Abstract
AbstractIn the literature it is often assumed that partitive pronouns can only be used in combination with elliptical objects of transitive or unaccusative verbs. Some counterevidence has been provided as well, however, showing that partitive pronouns may also occur with intransitive verbs. In this paper it is investigated, by means of a Grammaticality Judgment Task, if native speakers of Italian and Dutch accept the use of the partitive pronoun with three types of intransitive verbs, in combination with an elliptical quantified adverbial NP. It is shown that both groups of participants were quite ready to accept the partitive pronoun in these cases, in some contexts more than in others. Various explanations for the results are considered and one more specific suggestion is made to account for the data, also based on a comparison with other constructions and other languages.
Highlights
Partitive pronouns, called quantitative pronouns, are associated with indefinite expressions (Giusti & Sleeman, 2021)
Bennis (1986) accepts the combination of ‘remain’ with the partitive pronoun in Dutch, Will’s (2019) search on the internet shows that in Italian the partitive pronoun is abundantly used in combination with the verb costare in all registers, and the results of the Grammaticality Judgment Task that was carried out in the research for this paper show that the participants of both Italian and Dutch accepted the combination of the partitive pronoun with the three verbs in approximately 80% of the cases, on average
In the generative literature it is generally assumed that there is a syntactic constraint on the extraction of partitive pronouns, which could only be extracted from subcategorized arguments, but not from non-arguments such as quantified adverbial NPs
Summary
Called quantitative pronouns, are associated with indefinite expressions (Giusti & Sleeman, 2021). In the Dutch Example (1) and the Italian Example (2a), the partitive pronoun replaces the nominal constituent of a quantitative construction. In the Italian Example (2b), the partitive pronoun substitutes a determiner-less indefinite expression. In the French Example (3), it replaces a weak indefinite introduced by a partitive determiner. While in Dutch the partitive pronoun is a weak pronoun, in Italian and French it is a clitic:. (1) Ik heb drie boeken → Ik heb ER drie. I have three books I have par.wk three ‘I have three books.
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