Clitic Doubling Research Articles

Complementizer agreement is clitic doubling

Complementizer agreement is clitic doubling

The morphosyntax of Gothic preverb compounds: incorporation and applicativisation

Gothic preverb compounds illustrate several interesting characteristics, including multiple preverb stacking, idiomatisation, tmesis (i.e., separation by clitics), and P-copying (i.e., multiple pronunciation of the preverb). This paper is a close examination of the morphosyntax of these compounds, highlighting novel empirical generalisations about the Gothic language with key theoretical implications for our understanding of Germanic complex verbs and the alternations they participate in. In particular, this paper proposes a structural distinction between preverb compounds which are obligatorily semantically transparent and those which are optionally idiomatic. In arguing that transparent compounds involve the mechanism of preposition incorporation and m-merger, paralleling recent accounts of clitic doubling, while idiomatic compounds involve a thematic high applicative projection, this paper captures nuanced differences in these compounds’ case assignment and argument licensing behaviour. These structural differences will be shown to derive these two compound types’ constrained interaction with the aforementioned phenomena of stacking, tmesis, and copying. In addition, this paper compares Gothic complex verbs to their cross-linguistic correlates within and beyond Germanic, whilst also providing a diachronic pathway for the development of (multiple) preverb compounds.

Brazilian Portuguese argument ellipsis

The present study puts forward a novel analysis of argument ellipsis (AE) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), according to which AE in BP takes place in a clitic doubling configuration, where the clitic is a phonologically null clitic and AE targets the clitic doubled DP. The clitic doubling analysis accounts for a number of the properties of AE in BP. Specifically, it accounts for the ability of AE to target object DPs; for the inability of AE to target subject DPs, including not only subjects of finite clauses but also subjects of small clauses and infinitival clauses; and for the inability of AE to target non-specific indefinite DPs and idiomatically construed DPs. The present study also reviews the influential anti-agreement theory of AE and argues that it does not offer a viable account of AE in BP, as it both undergenerates and overgenerates AE in BP.

Dative Doubling in Non-Mandatory Contexts in European Spanish

Clitic doubling (CD) is the co-appearance in the same sentence of the clitic and a correlative syntagma in the canonical position of the object. Apart from obligatory contexts, CD of the indirect object (IO) is found with variable frequency in Romance languages and even in different varieties of the same language, most likely because it is a phenomenon of internal/external language interface. The objective of this work is to determine the frequency of CD in non-obligatory contexts of recipient and location IO in peninsular Spanish, and to analyse its features according to the referential hierarchy used for the diachronic evolution of the phenomenon. For this purpose, we extracted data from two open access corpora of interviews (COREC and PRESEEA) from different regions that are (or are not) areas of historical contact with other languages. The results show a significant extension of doubling in contexts where this is optional and the neutralisation of features that previously predicted CD of IOs. Nevertheless, there are geographical differences in peninsular Spanish in terms of frequency, definiteness, specificity, the influence of the cliticization of the direct object, and the accessibility of the IO referents in the minds of the speakers.

Double pronominalization and clitic doubling in Dialectal Brazilian Portuguese and Colloquial Standard Brazilian Portuguese

In this study, we propose a comparative analysis of the ditransitive constructions in Dialectal Brazilian Portuguese (DBP) and Colloquial Standard Brazilian Portuguese (BP), taking into consideration the phenomenon named Double Pronominalization, in which both the theme and the goal arguments are realized as clitics or full pronouns, with consequences for the occurrence of a type of Person Case Constraint as well as a specific case of clitic doubling. In the comparative scenario, we show that the DBP instantiates a particular type of Double Object Construction (DOC), in which the grammatical licensing of the goal argument has similarities with the English DOC. Further we consider that both the dialectal and the standard varieties display the prepositional ditransitive construction (PDC), in which the goal argument is introduced by the preposition para (‘to’). In this paper we propose that these innovative properties can be accounted for if we consider the theory of low and high applicative, as expressed in Pylkännen’s (2008) typology. Following Pancheva & Zubizarreta (2018), we also assume that the applicative head bears an interpretable person feature entering an agreement relation with the argument introduced in the specifier position of the applicative domain (cf. also Torres Morais & Salles 2010, 2016, 2019). Finally, we claim that the loss of third person dative clitics in BP undermine the feature make-up of the low applicative head, excluding clitic cluster and clitic doubling formation (of the EP type). Consequently, two strategies arise in the licensing of the goal argument in ditransitive structures: (i) under structural Case, in a low applicative head, as found in DBP; (ii) as an oblique phrase, introduced by the preposition para (‘to’). However, first and second clitics me and te remain, implying that the BP pronominal system expresses a monovalent value for the feature [participant]. We propose that they are licensed in a high applicative structure bearing an interpretable person feature, under an agreement relation with the inherent interpretable person feature, which corresponds to first (speaker) and second person (addressee) (cf. Torres Morais & Salles, 2022).

Animacy in the acquisition of differential object marking by Romanian monolingual children

Differential object marking (DOM) has been shown, in an impressive number of production studies, to be acquired by monolingual children at around age 3. The picture which emerges from comprehension data, however, reveals that DOM is an area of vulnerability in L1 acquisition. This study investigates the acquisition of DOM by monolingual Romanian children using a preference judgment task. 80 monolingual Romanian children (aged 4;04-11;04) and a control group of 10 Romanian adults took part in the study. Results show that DOM is vulnerable and trace this vulnerability to the animacy feature. Romanian children incorrectly overgeneralize DOM to inanimate proper names and inanimate descriptive DPs until age 9. The vulnerability of animacy is predicted by its variable behaviour with respect to object marking as well as by the current increase in the use of clitic doubling, a DOM marker less sensitive to animacy. On the learnability side, we account for the findings in terms of Biberauer & Roberts’ (2015, 2017) Maximize Minimal Means model. We suggest that, in accordance with the Feature Economy bias, Romanian children first identify only the role of referential stability (which has more robust cues in the input) and consider the possibility of animacy as a relevant feature later. In line with the Input Generalization bias, children maximize the role of referential stability which results in overgeneralization of DOM to inanimate objects, especially to inanimate proper names.

First conjunct clitic doubling in Modern Greek: Evidence for Agree-based approaches to clitic doubling

We investigate the syntax of the hitherto understudied phenomenon of first conjunct clitic doubling, with reference to Modern Greek. We argue that it provides crucial evidence against movement-based approaches to clitic doubling, which would incorrectly rule out first conjunct clitic doubling as a violation of the Coordinate Structure Constraint. This argument against movement is complemented by evidence from binding, showing that doubled DPs consistently occupy their base positions. The Greek data instead favor an account based purely on feature transmission via Agree. We develop an Agree-based analysis of the Greek facts, and show that existing evidence for movement in Greek clitic doubling (Weak Crossover alleviation, suspension of intervention effects) can be insightfully reanalyzed. The alleviation of Weak Crossover effects receives a more straightforward account compared to movement-based approaches, in that it can be subsumed under the general mitigating effects of information structure (givenness, topicality); the intervention pattern follows once the activity of a DP is related to the involvement of its phi-features in Agree operations; and the distribution of clitic doubling is implemented by means of a licensing approach, assimilating clitic doubling to differential object marking. Finally, we address two morphological aspects of clitic doubling that are often taken to be challenging for an Agree-based account, namely, the syncretism between determiners and clitics, and tense invariance. We show that, upon closer inspection, the former is no less challenging for movement approaches, while the latter cannot be considered a reliable diagnostic to tease apart agreement and clitic doubling.

Specificities in Object Clitic Doubling in Balkan Romance and Balkan Slavic

The present paper examines the specificities in object clitic doubling in two Balkan Romance languages, Romanian and Aromanian, and two Balkan Slavic languages, Macedonian and Bulgarian. Having illustrated, the conditions on clitic doubling in Romanian, Aromanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, we analyse and compare these conditions. It is pointed out that the conditions on clitic doubling in Aromanian and Macedonian are almost analogous – definiteness plays a central role in clitic doubling of the direct objects of the two languages, whereas the clitic doubling of indirect objects mainly depends on specificity. The conditions on clitic doubling in Romanian and Bulgarian differ substantially from the conditions on clitic doubling in the Balkan languages with which they are in close genetic relationships. In both Romanian and Bulgarian, clitic doubling depends on discourse factors, but the types and usage of these factors are idiosyncratic. In Bulgarian, all topicalized definite objects are clitic-doubled, while the indefinite topicalized objects are clitic-doubled only under specific conditions. In Romanian, the cliticization of both direct and indirect objects is typically triggered by topicality and specificity, while direct object clitic doubling is, in addition, triggered by humanness. We argue that object clitic doubling results from a centuries-long socio-linguistic contact in an environment in which direct inter-translatability is needed. Clitic doubling in Macedonian and Aromanian occurs under almost identical conditions, because the two languages have for a long time been in such an environment. When the object clitic doubling phenomenon spreads in areas where no direct inter-translatability is required, distinct phenomena appear.

Diachronic change and variation in use

Previous studies have demonstrated that in spontaneous speech, Rioplatense Spanish speakers—in contrast to speakers of Peninsular Spanish—sometimes produce clitic-doubled accusative nominal objects. If this contrast between varieties reflects different grammatical systems, it would be expected to also affect the acceptability of clitic doubling across varieties. We tested this hypothesis in a judgment study that compared the acceptability of dative and accusative clitic-doubled objects between Rioplatense and Peninsular Spanish speakers. Speakers of both varieties showed similar preferences with dative clitic doubling, consistent with previous work. By contrast, accusative clitic doubling was highly acceptable in Rioplatense Spanish, but not in Peninsular Spanish. Based on accounts of the diachronic development of clitic doubling, we argue that the Rioplatense speakers exhibit a diachronically advanced behavior compared to Peninsular Spanish speakers.

THE ROLE OF CLITIC DOUBLING IN THE INFORMATION STRUCTURE OF THE ALBANIAN LANGUAGE

This paper attempts to argue whether the repetition of the object or clitic doubling as a syntactic mechanism affects the encoding of the information structure in the Albanian language. In three previous studies by Kallulli (2000, 2008); Kapia (2010), it is reported that direct object clitic doubling is not an optional phenomenon in the Albanian language, that direct object clitic doubling systematically produces and encodes the information structure, and that clitic doubled objects are interpreted as topics. Thus, the object and the clitic have the status of topic in the sentence, as doubling occurs when the clitic refers to the already present discourse referent. That is, the NP is previously introduced in the discourse, thus becoming a specific referent available to be later selected via the doubling mechanism. In addition, according to them, when the object bears the topic feature, the direct object doubling is obligatory. Unlike Kallulli (2000, 2008) and Kapia (2010, 2012), Buchholz & Fiedler (1987) draw different conclusions, according to which the direct object clitic doubling in the Albanian language may be optional if the word order is canonical (SVO). This paper, on the other hand, aims at proving whether the object clitic doubling in our corpus marks the information structure by giving the feature [+ topic] or [-focus].

First Conjunct Clitic Doubling, the Person Case Constraint, and First Conjunct Agreement: Insights from Modern Greek

In this paper, we discuss the implications of the phenomenon of first conjunct clitic doubling (FC CLD), based on data from Modern Greek. We first recap the arguments in Paparounas & Salzmann (to appear), where it is argued that FC CLD provides evidence for Agree-based approaches to clitic doubling (CLD) and against approaches involving movement, which would incorrectly rule out FC CLD as a violation of the Coordinate Structure Constraint. Extending this line of inquiry, we explore the implications of FC CLD for theories of the Person Case Constraint (PCC) and theories of first conjunct agreement (FCA). We firstly show that most theories of the PCC face serious challenges when confronted with our data. These theories i) involve movement in the generation of the clitic/the implementation of the PCC, thus being wholly incompatible with FC CLD; ii) assume Agree operations that provide insufficient φ-features to actually generate the clitics on the PCC probe; or iii) place this probe too low in the structure for languages like Greek, where clitics surface high. Secondly, we extend our consideration of the PCC to the domain of FCA, showing that PCC effects in coordination provide evidence for rule ordering and labeling-based theories of FCA when relativized probing is involved.

Aproximación sociolingüística al doblado de clítico de objeto directo en Lambayeque, Perú

In this research, we analyze the accusative clitic doubling in Spanish Lambayeque. We understood accusative clitic doubling as the presence of the clitic of the direct object in co-occurrence with the nominal phrase of the direct object in postverbal position. The analysis is carried out in four cities of Lambayeque: Chiclayo, Eten, Ferreñafe and Mochumí. The four cities studied were chosen according to the level of contact with Quechua, economic activities, and greater centrality in education and services. The analysis was conducted in 72 interviews. We investigate the statistical significance of four linguistic factors: animacy, definiteness, and concordance (of gender and number) in the occurrence of the accusative double. In addition, the social factors of age, gender, and city of origin were studied. The results show that the accusative clitic doubling in this dialect variety is sensitive to the animacy, definiteness, and agreement between the determining phrase (FD) and the corresponding clitic. We found the possibility of proposing a hierarchy of significance among the studied factors.

On Psych Verbs and Optional Clitic Doubling in Catalan and Other Ibero-Romance Languages

Although undesired under a theoretical viewpoint, natural languages often show cases of “true” optionality. According to a reformulation of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2006), highly complex constructions are more susceptible to optionality and change. Psych verbs that select a subject dative experiencer fall under this definition. Ibero-Romance languages use different strategies to reduce this morphosyntactic inconsistency. Whereas Catalan and Spanish reinforce the deviant construction through additional morphological markers (dative clitic doubling and subsequent grammaticalization of the clitic as subject-verb agreement marker), Portuguese avoids inherent datives at all, using structural case instead. These innovations in argument structure have significant consequences: clitic doubling with full DPs and the grammaticalization of the clitic pronouns are blocked, in contrast to Catalan and Spanish. It becomes evident that a closer look at how argument structure is codified in the lexicon is needed in order to better understand processes of language change.

High and Low Arguments in Northern and Pontic Greek

This paper deals with the distribution of the use of the accusative as an indirect object in two major dialect groups of Modern Greek, namely Northern Greek and Pontic Greek. The loss of the dative in Medieval Greek (c. 10th c. AD) resulted in the use of the genitive as an indirect object in the southern varieties and of the accusative in Northern Greek and Asia Minor Greek. As Standard Modern Greek employs the genitive, little attention has been paid to the distribution of the accusative, and our study was aimed to fill that gap by presenting data collected in Northern Greece from speakers of both dialect groups. According to our findings, the accusative is exclusively used in all syntactic domains inherited from the Ancient Greek dative in both dialect groups, but the two groups are kept apart in terms of the obligatoriness vs. optionality or lack of clitic doubling and availability vs. lack of “high” positions, e.g., for external possessors and ethical dative constructions.

Pronominalization and clitic doubling in Syrian and Omani Arabic

AbstractThis article treats cliticization of a pronoun to a syntactic host and doubling of the clitic pronoun with a non-pronominal counterpart in Syrian and Omani Arabic. Although the two varieties are closely related and the morphological paradigms they display are very similar, the pronominalization and clitic pronoun doubling patterns they display are quite different. We trace this difference to a basic difference in whether the relevant syntactic processes are sensitive to intervention effects in the two dialects, with the result being that the restrictiveness of pronominalization and clitic pronoun doubling patterns parallel the restrictiveness of basic word order patterns – whether double-object constructions are ‘symmetric’ or ‘asymmetric’ – with Syrian being the more restrictive of the two varieties.

Extraposition in River Plate Spanish. A case of clausal doubling?

This paper explores a set of constructions from River Plate Spanish in which propositional attitude verbs occur both with a third person feminine accusative clitic and a CP in final position (e.g., No me la esperaba que hiciera tanto frío, ‘I didn’t expect it to be so cold’). The data under analysis, which resemble the well-studied phenomenon of extraposition in English (Jespersen 1933, Postal & Pullum 1988, Rosenbaum 1967, Rothstein 1995, 2004, etc.), have not so far received much attention in the study of Spanish syntax. Our conclusion is that the ‘extraposed’ CPs do not constitute cases of right dislocation or right-adjunction but clear instances of clausal doubling, analogous to the well-known process of clitic doubling with accusative DPs characteristic of Argentine Spanish (e.g., Lo vi a Gonzalo, ‘I saw Gonzalo’). Along the lines of Rothstein (1995, 2004), we argue that the mechanism for licensing the CP is predication and we provide evidence against the hypothesis that the clitic is an object expletive.

Distinguishing between accounts of the A/A'-distinction: the view from Argentinian Spanish Clitic Doubling

The A/A'-distinction underpins case, agreement, and binding properties of moving DPs. It also determines possible movement paths (cf. the Ban on Improper Movement). Van Urk (2015) and Safir (2019) take this distinction not to be a primitive of the grammar; rather, these authors seek to derive the A/A’-distinction from independent principles of the grammar. In both approaches, syntactic positions are not inherently A or A’. Rather, independent and more general properties of the grammar determine, as a byproduct, the nature of the movement that passes through these positions. While these approaches differ in which grammatical components they derive the A/A’-distinction from, both are able to explain the properties that it is based on (e.g. weak crossover, reconstruction, etc). Another similarity is that both approaches allow for a flexible definition of syntactic positions. I will argue that, despite these similarities, we can empirically adjudicate between these two theories. Specifically, Di Tullio et al.’s (2019) analysis of clitic doubling in Argentinian Spanish will be shown to be compatible only with Van Urk (2015).

Persons and Pronouns: Exploring Clitics in Judeo-Spanish

Optional versus obligatory clitic doubling and the person-case constraint (PCC) repair constitute two puzzles researchers haven’t fully addressed. In Judeo-Spanish, doubling is obligatory for third person accusative strong pronouns; for all other arguments, doubling is optional. This analysis contends arguments are generated with corresponding clitics in the syntax. The realization of clitics is regulated by functional heads: v and X, a head located beneath v. X is hypothesized to be a probe specified only for person; critically, third person accusative strong pronouns lack person features (Anagnostopoulou 2003), while other arguments bear person features. Optional doubling is regulated by alternations in Agree with v or X. An argument that appears without a co-referring clitic is derived via agreement with X. This interaction triggers deletion of clitics’ phi-features, which causes them to be null. Overt cliticization is derived via agreement with v. Obligatory doubling is derived via Agree strictly with v; third person accusative strong pronouns cannot be potential goals for X since they lack person features. Apart from doubling, X generates the PCC repair by blocking Agree between v and dative clitics, causing dative arguments to appear without a matching clitic, and by eliminating intervention effects between v and accusative clitics

Differential subject marking through SE

Abstract An outstanding question in current studies concerns the status of Romance SE that does not obviously mark reflexivity or anticausativity. This paper signals the presence of such constructions in Old and Modern Romanian, where SE occurs with unergative verbs and qualifies as pleonastic according to traditional grammars (i.e., it makes no difference for the truth conditions or for the argument structure). The main argument is that such constructions are actually instances of differential subject marking (DSM) in Romanian, and that the semantic triggers and the underlying configuration resemble those that occur with differential object marking (DOM) in this language. In terms of theoretical contribution, this analysis (i) widens the cross-linguistic inventory of DSM patterns, by adding Clitic Doubling; (ii) confirms the predictions of recent studies that there could be similarity rather than opposition between DOM and DSM contexts; (iii) shows the possibility of re-allocating the reflexive pronoun SE to other configurations besides (an instance of) verb reflexivization.

Some Tendencies in the Morphosyntax of the Migrational Shtokavian Dialects in Albania (Shijak and Myzeqe) and Slavic-Albanian Language Contact

This article puts into academic circulation the materials of the little-described migrational Shtokavian dialects in the Shijak (Durrës) and Myzeqe (Fier, the villages of Rreth Libofsha, Hamil, etc.) areas collected during a linguistic expedition in July and August 2021. The Sandžak region (Novi Pazar, Tutin and Sjenica, modern Republic of Serbia), where the Shtokavian Novi Pazar-Sjenica dialects have been traditionally spoken, is considered a homeland for the descendants of the Myzeqe Muslim Slavs. The Muslim Slavs from the Shijak region (Borake and Koxhas villages) migrated to Albania from the vicinity of Mostar (modern Bosnia and Herzegovina). Their linguistic origin is from Central Herzegovinian dialects (mostly to the east of the Neretva River) between the younger Ikavian and Eastern Bosnian dialects. The generations-long contact with the Albanian language intensified as a result of increased social mobility resulting from socio-political changes in Albania in 1990. These changes led to a number of quantitative and, to a lesser extent, qualitative changes in the migrational dialects at different language levels. Since the Albanian language is a part of the Balkan sprachbund, some of the changes support balkanizing processes in the structure of the dialects. Our material shows some signs of analytisation in the morphosyntactic / syntactic system (the prevalence of prepositional phrases over bare cases, infi nitive reduction, clitic doubling, etc.), which are associated with Albanian contact infl uence. The article also describes the principles we adhered to when collecting linguistic data, as well as the topics of ethnolinguistic questionnaires. Examples of dialect recordings are included in the appendix.