, propomos, seguindoBelletti (2004Belletti ( , 2005, que a periferia-vP é expandida em PB, de modo a acomodar o pronome 'encalhado' na parte baixa da estrutura, como Big DP é formado pelos dois pronomes, o DP1 se move para a posição baixa de tópico, na periferia-vP, enquanto o DP2 que permanece em vP é alçado para a posição SubjP (cf.Cardinaletti, 2004), via movimento remanescente de vP, respeitando assim a Minimalidade Relativizada (cf.Rizzi, 1990). 32 O advérbio baixo é projetado em Voice logo acima da projeção onde o objeto checa o caso Acc (cf.Belletti, 2004). ...
... Following Cardinaletti (2004), we take preverbal overt subjects to occur in a dedicated position, SpecSubjP. This position is the highest of the inflectional field, thus lower than FinP, which functions as the hinge between the complementizer and the inflectional field (Rizzi 1997). ...
The paper compares the Balkan phenomenon known as “infinitival loss” in two varieties of Romance that have not been in direct contact, i.e., Romanian and some southern Italian dialects. The aim is to investigate how the Romance clausal structure realizes a phenomenon that does not generally appear in Romance. We focus on two main properties: the fine structure of the complementizer field, with left-dislocated elements sandwiched between two overt complementizers, and that of the inflectional field, in which clitic pronouns and clausal negation adjoin to Tense and Mood, respectively. The differences between the two varieties of Romance are reduced to the different first-merge positions of the particles characterizing untensed finite clauses. Comparison with Romanian permits a better understanding of the southern Italian dialects, which show micro-variation and optionality in the position of complementizers and particles and the realization of negation.
... He further adds that the subject needs to occupy a higher projection to form the SOV order; therefore, following Cardinaletti (2004), he proposes SubjP, an inflectional projection, whose Spec hosts the raising subject. Kareem (2016, p. 87) states that in case of positive sentences Neg receives a null spell-out which means that the presence of NegP is optional in the structure. ...
This study investigates the morphosyntactic characteristics and distribution of subjunctive mood in English and Central Kurdish. To achieve this, the study adopts Chomsky’s (1995)Minimalist Program. Concerning English, the data is collected from previous studies and reference grammar books. As for Central Kurdish, in addition to the data from the literature, further data are provided as the researcher is a native speaker of the language. Due to the fact that the two languages are, to a great extent, different in terms of structure and morphology; two hypotheses are formulated for the analysis.
It is hypothesized that English formulaic subjunctive constructions have fully articulated Complementizer Phrases (CP) and involve movement to the periphery of the sentence due to the presence of a Modal Complementizer (Mc) in the head of CP. Moreover, it is argued that, in Central Kurdish, an inflectional projection namely Mood Phrase (MP), whose Specifier (Spec) functions as the landing site for the raising object in positive sentences, is the locus of mood markers (Mm) that is C-commanded by Negation Phrase (NegP) and in turn C-Commands Tense Phrase (TP). Further, the portmanteau prefix de- simultaneously functions
as the indicative Mm, positive polarity marker (PPM), and imperfective aspect maker (IAM) in the present. Also, evidence for identifying the characteristics of Intensional Subjunctive
(IS) and Polarity Subjunctive (PS) in subjunctive clauses of Central Kurdish is put forward with respect to Stowell (1993).
The results demonstrate that certain formulaic subjunctive constructions display T to C movement while certain others are derived by focalization and therefore exhibit movement to
the periphery of the sentence. Furthermore, it is shown that the subjunctive in Central Kurdish is not in conformance with Stowell’s (1993) classification of subjunctives, and that Central Kurdish, in contrast to English, utilizes mood as a means to express Modality rather than modal verbs, thus being in line with Palmer’s (2003, p. 3) argument: “languages have either mood or modality, but not both”.
... As Figure 1 (right panel) shows, subject elements (cf. Cardinaletti 2004;Rizzi 2015) moved from the vP area can also be plausible interveners in terms of locality if INA is moved. Subjects are distinct elements from INA, since INA tendentially do not bear any person feature and not every INA is marked with number/gender feature. ...
Non-arguments and adverbs are plausible candidates for filling the initial slot of sentences cross-linguistically. Following standard assumptions on the computational operations in syntactic cartography, two possible models can account for adverbs and non-arguments in initial positions, namely a (i) base-generation in a dedicated left peripheral position and (ii) a movement theory. In this paper, we aim to test the generalisation ability of these two models in grammatical clauses exploring quantitative and computational methods. After having discussed a methodology for creating expected counts of grammatical clauses, we test the two models against data extracted from twelve morpho-syntactically annotated treebanks of five Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish). Our results suggest that the (ii) movement theory better captures the data in all languages under investigation. This paper enriches the study exploring the tools of Quantitative Computational Syntax, which aims to test fine-grained theoretical linguistic proposals by exploring large-scale databases.
... This peculiar agreement pattern is found in other Italo-Romance varieties (as well as in Arabic, Berber and Turkish, most notably see Ouhalla 1993;Oualla 2005;Ouali 2006 2 ), and has been the topic of a number of studies (Rizzi 1986;Brandi & Cordin 1989;Poletto 1993;Benincà 1994;Cardinaletti 2004;Cardinaletti 2018;Schaefer 2020;Bentley & Cennamo 2022). As noted, one of the varieties displaying AAE is Venetan, a northern Italo-Romance variety spoken by ca. 4 million people in north-eastern Italy. ...
In this paper we discuss a change in the auxiliary selectional pattern of Brazilian Venetan, a heritage Italo-Romance variety spoken in southern Brazil. Venetan varieties display a default form of the past participle in constructions with postverbal subjects and a fully agreeing form in constructions with preverbal subjects: this is true both for the homeland varieties of the language, spoken in northern Italy, as well as for the heritage variety under analysis in this paper, spoken in southern Brazil. A crucial difference emerges in unaccusative constructions: while Italian Venetan uses the same form of the auxiliary be in presence of preverbal and postverbal subjects, Brazilian Venetan uses a specialized form of the auxiliary in the constructions with default agreement on the past participle, when postverbal subjects are present. We argue that the specialized auxiliary form emerges as a necessary resumption in the case of lack of agreement. The heritage variety becomes, therefore, morphosyntactically more complex than the non-heritage counterpart.
... Levando em conta esses dados, concordamos com Reis e Quarezemin (2019) que o local de pouso desse locativo é na posição SubP, sujeito da predicação. Essa posição, postulada por Cardinaletti (2004), serve como um núcleo criterial que atrai elementos com a propriedade interpretativa de sujeito da predicação. É importante salientar o sintagma 'propriedade interpretativa' na definição acima. ...
Este texto discute características de diferentes tipos de sentenças impessoais do português brasileiro, entre elas impessoais com o clítico 'se', impessoais com pronomes pessoais como 'a gente' e 'você', impessoais com verbos flexionados na 3ª pessoa do plural e, finalmente, impessoais com verbos flexionados na 3ª pessoa do singular. Discutimos todos os casos mostrando características prototípicas desses tipos de sentenças impessoais na língua, levando em conta, por exemplo, as leituras genérica e existencial, a constituição em traços-phi desses pronomes e as especificações de tempo e aspecto licenciadas nessas sentenças. Em relação ao último caso (impessoais com verbos flexionados na 3ª pessoa do singular), relacionamos suas características a mudanças sintáticas que vêm ocorrendo nessa língua. Mostramos que os pronomes nulos impessoais nesse caso diferem de pronomes nulos pessoais e que esses dois grupos não podem, então, receber uma análise unificada. Palavras-chave: sentenças impessoais, português brasileiro, sujeito nulo
... However, in the following years, much research has shown that there are several aspects in which NSLs behave differently from each other. For example, it is intensively debated whether in NSLs overt subjects occupy a canonical SpecTP position (e.g., Suñer 2002 for Spanish; Alexopoulou et al. 2004 for Greek;Cardinaletti 2004 for Italian) or a left peripheral/dislocated one (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998 for Greek;Ordoñez & Treviño 1999 for Spanish;Frascarelli 2007 for Italian). Sheehan (2016) observes that the resolution of this debate has relevant implications for understanding the mechanisms of licensing and interpretation of NSs. ...
We aim to understand whether Greek and Italian, two null subject languages, differ in the use and interpretation of null subjects, based on evidence from both a production and a comprehension experiment. The results of the two experiments show that the two languages differ in the extent to which they comply with the Position of Antecedent Strategy as formulated by Carminati (2002). In order to account for this difference, we introduce a principle which defines prominence of sentence constituents in terms of hierarchical height, elaborating on a recent proposal by Rizzi (2018). Then we show that the prominence of subject and object constituents in Greek and Italian reflects word-order differences between the two languages (Roussou & Tsimpli 2006). In more general terms, this paper argues in favour of a multi-factorial approach to reference interpretation, in that syntactic factors interact with discourse factors, leading to a gradient variety of reference possibilities.
... He claims that Spec-TP is an A-bar position and is the landing site for this kind of movement. Vallduví (1992), as well as Barbosa (1995Barbosa ( , 2000Barbosa ( , 2009, argued that SV constructions with a non-referential QP as subject in a NSL are analysed as involving the same kind of movement as (73) Even though the proposal that pre-verbal subjects do not raise to a preverbal A-position has faced opposition in the literature (Cardinaletti, 2004;Costa & Duarte, 2002;Rizzi, 2005), the evidence given in favor of this view comes from a variety of syntactic phenomena. In Barbosa (1995Barbosa ( , 2000Barbosa ( , 2009 I discuss a number of facts regarding the NSLs that can be captured under this analysis and are otherwise poorly understood. ...
Szabolcsi (2009), shows that there are languages where control and raising infinitives have overt subjects, in compliance with (1):
(1) a. The overt subjects of control complements can only be pronouns.
b. The overt subjects of raising complements can be pronouns or lexical DPs.
Drawing on data from European Portuguese (as well as Spanish and Italian) we show that the evidence underlying (1) constitutes a strong case in favor of a non-raising approach to obligatory control. Relying on the observation that many consistent Null Subject Languages (NSL) allow for explicit subjects in raising and control complements, we develop an account that aims to capture the association between this phenomenon and the null subject property.
... 12 12 An anonymous reviewer casts doubt upon the idea that interrogative clauses should be considered residual V2 clauses because in present-day Italian no Germanic inversion (Wh-element-AUX-DP subject-lexical VERB) is found. As intensively discussed in the literature (Rizzi 2005, Cardinaletti 2004, 2010 among others) the ungrammaticality of Germanic inversion in interrogative clauses in present-day Italian depends on the realization of DP subjects in the language, on the relationship between CP and IP and on the interplay between syntax and information structure (DP subjects are only realized when they are topicalized or focussed). Therefore, the absence of Germanic inversion in interrogative clauses in present-day Italian is not fed by the lack of V-to-C movement, but by independent properties of DP-subject syntax. ...
While there has been a substantial body of research on the asymmetry between main and subordinate clauses in terms of the licensing of pro-drop, potential differences between types of unembedded clause have received much less attention – despite the fact that competing theories of pro-drop make strong, clear predictions about the distribution of null subjects across clause types, especially with regard to interrogatives. This paper presents the first in-depth comparative study of pro-drop in both declaratives and interrogatives in two asymmetric pro-drop languages: Old High German and Old Italian. Based on a parallel corpus study using two translations of Tatian’s Diatessaron, we show that there is a clear difference in distribution between interrogatives and declaratives: null subjects are more frequent in declarative clauses than in interrogatives, and these also differ in terms of the persons in which pro-drop is licensed. Our results speak against the V-in-C licensing theory of asymmetric pro-drop of Benincà (1984) and Adams (1987), and in favour of an account based on an Agree relation with left-peripheral operators in the sense of Frascarelli (2007, 2018).
... In Rizzi (1986), this position has to be Spec TP where pro undergoes movement in order to be identified. More recently, the idea that pro is in Spec TP had been defended in Rizzi (1997); Cardinaletti (2004); Holmberg (2005) and Roberts (2010a). Following this previous literature, I assume that subject pro is indeed in Spec TP. ...
This paper systematically investigates reconstruction properties of Greek clitic doubled objects, motivates an analysis, and shows how this new evidence distinguishes between the numerous existing analyses of Clitic Doubling (CD). It is shown that CD-ed objects are externally merged in argument positions, not adjunct (pace Philippaki-Warburton et al. 2004) and that they must undergo XP/X'max' movement, by contrast to non CD-ed objects, into the middle field between vP and TP, like A-scrambling (Sportiche 1996). Alternative analyses where the doubled object undergoes X0/X'min' movement (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1997; Preminger 2019 i.a.) or feature movement (Anagnostopoulou 2003; Marchis & Alexiadou 2013) are shown to be unable to capture this data. Furthermore, the paper argues that CD-ed XPs undergo movement into the middle field in order to license a syntactic feature that relates to their interpretive properties. It also considers the interpretive properties of clitics, and shows that they are expletive determiners lacking semantic import. Lastly, it suggests that clitics can only be present if certain locality conditions are satisfied.
... Structure (6) would correspond to a German V2 subordinate clause, structure (7) to a subordinate clause with the finite verb in clause-final position. Cardinaletti (2004) proposes to split subjecthood into different functional projections specialized to host different subjects, one of which is SpecEPP. This line of argumentation could also be pursued in order to describe the different behavior of the formerly strong pronouns tu and io, which sometimes behave as weak pronouns. ...
A production test with 91 bilingual, trilingual and multilingual children (who acquire more than three languages) elicited finite verbs in German. In comparison with monolinguals, the children were accelerated with respect to finite verb placement in main clauses. Following Biberauer & Richards (2006), the EPP feature of T can be satisfied in different ways across languages: If a DP is necessary, which is the case for adult German, it can either be raised from Spec,vP to Spec,TP (in which case the finite verb surfaces in non-clause-final position) or it is pied-piped to Spec,TP. In the latter case, the whole vP is placed in the specifier of TP, giving rise to V-final patterns. The bilingual, trilingual and multilingual children prefer Spec-raising to Spec-pied-piping. We argue that the choice of the means for EPP satisfaction in the German of the multilingual children is influenced by the respective Romance language (French/Spanish).
... Son étude porte sur des phrases du type : Não está passando ônibus nas ruas do centro et As ruas do centro não estão passando ônibus; Naquela loja vende livro et Aquela loja vende livro. Le but est de vérifier les propriétés du constituant en position préverbale et une possible compatibilité avec la position SpecSubjP, comme proposé par Cardinaletti (2004) pour l'italien, pour fournir ainsi une réponse à la question de savoir si le portugais brésilien est une langue à proéminence topicale ou à proéminence du sujet. ...
... In my analysis, preverbal subjects in Spanish, except when A-or C-Topics, sit in TP, and they do because they need to value an intentional feature there. 40 This means that TP must be conceived as an Abar position in Spanish, a view which has also been sustained by Cardinaletti (2004), Gallego (2007), Masullo (1992), Uribe-Etxebarria (1992) and Zubizarreta (1998), among others. My proposal differs from them, though, in that it severely restricts the type of constituents which internally merge in Spec,TP: the most prominent argument in the conceptual structure of the verbal predicate in d-sentences and G-topics in context-dependent sentences. ...
... In my analysis, preverbal subjects in Spanish, except when A-or C-Topics, sit in TP, and they do because they need to value an intentional feature there. 40 This means that TP must be conceived as an Abar position in Spanish, a view which has also been sustained by Cardinaletti (2004), Gallego (2007), Masullo (1992), Uribe-Etxebarria (1992) and Zubizarreta (1998), among others. My proposal differs from them, though, in that it severely restricts the type of constituents which internally merge in Spec,TP: the most prominent argument in the conceptual structure of the verbal predicate in d-sentences and G-topics in context-dependent sentences. ...
This work introduces a subset of informational features (termed core intentional features), different from standard pragmatic features such as topic and focus. Adopting the basic tenets of the Minimalist program, core intentional features are defined as edge features which sit in the relevant phases and are subject to parametric variation. They are assumed to drive the derivation of the sentence so that it constitutes an intentionally-adequate object (i.e. a categorical or a thetic statement) even in the absence of a particular communicative situation. The paper specifically focuses on one of these features, [DI] (discourse intention), and on how it determines the eventual position of the subject in a discourse-prominent language such as Spanish. A preliminary distinction is made between sentences that inaugurate the discourse (d-sentences) and sentences which are integrated in a particular context (context-dependent sentences). It is argued that the SV/VS order in Spanish follows from the conditions of valuation of [DI] in each case; in particular, valuation of [DI] in d-sentences will be a matter of structural and semantic prominence whereas in context-dependent sentences it will depend on pragmatic conditions. The paper also addresses a number of significant contrasts in the much-debated issue of the placement of the subject in Spanish, which receive a principled explanation under the theory of core intentional features proposed here.
... Whereas in a non-V2 language like modern Italian (cf. Cardinaletti 1997Cardinaletti , 2004) the dedicated SpecTP subject position licenses, although not exclusively, both thematic subjects (18a) and rhematic subjects in wide focus (cf. 18b), in a V2 language like late Latin these same pragmatic functions are typically licensed by fronting of the subject to a specifier position within the C-space. ...
In this article we undertake a systematic study of the Itinerarium Egeriae, one of the best known late Latin texts, to determine the proper characterization of the word order of the text and to consider in particular whether the Itinerarium Egeriae can legitimately be considered to present a verb-second (V2) grammar on the par with the well-studied grammars of medieval Romance. The results, based on detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of the text and, where relevant, appropriate comparisons with medieval Romance, confirm the innovative nature of the syntax of the Itinerarium Egeriae whose word order patterns are shown to follow an asymmetric V2 constraint. The article therefore offers valuable original evidence for the often claimed, but hitherto unproven, hypothesis that the V2 syntax of medieval Romance represents the continuation of a parametric setting already well established in the grammar of late Latin.
... This may only happen if no Agent EA is merged because the latter would be the structurally closer candidate as 'Subject of Predication' (in this sense SF respects the Accessibility Hierarchy). The notion of 'Subject of Predication' hereby adopted is broader than the one proposed in Cardinaletti (2004). Cardinaletti refers specifically to subjects, thus nominal arguments, whereas in OI diverse lexical items may check [Subj-of-Pred*] as long as their semantic content is relevant for spatio-temporal and/or nominal deixis (I come back to this point below). ...
(FINAL PROOFS) Stylistic Fronting (SF) is an optional syntactic phenomenon whereby a lexical item that may belong to various syntactic categories fronts to a pre-finite V position, if no subject is merged in SpecIP. Literature reports that SF is productive in Icelandic and Old Scandinavian, and it is also attested in some Old Romance languages (Old Catalan, Old French). This paper presents a phase-based analysis of SF in Old Italian. In this language, SF has some previously undiscussed characteristics. A corpus study shows that Old Italian displays a root/non-root asymmetry in the typology of fronting items. In root clauses, nominal elements, such as nominal predicates with a special semantics, front more frequently than verbal elements (infinitives, past participles), which most frequently front in non-root clauses. Since fronting in root clauses is intrinsically ambiguous with topicalization and focalization, it is not considered SF, and is not extensively discussed in this paper. By contrast, I analyze as proper SF the fronting operation that occurs in non-root clauses, and I argue that this is a movement anchoring the event-structure (vP) semantic content to the context (FinP). This type of movement is possible only if vP is not a phase and no intervening agentive external argument is merged in SpecvP. The fronted material is pragmatically presupposed and interpreted as ‘Subject of Predication’. Pragmatics tests corroborate the argument.
... river "Muge is the name we give to that kind of fish when it is found in the river. " 4. I take the preverbal non-clitic subject in sentences like (1) to sit in Spec,ΣP/subjP (Martins 1994;Cardinaletti 1997Cardinaletti , 2004, a position of the high IP field. The post-verbal non-clitic subject in sentences like (2) stays in Spec, vP. ...
The volumes Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ contain the selected papers of the Going Romance conferences, a major European annual discussion forum for theoretically relevant research on Romance languages.
This volume assembles a significant number of selected papers that were presented at the 21st edition of Going Romance, which was organized by the Chair of Romance Linguistics of the University of Amsterdam in December 2007. The range of languages (both standard and non-standard varieties) analyzed in this volume is quite significant: Catalan, French, Italian, European and Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. The volume is quite representative of the spread of the variety of research carried out nowadays on Romance languages within theoretical linguistics and shows the vitality of this research.
... If it really is in FinP in Gainago/Torrile, this would be another argument for our claim that the Camponese a is in a lower position, i.e. in the highest portion of the TP (if we accept the idea that FinP is the lowest projection of CP). The clitic a of Campone does not correspond to the homologous clitic a of Bellinzonese either (Cattaneo 2009): Cattaneo shows that in this variety the clitic Thus, the most suitable position for the clitic a of Campone seems to be a very high position of the TP, in particular SubjP (Rizzi & Shlonsky 2007; see also Cardinaletti 2004 andCognola 2013). In any case, we exclude its incorporation with the verb in T°, since the clitic a and the verb are divided by at least one projection, i.e. ...
This article presents a syntactic analysis of the third person subject clitic a in Camponese, a heretofore unstudied Friulian variety. Following Poletto's (2000) map of subject clitics, we argue that it bears [+third person] features, and is, in fact, the spell-out of the functional head Subj°, located in the highest projection of TP (following Rizzi & Shlonsky 2007). In the first part of the article, we offer a detailed description of the distribution and syntactic properties of the subject clitic a, identifying its position in relation to the other elements that occur in the CP and TP. In the second part we discuss two proposals put forward to account for split clitics like a-l in the related variety of Forni di Sotto, where a and l are held to be part of a single clitic al (Manzini & Savoia 2009, Calabrese & Pescarini 2014). We show that such an account is incompatible with the case of Campone, where the clitics a and l are clearly separate: l is a [uφ]-clitic (Roberts 2010) and is located lower in the TP than the clitic a. We conclude with an analysis, which proposes the integration of Poletto's (2000) typology with a fifth type, corresponding to the clitic a of Campone.
... In European Portuguese, the functional polarity head Σ (Laka 1990, which immediately dominates TP, is precisely subject to that type of visibility constraint at PF. Thus it is licensed only if it is lexicalized. 15 12 As for its role with respect to the sentential subject, the P projection of may be taken to be equivalent or the SubjP (subject-of-predication) projection of Cardinaletti (1997Cardinaletti ( , 2004. See also Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998, Barbosa 2000, Bailyn 2004 The deictic locative moves to Spec,TP from within a Larsonian VP-shell. ...
This volume assembles a significant number of selected papers that were presented at the 22nd edition of Going Romance, held at the University of Groningen in December 2008. Though it contains a variety of topics, 'tense, mood and aspect' is represented most extensively. This volume contains a rich variety of Romance languages: Cape Verdean, European Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Spanish. The collection of papers is representative of the research carried out nowadays on Romance languages within theoretical linguistics and shows the vitality of this research.
This article provides evidence from Arabic (namely Modern Standard Arabic and Jordanian Arabic) that ɸ-Agree with an element which undergoes a phonological deletion at PF, i.e., a pro, results in the occurrence of a ɸ-inflection of the goal on the relevant probe. This occurrence is imposed by the effects of a suggested interface condition, named as The Agree Identification Condition, which requires a phonologically null goal to be ɸ-identified through a co-varying ɸ-inflection on its probe. Such an analysis directly accounts for the intriguing observation that ɸ-inflections in Arabic do not occur on heads (e.g., verbs and prepositions) when the latter ɸ-agree with an overt DP. Additionally, this article shows that the effects of this condition do not arise when the Agree relation occurs between a probe and an unpronounced goal which is a member of a movement chain. When one link of the chain (e.g., the higher copy) is overt, no ɸ-inflection of the goal would appear on the probe. This suggests that when a probe ɸ-agrees with a goal which constitutes one link of a movement chain, the Agree relation holds between the probe and the whole chain.
This paper starts from the premise that there is something special about v in southern Romance, proposing a principled explanation for the respective absence and presence of DOM in northern and southern Romance which derives its distribution from the respective height of V-movement. It reviews a selection of key examples of morphosyntactic divergence between northern and southern Romance varieties which highlight a number of significant differences in the featural make-up of the functional heads of the sentential core T-v and the parametric options they instantiate, including in particular the distribution of DOM. Especially interesting in this respect is the behaviour of Romanian which, synchronically, displays a degree of internal variation that requires us to assume both consistent and inconsistent pairings of head and edge features across T and v, giving rise to unmarked and marked hybrid parametric options which variously mix facets of southern (e.g., DOM) and northern (e.g., subject clitics) syntax.
While the V2 status of medieval Romance and old French in particular is widely supported by detailed empirical and statistical studies, there are still some dissenting voices, such that the introduction and detailed scrutiny of new data, especially involving a range of more diverse textual sources, is a welcome addition in that it can provide important confirmatory evidence in favour of the V2 hypothesis. The present article therefore undertakes a detailed examination of the word order of a non-canonical old French prose text, the Histoire Ancienne jusqu'à César (henceforth HA), of particular interest since its earliest manuscript witnesses were produced outside of France providing us with a precious example of a supralocal use of French. Within this context, the study of word order and, in particular, the evidence for a V2 constraint in the HA offers us a discrete scientifically-controllable variable by which to measure the extent of structural unity across those mutually intelligible medieval koinés, of which the language of the HA is but one example, albeit from outside of France. An examination of the word order of the HA, in itself an original result, is shown to follow a V2 syntax, thereby underlining the salience of this structural constraint as a distinctive and stable feature of the grammars of medieval French texts produced both inside and outside of France. At the same time, this strengthens, in turn, claims for the existence of a common medieval Romance syntax characterized by a shared structural norm in the form of the V2 constraint, arguably the common denominator and hallmark of all medieval Romance grammars. * I should like to thank two anonymous reviewers and Pierre Larrivée for their most helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article. My sincere thanks also go to Simone Ventura for many insightful discussions of a number of points relating to the nature and language of the HA.
This article is an examination of null expletive subjects occurring in the context of an embedded clause in Logoori, a Kenyan Bantu language. Logoori morphologically distinguishes between two null CP‐linked expletive subjects in its subject‐agreement paradigm. Based on morphological, syntactic, and semantic evidence, I argue against the postulation of a null (pro)nominal element (e.g., ). Instead, through a careful study of the properties of embedded CPs, such CP‐linked null expletives are shown to be a direct result of T agreeing with the embedded clause. The account situates the formal semantics of Logoori subject agreement in a plausible syntactic framework. I further illustrate how the account proposed for Logoori extends to other kinds of CP‐linked expletives in other languages, including other null‐subject languages, partial null‐subject languages, and non‐null‐subject languages.
In this introduction to the Special Collection of the same title, we start out by discussing some key issues addressed by recent research on micro-variation in subject realization and interpretation in anaphoric contexts (Section 1). This includes the status of some subject anaphoric devices in null 'vs'. non-null subject languages, the possibility of micro-variation among null subject languages, and the way in which L2 speakers, elderly speakers and children deal with the task at stake and the factors that may influence this process. Then, we briefly summarize the seven contributions to this collection (Section 2) and relate the findings of each contribution to one another as well as to previous research (Section 3). As a whole, the studies in this collection not only shed light on many of the above mentioned issues, but they also raise novel research questions that open new perspectives of investigation into the choice and interpretation of subject referring expressions.
In this work we analyze the anaphoric devices employed in topic continuity and topic shift in the semi-spontaneous narrations of three groups of speakers: Italian Natives, Greek Natives and near-native second language speakers (L2ers) of Italian with Greek as a first language (L1). According to some recent literature, near-native speakers of a null subject language over-use overt pronouns even when their L1 is also a null subject language. It is still unclear whether this over-use is tied to differences in the languages involved (e.g. Italian and Spanish, Filiaci 'et al'. 2014) and hence might be the result of cross-linguistic influence. Our data reveal that in Italian 'pro' has a more specific function than in Greek in signaling topic continuity. The characteristic of 'pro' in Italian is preserved in the L2ers productions. We also found that L2ers over-use overt pronouns, particularly in topic continuity, despite the similarity of their two languages in this respect. Finally, we single out an additional factor that influences speakers’ choice of anaphoric devices, i.e. the number and kind of active referents, proving evidence that all speakers’ groups employ overt pronouns particularly when there are two active animate referents that differ for gender and/or number, and L2ers significantly more than the other two groups. Our findings thus show that micro-variation in the use of anaphoric devices is attested among null subject languages, while the over-use of overt pronouns by L2ers stems from their difficulty in establishing topicality under higher degrees of cognitive load.
This article approaches locative inversion as a construction resulting from valuation of the core intentional feature [DI] (for discourse intention) by a locative constituent to obtain an event‐reporting thetic statement that expresses a state of affairs located in some spatiotemporal coordinates. I argue that in languages where [DI] is an EPP feature, as is the case with Spanish, the locative is internally merged in Spec,TP, competing with the subject for this position with respect to prominence conditions. Two types of locative‐inversion constructions therefore obtain: (i) core locative inversion, where the locative phrase is structurally prominent, and (ii) deictic locative inversion, where the locative phrase is nonprominent but must be merged in Spec,TP for reasons of interface economy. The article explores in detail the differences between the two and the predicted differences between Spanish and other languages, such as English, where the EPP is not informational but formal in nature. It also offers empirical support for Spec,TP as the landing site of the locative in Spanish (and, it is predicted, in other discourse‐prominent languages), showing that locative inversion is not a root phenomenon in this case and can therefore be found in many contexts where standard topicalization would be ruled out.
In this paper, we present evidence in favour of a syntactic approach to subject drop in Swiss French text messages. Subject drop in our corpus follows patterns found in various so-called "written abbreviated registers" such as diaries, notes etc.: it occurs at the beginning of main sentences and after preposed adjuncts. Based on a corpus of 1100 text messages, collected in 2009/10 (www.sms4science.ch), we test predictions put forward by two approaches to argument drop in abbreviated registers, i.e. the "Avoid Weak Start" hypothesis by Weir (2012a) and the "Truncated CP hypothesis" by Haegeman (2013). While for our data the first approach cannot be excluded, our results more strongly support the syntactic one, despite the fact that some data, especially preposed strong subject moi without clitic resumption, challenge existing analyses. These data suggest that dropped referential subjects can be analysed as instances of familiar topic drop.
Latin is often cited as a typical example of a free word order language. Free word order inevitably complicates the compositional semantics for any theory in which functions are lexically defined to take their arguments in a fixed order. A number of sophisticated logical mechanisms have been suggested over the years to resolve this problem, but none of them is actually compatible with the Latin data. We adjust the syntax to fit the philological evidence and use the resulting structure as the basis for a simple semantics which allows arguments to be entered into the semantic composition in the order in which they are presented by the syntax.
The present chapter critically reconsiders the traditional typological distinction between Latin and Romance in terms of a syntheticity-analyticity opposition, according to which core grammatical categories and distinctions are marked morphologically in Latin but syntactically in Romance. After considering a wide selection of the Romance evidence for innovative analytic structures manifested in the emergence of a series of functional categories lexicalizing various functional heads within the nominal, verbal and clausal domains, a number of empirical and theoretical problems and limitations with this superficial dichotomy are reviewed. These highlight how the observed differences between Latin and Romance cannot be simplistically reduced to a synthetic-analytic opposition. Rather, it is argued that the observed rise of Romance analyticity should be considered an epiphenomenal development, ultimately the manifestation of a deeper change, but not, significantly, its cause, related to a change in the head directionality parameter from head-finality to head-initiality.
This paper reports an empirical study of the discourse-pragmatic functions of subject left dislocation (LD) in Old Occitan. Data come from the complete troubadour biographies, in which the most common manifestation of subject LD is a nominal subject + sentence adverb
si
+ verb, as in “Bertrans de Born si fo uns castellans” [Bertran de Born was a nobleman]. Whereas previous accounts fail to integrate syntax with discourse-pragmatic function, these results reveal the importance of both in explaining the occurrence of subject LD. Using recent approaches to the clausal left periphery (e.g., Benincà 2006), I distinguish LD subjects from conventional (i.e., non-dislocated) pre-verbal subjects. Next, following Fleischman’s (1991) analysis of
si
in Old French, I illustrate how subject LD structures the flow of information in discourse. In particular, subject LD marks a constituent as a discourse topic and can also introduce a new referent into the discourse and thereby mark it as topical.
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