Abstract
Previous literature contains two different points of view regarding the subject-object asymmetry related to the DP head of pseudorelatives (PRs). Some authors claim that the DP head can only be interpreted as the subject of the embedded predicate (subject-gap PRs). Other authors point towards the possibility of finding other constituents (e.g. direct object) in head position (object-gap PR), too. In this paper I claim that there are certain languages that only allow the DP head to be the subject of the embedded predicate, that is, they only allow subject-gap PRs, whereas other languages allow both subject-gap and object-gap PRs. Thus, the aim of this paper is to present the object-gap pseudorelative (PR) generalization to account for the cross-linguistic availability of subject-gap and object-gap PRs: the availability of object-gap PRs is subject to object clitic doubling. The structure of this paper goes as follows. Section 1 introduces PRs. Section 2 presents data about subject-gap and object-gap PRs. Section 3 gives some remarks on object clitic doubling. Section 4 presents the object-gap PR generalization. Conclusions and further research issues are presented in section 5.
Highlights
Pseudo-relatives (PRs)1 are constructions formed by a DP plus an embedded clause headed by the complementizer quethat (1)
The Object-gap PR generalization What do PRs and object clitic doubling have in common? If we look back at the examples (3) - (8), an important similarity between object-gap PRs and object-clitic doubling constructions arises: the same languages (French, Italian and Portuguese) that do not allow object-gap PRs do not allow object clitic doubling constructions, and those languages that allow object clitic doubling (Spanish or Greek) allow objectgap PRs
Previous literature on PRs presents a subject-object asymmetry regarding the syntactic nature of the DP in head position with respect to the embedded predicate
Summary
Pseudo-relatives (PRs) are constructions formed by a DP (the head) plus an embedded clause headed by the complementizer quethat (1). PRs have been studied from very different angles since the late 19th century (Casalicchio 2013; Graffi 2017 and references therein). Researchers on semantics, syntax and discourse have been studying PRs for decades (Granville-Hatcher 1944; Schwarze 1974; Radford 1975; Súñer 1978; Graffi 1980, 2017; Guasti 1988; Campos 1994; Cinque 1995; Brito 1995; Rafel 1999; Scarano 2002; Casalicchio 2013, 2014, 2016; Koopman & Sportiche 2014; Rodríguez-Espiñeira 2014; Angelopoulos 2015; Moulton & Grillo 2015a, 2015b; Grillo & Moulton 2016 among others). PRs are present in a great variety of languages such as: Spanish (2a), Catalan (2b), Italian (2c), Romanian (2d), Portuguese (2e), French (2f), Galician (2g), Greek (2h), Japanese (2i) or Dutch (at least in some varieties) as opposed to languages like English, Basque or Chinese (Grillo & Costa 2014: 157)
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