Clitic Climbing Research Articles

On Coordination and Clitic Climbing in Spanish Auxiliary Verb Constructions

AbstractIn this work we analyse some aspects of the interaction between coordination and clitic climbing in Spanish sentences with auxiliary verbs. We aim at shedding light on three kinds of structures, or ‘scenarios’: (1) those in which we find coordinated auxiliaries taking a single lexical verb as complement (Puede y debe hacerlo); (2) those in which a single auxiliary takes coordinated lexical verbs as complement (estás molestándonos y mirándonos), and (3) those in which coordinated auxiliaries take coordinated lexical verbs as complement (puede y debe terminarlo y entregarlo). Our proposal will involve a combination of Gapping and Across-the-Board rule application for Scenarios (1) and (2) and Right Node Raising for Scenario (3). We will argue that well-known syntactic constraints on long distance dependencies, such as those proposed in Ross, John Robert. 1967.Constraints on variables in syntax. Cambridge: MIT disertation, can account for the facts without the need forad hocmachinery.

Clitic Climbing, the Raising-Control Dichotomy and Diaphasic Variation in Croatian

In the paper, we discuss the phenomenon of clitic climbing (CC) out of infinitive complements in contemporary Croatian. Based on the first theoretical work and some empirical findings on CC in Czech and Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian (BCS) and the observation that differences in CC linked to register have been reported for some languages, we elaborate on the claim that CC varies in respect of both register and the Raising-Control Dichotomy. The following research questions are addressed: Does clitic climbing out of the single infinitive in Croatian depend on the type of complement-taking predicate (CTP) with respect to the Raising-Control Distinction? Does CC appear with equal frequency in standard and colloquial Croatian if the type of CTP verb (Raising vs Control) as a variable remains constant? Our study is based on data for two types of complement-taking predicates: a) Raising (8 different verbs) and b) Subject Control (8 non-reflexive + 8 reflexive verbs). The data was extracted from the Forum subcorpus of hrWaC v2.2 and from the Croatian Language Repository and Croatian National Corpus. Our data suggest that not only the Raising-Control Dichotomy, but also diaphasic variation have an impact on CC from infinitive complements.

스페인어 접어인상구문의 의미-통사적 분석

스페인어 접어인상구문의 의미-통사적 분석

Clitic Climbing, Finiteness and the Raising-Control Distinction. A Corpus–based study

Abstract In the paper, we discuss the phenomenon of clitic climbing out of finite da2-complements in contemporary Serbian. Scholars’ opinions on the acceptability and occurrence of this construction, based on a handful of self-made examples, vary considerably. Expanding on the assumption that the correctness of the phenomenon has often been denied due to its rareness we employ large corpora to examine the problem. We focus on possible constraints arising from the syntactic properties of clause-embedding predicates.

Verb-Adjacent Clitic Climbing and Restructuring in Isbukun Bunun

This paper investigates agent-oriented, manner, and frequency adverbials in Isbukun Bunun and demonstrates how voice affects the functions of adverbials and captures the notion of restructuring. Adverbial-verb constructions are shown to involve complementation rather than conjunction or adjunction. Undergoer movement, clitic climbing, and negation tests are utilized to show that Actor-Voice adverbials are regarded as nonrestructuring predicates, while Undergoer-Voice adverbials are treated as restructuring ones. Verb-adjacent clitic climbing in adverbial-verb constructions is also shown to be closely related to restructuring.

Don’t shoot the messenger: How subjectivity affects distributional properties

The present paper discusses the differences in distributional properties between schijnen and lijken: two Dutch raising-verbs that are often translated to English ‘seem’. According to the cartographic approach, for instance Haegeman, L. (2006a. Clitic Climbing and the Dual Status of Sembrare. Linguistic Inquiry 37, 484–501), the differences in distributional properties follow from a difference in their position in the syntactic structure. Lijken is proposed to be a lexical verb inserted in a low position. Schijnen on the other hand is a functional head encoding speaker-related evidential mood, inserted in a high position. This paper shows that postulating different syntactic positions is unnecessary. The distributional differences follow from restrictions on scope as a result of the subjectivity directly (or speaker-related mood). The subjectivity of schijnen results in positive polarity behavior and as such schijnen is ruled out in nonveridical contexts (cf. Ernst, T., 2009. Speaker-oriented adverbs. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 27, 497–544). A benefit of the present approach is that it is able to fit in cases in which schijnen is used non-subjectively and can appear under modals and aspect. In addition, it is able to accommodate the impossibility to embed subjective lijkt-me under modals and aspect.

Clitic climbing revisited

Presently, there is overall consent among researchers on Romance in HPSG (Miller and Sag, 1997, Abeillé et al., 1998, Monachesi, 1996, 1999) that bounded clitic climbing (CC) is best understood in terms of argument composition. Despite the fact that all current analyses of CC are based on the same core idea, individual analyses of this phenomenon differ.In this paper, I shall propose a unified approach that will be applicable to CC in both French and Italian. The approach will be cast entirely in terms of valence lists, argument structure and slash, such that construction- or language-specific book-keeping devices can be eliminated. As a side-effect, this approach provides a more strengthened view of lexical integrity, in that morphological information, i.e. an argument's mode of realisation, will not be directly accessible for subcategorisation.

Litic Climbing and Null Subject Languages

The aim of this paper is to derive Clitic Climbing from restructuring together with the Null Subject property. Data are drawn mainly from Catalan. I propose a biclausal analysis for restructuring constructions in which clitic climbing (like any clitic-Argument dependencies) is analysed as an A-dependency, assuming that clitics are AGR-heads which check features in the Agreement-Case system. Clitic climbing would be then a «long distance» A-dependency, which is made possible by assuming that restructuring is always raising, and that raising in NSLs is a transparent structure for A-dependencies, due to the nature of Nominative Case checking in these languages. To this end, a reformulation of locality conditions for checking (Agree, Chomsky 1998) is needed, which has some independent plausibility.

Possessive clitics and the structure of nominal expressions

This paper examines the syntactic structure of nominal expressions (NE) containing possessive phrases with special attention on Bulgarian NE with possessive clitics. We argue that the possessive clitic appears in two syntactic positions: one inside the NE, and one in the VP domain, even though it can be pronounced either pre- or postverbally in the second case. The choice of the position in which the clitic is pronounced is determined by the general conditions governing the syntax-phonology interface. Following a proposal of Franks [Clitics in Slavic. Paper presented at the Workdhop on Comparative Slavic Morphosyntax, Bloomington, IN (1998)] and Bos̆ković [On the Nature of Syntax-Phonology Interface: Cliticization and Related Issues (2001)] we argue that when the clitic escapes the boundaries of the NE, it creates a non-trivial chain. In the default case, the head of the chain is pronounced but when pronouncing the head leads to a PF violation, a lower copy of the clitic is pronounced. We explore the question what conditions the possibility for the possessive clitic to appear in two syntactic positions. We propose that the clitic climbs to the verb for reasons of case. We support earlier proposals that movement into theta-positions is possible. We argue that the possessive clitic is assigned inherent Dative case. In the spirit of Lasnik [Chains of Arguments (1999)], we account for the cases of clitic climbing that seem to involve optional movement without appealing to the controversial notion of optionality. We defend the view that the different word orders result from different lexical choices. Finally, we examine various agreement phenomena inside the Bulgarian NEs which provide new evidence that movement is constrained by principles of Economy of derivation.

Coherent Infinitives in German, Polish, and Spanish

In this article I present a unified analysis of long scrambling (LS) (scrambling across sentence boundaries) out of infinitivals in German and Polish and clitic climbing (CC) (clitic movement across sentence boundaries) in Spanish. Infinitives exhibiting LS in German have been termed coherent infinitives by Bech (1955) whereas the phenomenon of infinitives allowing for clitic climbing (CC) in Spanish (and other Romance languages) is often named restructuring (see for example Napoli 1981, Bordelois 1986, Choe 1988). The terms coherent infinitives' and restructuring' refer to the observation that certain control verbs as well as ECM- and raising verbs can take infinitival complements that are not barriers for clause bounded processes. Although these infinitives are usually described in terms of a list of characteristics (see for example Haider 1986), it should be emphasized that a) empirical implications for other languages than German have not been discussed from a comparative perspective and b) the theoretical status of the concept of such infinitives is not clear. Restricting myself to control complements I will show that concerning a) LS in German and Polish and CC in Spanish show up with the same class of control complements, displaying an interesting parallel between the Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages from a typological point of view. Furthermore, concerning b), I will give a unified analysis of CC and LS by discussing lexically and structurally determined options, that make a bisentential representation behave syntactically like a monoclausal structure in German, Polish, and Spanish. I will argue that CC and LS are both licensed by the same mechanisms. To account for this fact I will introduce a theory of barriers and incorporation, apply it to the data presented and extend it to the impossibility of LS and CC in the presence of certain islands

Analyzing Syntactic Variation with Computer-Based Corpora: The Case of Modern Spanish Clitic Climbing

Un corpus informatise a fournit les donnees necessaires aux recherches sur la variation des constructions clitiques en espagnol parle et ecrit (lo debe comprar vs. debe comprarlo)

The Grammaticalization of Auxiliaries: Spanish Clitic Climbing

Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1988), pp. 352-363

Semantic Interpretation vs. Lexical Governance: Clitic Climbing in Italian

Semantic Interpretation vs. Lexical Governance: Clitic Climbing in Italian