Taking case out of the Person-Case Constraint

Abstract

The Person-Case Constraint (pcc) is a restriction on co-occurring weak pronominal direct (do) and indirect objects (io) that restricts the person value of the do. This article presents a previously unnoticed variant of the pcc found in Slovenian, where the canonical pcc operates alongside a reverse pcc, where the restriction applies to the io. This pattern is not predicted by standard syntactic approaches to the pcc (which rely on inherent asymmetries between the io and do). It is argued that the pcc (in all its forms) arises with pronouns that are inherently unspecified for a person value and need to receive it externally from a functional head via Agree. The structurally higher pronoun blocks the structurally lower pronoun from receiving a person value, giving rise to the pcc. The reverse pcc then arises due to optional do-over-io clitic movement prior to person valuation. The proposed analysis is shown to capture cross-linguistic variation regarding the pcc including the Strong/Weak pcc split, which is attributed to a variation in the structure of pronouns. The article also establishes a cross-linguistic typology of the reverse pcc, where the reverse pcc exists exclusively as an optional pattern alongside the baseline pcc pattern.