Obligatory dative clitic-doubling of type III experiencers in Bulgnais

Edward J Rubin

doi:10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4299

Abstract

The correlation between the position of the Dative experiencer of a type III psych-verb relative to the verb itself and the obligatory vs. optional nature of an associated Dative clitic has seldom been noted in the literature, and it has never previously been explained. This paper presents relevant new data from Bulgnais (Bologna, Italy), and it proposes that these verbs, in the languages that require the Dative clitic with the preverbal Dative experiencer, have an additional strong lexical property beyond inherent Case licensing. Like Case licensing, this property requires feature checking, which is satisfied alternately by the clitic (unmarked word-order) or by the experiencer phrase. Only when the clitic checks the lexically required feature can the full experiencer move to the preverbal position, because otherwise, it is frozen in a postverbal position by its role in checking the mentioned strong lexical feature, which occurs lower in the verbal domain.

Highlights

This paper focuses on an explanation of the data presented in (1-2), which are from Bulgnais, a northern Italian variety found in and around Bologna, the capitol of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, that has received relatively less attention than other varieties in the country
In Bulgnaisand other grammars like it, including at least Spanish, type III psych-verbs have a required Dative clitic when their experiencer argument is preverbal but an optional one when it is postverbal. To account for this previously unexplained correlation, we have proposed that these verbs lexically specify Inherent Dative Case and an additional feature in need of checking, and that these two properties are associated with the same independently motivated light vE. uF is identical to the non-Case-related, non-left-peripheral feature responsible for movement of one of the two arguments to SpecT
At the merger of the experiencer, both properties of the light vE, Inherent Case and uF, are simultaneous satisfied by feature checking, a simple extension of Woolford’s (2006) notion that Inherent Case is structurally licensed in association with T-marking

Summary

Introduction

This paper focuses on an explanation of the data presented in (1-2), which are from Bulgnais, a northern Italian variety found in and around Bologna, the capitol of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, that has received relatively less attention than other varieties in the country. We discuss the analysis of type III psych-verbs in Belletti & Rizzi (1988), highlighting the uncontroversial aspects that we will adopt from it, including the Inherent Case and preverbal position of the experiencers in Italian, which correspond to the data in (1). In Spanish (9a), a preverbal experiencer of a type III psych-verb occurs with the same obligatory Dative clitic as we saw in Bulgnais (1). Our analysis starts with four uncontroversial conclusions established by Belletti & Rizzi (1988): Type III psych-verbs have no external argument; the experiencer is generated in a structurally higher position than the theme; either argument can legitimately move to the subject position, with the noted alternation in the requirement for the clitic in Bulgnais (and Spanish); and the experiencer has Inherent Dative Case. In (17), we see Woolford’s structure, which uses applicative light vs, following McGinnis (1996, 1998, 2001) and much subsequent work:

DPGOAL vG

DPEXP vE

DP a

DPTHM sti lîber qué

TP a ZvanénF DCL V piasó