Weak Pronouns Research Articles

La gramaticalització del futur i el condicional al català del segle XIII: formes analítiques i formes sintètiques

The Romance future and conditional tenses are the result of the grammaticalization of the Latin periphrasis CANTĀRE HABEŌ. In medieval Catalan, the synthetic forms, with proclitic (el faré) or enclitic (faré-lo) pronouns, coexisted with the analytical ones, that presented mesoclisis (fer-lo he). These forms were distributed according to the medieval syntax of weak pronouns (Batllori et al., 2005). Analytical forms do not present univerbation (cf. Lehmann, 1985) and are thus less grammaticalized. In this article, the grammaticalization of these tenses is observed from the occurrences of Vides de sants rosselloneses, written in the 13th century. The results, compared with Spanish (cf. Bouzouita, 2016a) and Navarroaragonese (cf. Primerano, 2019), support the hypothesis of the diatopic diffusion of the grammaticalization process, according to which the grammaticalization is more advanced in the eastern languages of the Iberian Peninsula than in the western languages (Bouzouita & Sentí, 2022).

Referential Dependencies in Turkish: Some Novel Arguments on the Binding of Kendisi, O and Pro

The Turkish reflexive kendisi (self-3SG.POSS) deviates from Principle A of the Binding Theory and from the Minimalist movement approaches to referential dependencies. This paper concurs with Kornfilt (2001) and provides further support that kendi-si is preceded by a null possessor (pro) which influences its binding but argues that kendisi is not a reflexive. Kendisi’s distribution changes when its possessor is a null pronominal (pro) or an overt pronominal (o, ‘she/he/it’). It is claimed that pro and o are not the null and overt counterparts of the same pronominal. Pro and o show the same distribution only in (in)direct object positions. In possessive phrases and subject positions, their distributions differ. Following Cardinaletti and Starke (1999) and Safir (2004), it is argued that pro is a weak pronoun which only refers to an antecedent mentioned in the context. But o is a strong pronoun and can make independent reference and function as a topic shifter.

Auxiliary clitics in Old Russian chronicles

Present tense auxiliaries in Old Russian could have different categorial status: they could be perceived as simple auxiliary verbs, as clitics or as weak pronouns. The investigation aims at clarifying this situation relying on corpus studies in the text of chronicles. Problems like the position of perfect auxiliaries relative to their host, their behaviour in clitic clusters, and their relation to pronominal subjects will be looked at. The quantitative and distributional analysis of these forms helps us decide whether these elements actually acted as enclitics, in what proportions, and what position they occupied in clause.

How weak are Romanian clitic pronouns?

In traditional linguistics, pronouns are divided into two classes: those that can bear word stress, coined “strong”, “full” or “tonal”, and those that cannot, coined “weak”, “clitic”, or “atonal”. However, in the last decades, research on this topic has shown that items generally labeled as clitics are far more complex. Somewhere between words and affixes, these hybrid linguistic entities challenge both description and modeling. As for Romanian, the debate on weak (i.e., clitic) pronouns has been dominated by the question of their categorial status: are these items clitics or affixes? In this article, I present and scrutinize different approaches that support the claim that there are differences between proclitics and enclitics, i.e., between clitics occurring before vs. after the verb; this includes not only positional, but also featural differences. I identify various types of ambiguities in Romanian that could lead to improper data interpretation, and, based on an analysis of syllabicity – the most salient feature of Romanian weak pronouns – I refute claims for treating clitics in preverbal position differently than in postverbal position. Furthermore, using evidence from both historical data and data pertaining to language varieties, I show regularities in the Romanian weak pronoun system, bringing evidence against the claim that Romanian weak pronouns show a great deal of idiosyncrasies.

ON THE SPECIAL PRONOUN TA IN THE WUHAN DIALECT OF CHINESE: A RESUMPTIVE ANALYSIS*

AbstractIn this article, I will investigate a special pronoun Ta that appears in the postverbal thematic position of various constructions in the Wuhan dialect of Chinese. I will argue that all the sentences containing Ta can be unified under an Agree‐based resumptive analysis. More specifically, I will claim that Ta, differing from the regular pronouns, is φ‐feature deprived (or a weak pronoun), which is the reason why the pronoun can function as a resumptive pronoun in ba‐constructions (a case of A‐resumption) on a par with A‐traces/copies. Furthermore, I will argue that the completion‐inducing effect of Ta does not necessarily entail that Ta is an aspectual marker; rather, the effect is due to the exceptional omission of the telicizing verb particle inside the small clause; therefore, Ta remains to be a resumptive pronoun throughout.

Extending the Person-Case Constraint to Gender: Agreement, Locality, and the Syntax of Pronouns

In many languages with clitic or other weak pronouns, a Person-Case Constraint (Perlmutter 1971, Bonet 1991) prohibits certain combinations of these pronouns on the basis of their person features. This article explores the crosslinguistic variation in such constraints, starting with several closely related Zapotec varieties. These restrict combinations of clitics not just on the basis of person, but also on the basis of a finely articulated, largely animacy-based gender system. Operating within a larger combinatorial space, these constraints offer a new perspective on the typology of Phi-Case Constraints (ΦCCs) more generally. This typology has an overall asymmetrical shape correlating with the underlying syntactic position of pronominal arguments. We develop a principled theory of this typology that incorporates three hypotheses: (a) ΦCCs arise from how a functional head Agrees with clitic pronouns, subject to intervention-based locality (Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar and Rezac 2003, 2009); (b) the variation in these constraints arises from variation in the relativization of probes (Anagnostopoulou 2005, Nevins 2007, 2011); and (c) clitic and other weak pronouns have no inherent need to be licensed via Agree with a functional head. Under this account, the crosslinguistic typology of ΦCCs has the potential to shed light on the grammatical representation of person and gender.

Variation in Mainland Scandinavian Object Shift: A Prosodic Analysis

Despite decades of research, debate continues over the analysis of Object Shift in Mainland Scandinavian, and all syntactic and information-structural accounts have run into empirical and/or conceptual problems. We argue that this debate can be resolved by recognizing that Object Shift is, in fact, a prosodic phenomenon. Our analysis builds on the observation that varieties with optional Object Shift (most Swedish dialects, South Danish dialects (e.g., Ærø)) also have a tone accent contrast. The in-situ word order in these varieties is licensed because tonal accent creates a prosodic domain that makes the incorporation of weak pronouns possible.

Clitics are not enough: on agreement and null subjects in Brazilian Venetan

This paper presents some facts about the syntax of subject pronouns in contact. We investigate agreement and EPP-checking in Brazilian Venetan, a heritage northern Italo-Romance variety spoken in southern Brazil in contact with Brazilian Portuguese. Central Venetan, the northern Italo-Romance variety that constitutes the basis of Brazilian Venetan, is a null-subject language presenting agreement-like subject clitics; Brazilian Portuguese is a partial pro-drop language, in which null subjects are allowed only in precise syntactic conditions and it is developing reduced pronominal subjects. We will address two changes we detected in Brazilian Venetan with respect to the syntax of subject pronouns: the non-contrastive realisation of the first person singular tonic pronoun, and the change in the syntax of subject clitics, which seem to be used as weak pronouns rather than agreement items. We will claim that the first change has to be connected to the simplification of interface conditions between syntax and discourse, a pattern which is commonly attested in bilingual speakers, while the second can be quite safely ascribed to the contact with a partially overlapping structure, namely the reduced pronominal subjects in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. We analyse the two phenomena, trying to find possible links between them in order to develop an analysis of subject clitics in contact and the conditions in which we may most probably find an effect of contact.

Reconsidering the syntax of interrogatives in Caribbean Spanish. With especial reference to Dominican Spanish

This paper readdresses one of the most conspicuous syntactic traits of varieties of Caribbean Spanish that has been on the research agenda ever since its detection almost a hundred years ago: the preverbal occurrence of subjects in interrogatives with a simple non-subject argumental wh-expression. In an attempt to shed more light on the still highly controversial issues of the frequency of whSV order and the kind(s) of preverbal subject, the paper initially gathers relevant claims as well as examples from the literature and then presents pertinent results from a refined large-scale quantitative analysis of natural speech from colloquial Dominican Spanish, hereby filling a long-standing lacuna. Additionally, the paper discusses previous approaches, showing that none of these are free from problems. Drawing on relevant aspects of earlier approaches and building on insights into the fairly related state of affairs in medieval French, the paper eventually argues that whSV order in Dominican, and by extension, other pertinent varieties of Caribbean Spanish, follows from ongoing morpho-syntactic changes that are taken to ultimately result in the resetting of the null subject parameter: the development of a paradigm of weak subject pronouns, the concomitant establishment of a dedicated subject position, SpecTP, and the overall strong tendency towards SV order.

The be‐auxiliary's categorial status in Old Russian1

AbstractThis article proposes that the present tense forms of the be‐auxiliary byti (AUX) in Old Russian should be identified as weak pronouns, based on their prosodic, morphological, and syntactic properties. The loss of AUX in Old Russian, which distinguishes East Slavic from West and South Slavic languages, is ascribed to the competition between AUX and strong subject pronouns as a consequence of the reanalysis of AUX as a weak subject pronoun. This reanalysis was triggered by the early loss of synthetic past tenses in Old Russian. The AUX's position to the right of pronominal clitics indicates that the AUX remains in its initial merge position either as an auxiliary verb or as a subject pronoun. The co‐occurrence of AUXin situ and a null subject in Old Russian implies that rich verbal agreement and null subjects are unrelated with verb raising to I0.

The syntax of weak and strong pronouns in Dagbani and Kusaal

AbstractAlthough studies in Dagbani and Kusaal have distinguished between weak and strong pronouns, their syntactic peculiarities remain largely uninvestigated. This paper aims to fill this gap by presenting a systematic investigation of the distribution of these pronouns drawing data from these two languages. We demonstrate that strong pronouns have dedicated syntactic positions including left peripheral focus, predicate focus, and fragmentary answers where pronominals are required. We further show that Dagbani and Kusaal behave differently regarding the distribution of strong and weak pronouns in two domains (i) conjunct ordering of pronouns in conjoined noun phrases and in (ii) fragmentary or elliptical answers. We contend that the ban on weak pronouns in positions of syntactic focus is attributable to their prosodic deficiency.

Le système pronominal du français louisianais

This paper discusses the pronominal system of Louisiana French, a variety of French spoken mainly in the south-western part of Louisiana State.
 The analysis of data (Girard Lomheim, 2016) shows that although Louisiana French clitics share certain features with clitics from other informal varieties of French and dialects of French, they cannot be analysed along quite the same lines. They have reached a more advanced stage of grammaticalization. They are moving away from the status of syntactic argument towards the status of agreement marker. The fact that they are subject to strong phonetic erosion and have been gradually replaced by weak pronouns shows that they are coming closer to the ultimate stadium of their grammaticalization cycle (van Gelderen, 2011), the null stadium.
 The progressive reduction of the clitic paradigm is accompanied by the emergence of a new class of weak pronouns, which leads us to claim that the pronominal system of this vernacular is organized in three classes of pronouns: strong pronouns and two classes of deficient pronouns: weak pronouns and clitics in the terms of Cardinaletti et Starke (1994 and 1999). We claim that the difference between strong and weak pronouns should be addressed in terms of syntax and morphology whereas the difference between weak pronouns and clitics should be accounted for in terms of morphosyntax and phonology.

Pronominal typology and the de se/de re distinction

This paper investigates how regular pronominal typology interfaces with de se and de re interpretations, and highlights a correlation between strong pronouns (descriptively speaking) and de re interpretations, and weak pronouns and de se interpretations. In order to illustrate this correlation, I contrast different pronominal forms within a single language, null versus overt pronouns in Kutchi Gujarati, and clitic versus full pronouns in Austrian Bavarian. I argue that the data presented here provide cross-linguistic comparative support for the idea of a dedicated de se LF as argued for by Percus and Sauerland.

Um novo olhar sobre as sentenças com redobro em português brasileiro

O objetivo principal desta pesquisa é investigar o comportamento do sujeito e do pronome resumptivo nas sentenças com redobro do sujeito em português brasileiro (PB). A partir de evidências sintáticas, semânticas e prosódicas, será possível verificar (i) se tais construções podem ser analisadas como casos de deslocamento à esquerda; (ii) se essas sentenças caracterizam o PB como uma língua tópico proeminente; (iii) se o sujeito pré-verbal se comporta como um tópico; (iv) se o sujeito tem o mesmo comportamento do objeto deslocado com retomada pronominal; (v) se o pronome resumptivo que retoma o sujeito pré-verbal nessas construções deve ser analisado como um clítico (um núcleo) ou como um pronome fraco, ocupando a posição de especificador. A hipótese deste trabalho é a de que o pronome resumptivo pode instanciar visivelmente o núcleo da projeção funcional SubjP (RIZZI, 2005), sendo a realização lexical de Subj, atrai um constituinte compatível com o traço “sujeito da predicação” (cf. CARDINALETTI, 1997, 2004).

Strong and weak pronouns in the covert system of pronouns

AbstractIn this article, which is taken almost verbatim from parts ofAgreement Beyond Phi(Miyagawa, Shigeru. 2017.Agreement beyond phi. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 75. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.), I focus on a puzzling observation about subjectproacross languages: in languages such as Japanese and those of Romance, the subjectprobehaves exactly like a pronoun in being able to freely refer to entities in the discourse with reasonable context, and also to refer sentence internally to a subject, an object, or other phrases. However, in Chinese, the subjectprois extremely limited in its reference potential: it is able to refer to a discourse entity in very narrow contexts, and sentence internally, its antecedent is limited to the subject. I show that the Chinese subjectprodemonstrates the principles of Strong Uniformity, by depending on ϕ-feature agreement for sentence-internal reference, and when that option isn’t taken, switches to the Topic feature to refer to a discourse entity.

Aspectos morfofonológicos nos paradigmas dos pronomes fortes e fracos

Considerando que os traços-j podem vir realizados nos pronomes fortes e nos tipos de pronomes fracos (pronomes livres, clíticos ou flexão de concordância), este trabalho propõe que a possibilidade de homofonia (rima) entre eles pode levar à elipse dos pronomes livres fracos, gerando o fenômeno do chamado sujeito nulo pro, e que é na morfofonologia que a criança se pauta para determinar o tipo de língua que ela está aprendendo. Esta proposta embasará a análise do Português Brasileiro com respeito ao Parâmetro do Sujeito Nulo.

Faetar null subjects: a variationist study of a heritage language in contact

Abstract Faetar is an under-documented variety descended from Francoprovençal and spoken in two isolated Apulian villages in southern Italy as well as in the emigrant diaspora, especially in the Greater Toronto Area. Speakers use two series of subject pronouns (strong and weak pronouns), producing sentences with zero, one or two overt subject pronouns. The status of the overt forms as subject pronouns, emphatic pronouns, left- or right-dislocated pronouns, clitics, or affixes is not clear. Contrary to the predictions of the Null Subject Parameter hypothesis (Perlmutter 1971, Deep and surface structure constraints in syntax. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston; Chomsky 1981, Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris), these grammars have subject pronoun paradigms that are variable and conditioned by a number of linguistic factors (including person, tense, information status and subject type). This article delineates which aspects vary diachronically, spatially, or between individuals – a necessary prerequisite to constructing a theoretical model that accounts for this variation. By comparing the patterns of use in France, Italy, and Toronto, and using sources that span nearly a century, we see that despite the very small size of its speech community, Faetar shows little sign of accommodating to English’s virtually categorical presence of subject pronouns, nor to Italian’s high null subject (hereafter Ø-subject) rate, nor to the conditioning effects found in those languages.

Kwantitatief er en ze

Abstract Quantitative er and ze This paper reconsiders the syntax of indefinite quantitative er and its definite counterpart ze. Quantitative er ‘there’ is obligatory in Dutch when the only visible element in a nominal group is a numeral. I argue that quantitative er is the pronominalization of a lower projection of the nominal group (DP-low) that contains directly modifying adjectives and complements of N but not relative clauses and PP-adjuncts. Quantitative ze is the pronominalization of a higher projection of the nominal group (DP-high) that contains DP-low and the layers to which PP-adjuncts and relative clauses attach. Both quantitative er and ze are weak pronouns that, like all weak pronouns, move to the left-hand part of the middle field. This analysis explains the parallel syntactic distribution of quantitative er and ze and the differences in modifiability of the two pronouns. New evidence for the claim that quantitative er involves pronominalization, not ellipsis, comes from the obligatory lack of gender agreement between the nominal group and the relative pronoun in an asso-ciated relative clause. New evidence for the parallel analysis of er and ze comes from optional haplology when there are two instances of quantitative ze in one clause.

The Rise and Fall of Proclisis in Old Spanish Postprepositional Infinitival Clauses: A Quantitative Approach

AbstractThe diachronic trajectory of weak pronoun placement in infinitival clauses that follow a preposition has the up-and-down profile of what Gertjan Postma has termed a ‘failed change’. Proclitic placement increases in frequency throughout the late Middle Ages but then declines, disappearing altogether in the early modern period. The present article reports the results of a detailed quantitative survey which tracks this diachronic event for approximately 350 years at the decadal level. The findings reveal with some precision the quantitative curve described by this failed change and enable a number of hypotheses to be constructed in relation to the event’s nature, as well as its place within developments in the infinitival subsystem overall. In addition, the case study presented here suggests that failed changes are not necessarily capable of being modelled as a single Hubbert curve, as Postma proposes. Instead, a model involving two independent but abutting S-curves may be more appropriate.ResumenLa trayectoria diacrónica de la colocación de los pronombres átonos en las oraciones de infinitivo que siguen a una preposición tiene el perfil pendular de lo que ha denominado Gertjan Postma un ‘cambio fracasado’. La frecuencia de la proclisis aumenta durante la Edad Media tardía pero después disminuye para desaparecer por completo a principios de la época moderna. El artículo actual presenta los resultados de un detallado estudio cuantitativo que sigue este suceso diacrónico a nivel de década durante aproximadamente 350 años. Los resultados revelan con precisión la correspondiente curva cuantitativa y facilitan la postulación de hipótesis sobre la naturaleza de este suceso, y sobre su relación con otros acontecimientos dentro del subsistema del infinitivo. Por otra parte, el caso examinado aquí sugiere que no todos los cambios fracasados describen una curva Hubbert, como propone Postma. Por lo contrario, un modelo con dos curvas en S independientes pero colindantes puede ser más apropiado.

A note on phrasal movement in Modern South Arabian and its consequences

I argue that the predominance of clause-final negation and the ban on object cliticization on perfective verb stems with a subject agreement suffix in the Modern South Arabian languages (MSA) Mehri and Jibbali are both consequences of the fact that in these languages, a verbal projection rather than a verbal head is probed by T(ense) or by a higher functional head. As a result, this verbal projection moves to a position above T and a fortiori above negation. A corollary of verb-projection phrasal movement above T is that the affixal phi features of subject agreement are stranded, bereft of a suitable host. In face of this conundrum, MSA reanalyzes subject agreement as a weak pronoun that undergoes suffixation under adjacency to a verbal host, like a pronominal object suffix. This reanalysis has a price, however, in that only a single suffix is possible on a single host, since only one suffix is adjacent to it. Hence, object pronouns cannot occur as clitics on a verb with a weak pronominal subject suffix.