CURRENT STUDIES IN ITALIAN SYNTAX
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CURRENT STUDIES IN ITALIAN SYNTAX ESSAYS OFFERED TO LORENZO RENZI
Edited by
GUGLIELMO CINQUE Universitd di Venezia and
GIAMPAOLO SALVI Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest
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NORTH-HOLLAND LINGUISTIC SERIES: LINGUISTIC VARIATIONS
Series Editors
Advisory Board
Johan Rooryck (Leiden University) Pierre Pica (CNRS, Paris)
Noam Chomsky (MIT, Cambridge Mass) Guglielmo Cinque (University of Venice) Marcel Den Dikken (CUNY Graduate Center) Zygmunt Frajzyngier (University of Colorado at Boulder) Ken Hale (MIT, Cambridge Mass) Anders Holmberg (Troms0 University) Harry Van der Hulst (University of Connecticut) Michael Kenstowicz (MIT, Cambridge Mass) Yuki Kuroda (Touhoku University) Vladimir Nedjalkov (Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg) Aryon Dall'Igna Rodrigues (Brasilia University)
Editorial Board Paola Beninca (University of Padova) Richard Larson (SUNY Stony Brook) Alain Rouveret (University of Paris VIII) Esther Torrego (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
The goal of this collection is to put at the disposal of the linguistic community studies which contribute to a deeper understanding of the nature of linguistic variation within the generative tradition that has developed since the middle of the twentieth century. The series pays particular attention to the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy more accurately reformulated as a tension between the simplicity of the language faculty and its apparent complexity. Volumes will cover the traditional domain of syntactic studies, but also include related areas such as semantics, morphology, phonology and the lexicon. The series aims at distributing theoretical and empirical studies which constitute important contributions to the field, in particular to the domain of micro- and macro-variation. The particular aim of the series is to publish both theoretical and empirical studies of language. Although the main focus of the series will be on generative linguistics, it will not exclude studies of a more general nature or from different schools of thought, insofar as they contribute to our understanding of the language faculty.
CONTRIBUTORS Paolo Acquaviva, Department of Italian, University College Dublin, PAOLO.
[email protected] Adriana Belletti, Universita di Siena,
[email protected] Paola Beninca, Dipartimento di Linguistica, Universita di Padova,
[email protected] Franco Benucci, Dipartimento di Linguistica, Universita di Padova,
[email protected] Pier Marco Bertinetto, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, BERTINET@ SNS.IT Anna Cardinaletti, Dipartimento di Studi interdisciplinari su traduzione, lingue e culture, Universita di Bologna, CARDIN@ UNIVE.IT Guglielmo Cinque, Dipartimento di Scienze del Linguaggio, Universita di Venezia,
[email protected] Giuliana Giusti, Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Europei e Postcoloniali, Universita di Venezia,
[email protected] Maria Teresa Guasti, Universita di Siena and Universita San Raffaele,
[email protected] Richard S. Kayne, Department of Linguistics, New York University,
[email protected] Lidia Lonzi, Universita Statale di Milano,
[email protected] M. Rita Manzini, Dipartimento di Linguistica, Universita di Firenze,
[email protected] Andrea Moro, Universita San Raffaele, A.MORO @ HSR.IT Cecilia Poletto, Istituto di Fonetica e Dialettologia, CNR, Padova,
[email protected] Luigi Rizzi, Dipartimento di Scienze della Communicazione, Universita di Siena,
[email protected] Giampaolo Salvi, Department of Italian Language and Literature, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest,
[email protected] Leonardo M. Savoia, Dipartimento di Linguistica, Universita di Firenze, LSAVOIA @ UNIFI.IT Christina M. Tortora, Department of Linguistics, University of Michigan, CTORTORA @ UMICH.EDU
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CONTENTS Preface 1: Syntactic intervention effects on Italian polarity items Paolo Acquaviva 2: Speculations on the possible source of expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses Adriana Belletti 3: The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery Paola Beninca
xi 1
19 39
4: Aspect prefixes in verbal periphrases in Italian and other Romance languages . . 65 Franco Benucci 5: "Propulsive" tenses in modern Italian fictional prose Pier Marco Bertinetto
97
6: A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation" ... Anna Cardinaletti
117
7: "Restructuring" and the order of aspectual and root modal heads Guglielmo Cinque
137
8: The birth of a functional category: From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun Giuliana Giusti 9: Romance causatives and dynamic antisymmetry Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Moro
157 173
10: A note on clitic doubling in French Richard S. Kayne
189
11: Either "subject-oriented" or merely sentential Lidia Lonzi
213
12: The syntax of object clitics: si in Italian dialects M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo M. Savoia
233
13: Complementizer deletion and verb movement in standard Italian Cecilia Poletto
265
14: On the position "Int(errogative)" in the left periphery of the clause Luigi Rizzi
287
15: The two sentence structures of Early Romance Giampaolo Salvi
297
16: Evidence for a null locative in Italian Christina M. Tortora
313
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PREFACE The essays on Italian syntax that make up this publication were especially gathered to pay homage to Lorenzo Renzi, "Cino", on his 60th anniversary. Our gratitude to him goes well beyond the natural indebtedness of two students for their teacher. We, as well as the other contributors to the volume, acknowledge the very special role that he had in creating in Italy, since the early '70's, a unique lively and collaborative atmosphere for the study of Italian syntax. Although his scientific interests have ranged, and range, very widely (from Romance Philology proper, to the analysis of poetry; from Romanian studies to sociolinguistics, and to dialectology and grammar), he has always shown a special attention to the study of Italian grammar. Together with Francesco Antinucci, he conceived, and then promoted with Giampaolo Salvi and Anna Cardinaletti, the three-volume Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, published by il Mulino, Bologna, from 1988 to 1995. This is a reference grammar of Italian based on firsthand research by a conspicuous number of (then) unemployed young and promising linguists, and an enterprise with no precedents in our tradition. With this long-term project, with his own work on particular aspects of the grammar of Italian and of the dialects of Italy, and with his very special human qualities, he has influenced generations of scholars, but above all he has managed to hold them and their research together. Luckily, this influence of his will accompany us for many more years to come. Not long after the last volume of the grammar of modern Italian was given to the publisher, he started elaborating another project: a reference grammar of Old Italian; something which does not yet exist. The contributors of these essays, except for Richard Kayne, who is present here as a friend of Cino's, have all been engaged in the first enterprise and are currently engaged in the second. The essays which we present here to Lorenzo Renzi cluster around a number of themes which are currently the object of much attention from the theoretical point of view, or from the point of view of other languages and language families. We hope that they will contribute to the ongoing debate around such themes. The contributions by Beninca, Poletto and Rizzi approach the fine structure of the left periphery of the Italian clause, shedding new light on the hierarchy of the functional projections which make up the CP "field". Rizzi provides evidence for an Interrogative Phrase projection (hosting se 'whether' and perche 'why') distinct from, and lower than, his (1997) ForceP, and higher than his (1997) FocusP and the projection to which wh-phrases move (in embedded questions). Poletto discusses evidence for a subject position within the CP "field", in the broader context of complementizer deletion in Italian. Beninca provides arguments that TopicP is invariably higher than FocusP, despite certain appearances, and that exclamative wh-phrases are hosted in a projection higher than TopicP.
xii
Preface
The contributions by Cardinaletti, Tortora, and Guasti and Moro, all deal with different word order problems from an "antisymmetric" point of view. Cardinaletti provides evidence for treating the marked orders VS,O and VO,S (with the last constituent "destressed") quite differently one from the other: the former from the focussing of the subject in situ (within VP); the latter from a right-dislocation of the subject, in compliance with Antisymmetry. Tortora argues for the necessity of distinguishing two types of VS orders with unaccusative verbs, depending on the presence of an overt (or covert) goal. Guasti and Moro analyse certain word order and other properties of the Italian causative construction as consequences of a particular interpretation of Antisymmetry recently proposed by Moro. The contributions by Benucci, Bertinetto and Cinque relate instead to the functional portion of the clause, with special reference to tense, aspect and modality. While Bertinetto focuses on narrative uses of tense, and the apparent replacement in contemporary literary Italian of the simple past with other tenses, Benucci and Cinque concern themselves with the structural representation and order of these functional notions in the clause. Cinque attempts to provide an ordering of aspectual and modal heads that is more finely grained than the one proposed in his previous (1999) work, with evidence of a novel kind, based on a new analysis of "Restructuring". Benucci traces the diachronic development of a number of aspectual heads in Romance expressed as prefixes on verbs and documents the existence of "prefix climbing" in Restructuring contexts. Also concerned with functional projections and diachrony are Giusti's and Salvi's contributions. Giusti analyses the rise of articles and clitics from Latin demonstratives via a process which reinterprets a phrase in specifier position as an X° in the adjacent head position. Salvi discusses a little known subordinate sentence type of early Romance (later superseded by the Verb Second structure of main clauses) interpreting it as a residue of Latin sentence structure. The contributions by Belletti and Acquaviva deal with different aspects of negation in Italian. Belletti approaches the question of expletive negation in (subjunctive) comparative clauses, deriving it, and the degree phrase piu 'more', via movement from the discontinuous negative elements non... piu 'not... any more' in the comparative clause. Acquaviva analyses the licensing conditions of polarity items in Italian (including overtly negative phrases), suggesting that like in English they must be found adjacent to their licensing operator at LF. Lonzi's contribution considers a number of subject oriented adverbs in Italian analysing their interaction with passive, negation and other structural properties. The contributions by Kayne, and by Manzini and Savoia, deal with the syntax of clitics. Kayne's proposal that structurally Case-marked pronominals in French must be doubled by a clitic sheds new light on many aspects of the syntax of tonic and clitic pronouns in French, as well as in Italian and other Romance varieties. Manzini and Savoia discuss the status of si in its different interpretations and consider its ordering within the clitic cluster in many different dialectal varieties. We wish to thank Paola Beninca for her suggestions in the early stages of the preparation of the book, and Peter Szigetvari for his editorial help. We hope that Cino will like these articles and will see them, as we do, as a small token of our great appreciation for him and his work. Venice/Budapest, June 1999
Guglielmo Cinque and Giampaolo Salvi
1
SYNTACTIC INTERVENTION EFFECTS ON ITALIAN POLARITY ITEMS
Paolo Acquaviva
INTRODUCTION A substantial amount of work in recent years has addressed the issue of the so-called N-words (Laka 1990) of Romance, that is, lexical items or determiners paralleling the distribution of polarity items like any N in some respects and that of negative quantifiers like no N in other respects. Yet the discussion typically does not focus on the different kinds of N-words within the same language and on the theoretical consequences of this variety for the study of polarity sensitivity. For this reason, this paper does not concern itself with the way formally negative items (N-words) may be licensed in negative or non-negative contexts. Its aims are, first, to discuss in some detail if and to what extent Italian polarity items (including N-words) are subject to the same semantic/pragmatic intervention effect called IMMEDIATE SCOPE CONSTRAINT (ISC) documented by Linebarger 1987 for English polarity items; second, to explore the significance of the resulting pattern for the general issue of polarity sensitivity. With respect to these two related questions, the data examined will suggest, respectively, that the scopal intervention effect proposed by Linebarger does in fact hold of Italian dependent items and N-words alike, and that the ISC must be recognized as a property of polarity licensing rooted in the LF representation.
1 BASIC FACTS The preliminaries need not detain us too long. All that is required to follow the discussion on intervention effects in Italian is summarized in (1) and exemplified in (2). The various other constraints on licensing (chiefly, but not only, Subjacency effects) and the typology of licensers are not directly relevant for the discussion, which will centre on the effects triggered by quantifiers and other operators intervening between a licenser and a polarity item. Our point of departure will be the Immediate Scope Constraint, given in (3).
2
Paolo Acquaviva (1) a. Italian N-words are negative in isolation; dependent items (polarity items which are not N-words) are not acceptable unless they are licensed in the sentence. b. The negative marker non is realized on the inflectional complex. c. An N-word in preverbal subject position must not be followed by a negative marker to negate the clause. d. A dependent item always requires a c-commanding licenser. e. An N-word or a dependent item is licensed by a negative marker on a superordinate inflection. (2) a. Cosa posso fare per te? Niente/*Alcunche. 'What can I do for you? Nothing/*Anything.' b. La lettera non e arrivata. 'The letter has not arrived.' c. Nessuno (*non) ha capito. 'Nobody understood.' d.*Granche non e successo. 'Much has not happened.' e. Non credo che il governo sia disposto a fare niente/granche. 'I don't think the govrenment is prepared to do anything/much.'
(3) The Immediate Scope Constraint (Linebarger 1987 : 338) A negative polarity item (NPI) is acceptable in a sentence S if in the LF of S the subformula representing the NPI is in the immediate scope of the negation operator. An element is in the immediate scope of NOT only if (i) it occurs in a proposition that is the entire scope of NOT, and (ii) within this proposition there are no logical elements intervening between it and NOT. Linebarger motivates the ISC with contrasts like (4)-(5): the former is ambiguous as indicated in (4b-c), while the latter, where the polarity item budge an inch replaces move, only has the reading (5c) paraphraseable as 'the reason for his not budging an inch was that he was pushed'. (4) a. He didn't move because he was pushed. b. NOT CAUSE he was pushed, he moved c. CAUSE he was pushed, NOT he moved (5) a. He didn't budge an inch because he was pushed. b.*NOT CAUSE he was pushed, he budged an inch c. CAUSE he was pushed, NOT he budged an inch Linebarger observes that the polarity items is unquestionably within the scope of negation at S-structure. What seems to matter is that in the representation of scope relations formalized as (5b) (taken to be an LF structure) the operator CAUSE intervenes between the licensing NOT and the polarity item.
Italian polarity items
3
As Linebarger further notes, ISC effects can be obviated in two ways: one is by derivative licensing, that is, by the creation of implicatures that respect the ISC, and the other is by existentially quantifying the polarity item. I will not concern myself here with Linebarger's derivative licensing, discussing which requires discussing the whole issue of polarity sensitivity.1 Existential quantification, illustrated by (6)-(7), is instead directly relevant: (6) a. She didn't wear earrings to every party. b. 'It wasn't every party that she wore earrings to.'
(Linebarger 1987 : 353)
(7) a. She didn't wear any earrings to every party. b.*'It wasn't every party that she wore any earrings to.' c. 'There are no earrings that she wore to every party.' Both sentences have an irrelevant reading, here not represented, in which the universal quantifier takes widest scope: to every party, it was the case that she didn't wear earrings. When negation has widest scope, the bare plural earrings in (6) can be interpreted inside the scope of the negated universal quantifier, as paraphrased in (6b). There are two operators, in the scope relation NOT EVERY, and earrings is associated with a variable. If we replace earrings by the polarity sensitive any earrings, the corresponding reading (7b) disappears: (7a) cannot state that her earring-wearing to parties had exceptions. However a new interpretation is available, paraphrased in (7c), where an existential operator appears between negation and the universal quantifier: NOT3EVERY. Here, any earrings has been raised past the scope of the universal operator by being existentially quantified. The unavailability of reading (7b) for (7a) follows from the ISC: the universal operator illegitimately separates the polarity item any N from its licensing negation. All we need to do to check if this explanation is more than a correct description is to replace any earrings with an expression that, for whatever reason, does not lend itself as easily to existential quantification; failing the only reading not violating the ISC, the sentence should be simply unacceptable. As Linebarger shows, this is the case:2 (8) *He didn't wear any clean clothes to every party. Further exemplification is provided by the means of idiom polarity items like budge an inch or a red cent, which cannot be interpreted existentially ('there is no red cent such t h a t . . . ' ) .
' Although I will try to keep the argument independent from the most fundamental issues about polarity sensitivity, some assumptions should be made explicit. In general, the line I am following here presupposes that polarity sensitivity is a property of the semantics of utterances in context, showing non-trivial morphological and syntactic constraints as a reflex of grammaticalization of polarity expressions (see especially Israel 1996, with discussion of some earlier approaches). The present paper focusses on one such constraint (the ISC) and shows how much empirical detail can be uncovered by analysing Italian N-words as well as dependent items from this perspective. 2
Linebarger apparently thought it appropriate to switch from 'she' to 'he' here.
4
Paolo Acquaviva
2 ITALIAN POLARITY ITEMS AND THE IMMEDIATE SCOPE CONSTRAINT The first point of our argument consists in assessing whether Italian N-words behave like English polarity items with respect to the ISC. As already shown in Acquaviva (1999), the semantically strong (in the sense of Barwise & Cooper 1981) equivalents of 'every' and 'most' do in fact block the relation between negation and an N-word, contrasting in this respect with indefinites, weak quantifiers like 'many', and non-quantificational determiners like 'this': 3 (9) a.*Non ho dato ogni regalo a nessun parente. 'I didn't give every present to any relative.' b.*Non ho dato la maggior parte dei regali a nessun parente. 'I didn't give most presents to any relative.' (10)
a. Non ho dato un regalo/dei regali a nessun parente. 'I didn't give a present / presents to any relative.' b. Non ho dato molti/questi regali a nessun parente. 'I didn't give many / these presents to any relative.'
The same applies to dependent items: (11)
a.*Non ho dato ogni regalo a chicchessia. 'I didn't give every present to anyone.' b.*Non ho dato la maggior parte dei regali a chicchessia. 'I didn't give most presents to anyone.'
(12)
a. Non ho dato un regalo/dei regali a chicchessia. 'I didn't give a present/presents to anyone.' b. Non ho dato molti/questi regali a chicchessia. 'I didn't give many/these presents to anyone.'
This systematic asymmetry, which appears in English as well, clearly shows that potential interveners for the ISC are not generically prepositional operators and quantified expressions (as Linebarger (1987) suggests), but more precisely the elements interpreted as quantifiers proper in the tradition of Discourse Representation Theory, as opposed to restricted variables (Kamp & Reyle 1993). In fact, the semantic regularity is only partial, because among the interveners are positive polarity items like 'some' and qualsiasi, a free-choice determiner perhaps best glossed as 'no matter what':
Judgments are systematically dimmed here because it is generally possible to deny just any sentence as an instance of metalinguistic negation (Horn 1989). In so far as possible, this reading (which requires a distinct pitch accent on the N-word) has been ignored. Also, it should be borne in mind that when unacceptability is reported for an Italian sentence, typically it refers to the lack of a sensible interpretation: for instance, if a sentence requires existential quantification over a set of drops of wine in order to be well-formed ('there is no drop such that I drank it'), without allowing the obviously intended reading ('I didn't drink a drop'), this will be signalled by a star.
Italian polarity items (13)
5
a.*Non ho dato qualche regalo a nessun parente/chicchessia. 'I didn't give some present to any relative/anyone.' b.*Non ho dato qualsiasi regalo a nessun parente/chicchessia. 'I didn't give no matter what present to any relative/anyone.'
In Acquaviva 1996 independent arguments are provided that all quantifiers proper, but only a few indefinites, are hosted in a functional projection above DP, which also hosts the negative feature of N-words. If this is so, then the interveners for the ISC are just those quantifiers with an extra functional projection above DP-level. In turn, this means that the ISC is essentially a condition on LF, ultimately reducible to a minimality effect (in the sense of Rizzi 1990): a polarity item, over and above its semantic or pragmatic characterizations, must be licensed by the closest functional head with the feature [+operator]. The remainder of this paper pursues this hypothesis, making precise the informal formulation just given and broadening its empirical coverage.
3 EXISTENTIAL QUANTIFICATION The Italian data just reviewed do not yet show that N-words and dependent items are subject to the ISC exactly like English polarity items. The unacceptable (9), (11), (13) are apparently not salvaged by existentially quantifying the polarity item. Before examining a different type of ISC effects, let us take a closer look at the issue. The first qualification to add is that the universal quantifier is always incompatible with negation under the distributive interpretation, but when a collective reading is available the acceptability improves. This is clearly shown by the alternation ogni 'every'tutti 'all'; the first is almost always distributive, while the second can easily be interpreted as a collective: (14)
a.?*Non trovo nessuna somiglianza tra ognuno dei tuoi fratelli. I can't find any resemblance between each of your brothers.' b. Non trovo nessuna somiglianza tra tutti i tuoi fratelli. 'I can't find any resemblance among all of your brothers.'
(15)
a. *Non trovo nessuna utilita in ogni tua iniziativa. 'I can't find any usefulness in every initiative of yours.' b. ?Non trovo nessuna utilita in tutte le tue iniziative. 'I can't find any usefulness in all of your initiatives.'
When ogni admits a collective interpretation the sentence is quite acceptable: (16)
?I1 vecchio non ha lasciato ogni cosa a nessuno di voi tre. 'The old man didn't bequeath everything to any of the three of you.'
(16) is interesting because the only admissible scope order is inverse to the linear order of the quantifiers: 'there is no x such that the old man bequeathed everything to x\ Once distributivity
6
Paolo Acquaviva
is set aside, it appears that existential quantification is a way for Italian N-words too to respect the ISC. Consider (17): (17) a.
Non ho dato un voto a tutti gli studenti. 'I didn't give a mark to all students.' b. %Non ho dato nessun voto a tutti gli studenti. 'I didn't give any mark to all students.' c. Non ho dato nessuno di questi voti a tutti gli studenti. 'I didn't give any of these marks to all students.'
The simple indefinite un voto in (17a) may be interpreted in the scope of the negated universal quantifier: it's not to every student that I gave a mark (i.e., some remained without a mark).4 This reading is totally unavailable in (17b); the diacritic, however, is meant to indicate that an alternative reading might rescue the sentence, although this interpretation is extremely unnatural: none of the marks was such that it was given to the totality of the students. The scope order here is NOT-EXIST-ALL (~3x : mark'(x) &Vy [student'(y) —> give'(me, x, y)]). The reading is unnatural because typically one speaks of the mark given to each choice of students, not of the number of students who got each mark. But if a partitive makes it clearer that the assertion is about individual members of the set of marks, as in (17c), the sentence is acceptable. Two things are interesting in this respect: first, the acceptability depends on the availability (and naturalness) of existential quantification, although the linear order is the same in (17b-c), which exactly parallels Linebarger's observations about English polarity items; second, both nessun voto and nessuno di questi voti are N-words, hence the abstract raising which, we are assuming, allows an existentially quantified item to be in the immediate scope of negation has nothing to do with a hypothetical raising of all formally negative expressions into the specifier of NegP (the Neg Criterion of Haegeman & Zanuttini 1991). Examples may be multiplied to the benefit of empirical detail but to the expense of space.5 Therefore, just one more illustration is provided: (18) a.
Non ho messo tutti i fiori in un vaso. 'I didn't put all the flowers in a vase.' b. %Non ho messo tutti i fiori in nessun vaso. 'I didn't put all the flowers in any vase.'
The two readings of the perfectly acceptable (18a) are transparent: not all flowers were put in a vase (which entails that some flowers remained out of a vase), or not all flowers were put in the same vase (which does not entail that some remained out of a vase). The scope of the operators 4
Recall that throughout we must ignore the reading where the universal has widest scope ('for all students, it was/wasn't the case t h a t . . . ' ) . The intended reading paraphrased in the text is perhaps more conspicuous if ancora 'yet' is added to (17a): non ho ancora dato un voto a tutti gli studenti 'I haven't yet given a mark to all the students'.
5
One thing to note, for instance, is that interveners like qualche N seem to be just incompatible with negation, (i.e., a positive polarity item), regardless of N-words. Secondly, a paradigm like (i)-(iii) may underline that availability of existential quantification is independent from morphosyntactic class. Sconti 'discounts' cannot be existentially quantified no matter whether it appears as a bare plural in the idiom fare sconti 'to make
Italian polarity items
1
is, respectively, NOT-ALL-EXIST and NOT-EXIST-ALL. (18b) has the awkward flavour we are familiar with by now. The reason is that the first reading is completely unavailable: (18b) cannot mean 'my flower-potting was not exceptionless', 'the flowers I put in a vase were not all'. In so far as the sentence is acceptable, the reading must be 'there is no vase I put all the flowers in', where the N-word is existentially quantified past the scope of the universal operator: it is not the case that there exists a vase x such that I put all the flowers in x. This section has not just shown that Italian N-words too are subject to the ISC and may be existentially quantified in order to respect it. It has also brought out that sentences where such raising applies to N-words are less acceptable than the same structures involving a simple indefinite (cf. (18)). The degrading effect is reminiscent of that of weak islands, and is caused not by existential quantification itself (for otherwise simple indefinites would display that too), but by that 'something else' characterizing N-words but not simple indefinites. We will now see that new data support the first conclusion (existentially quantifiable polarity items can respect the ISC where others cannot) and shed light on the second (there is a weak island-like, syntactic effect peculiar to polarity items).
4 INTERVENING COMPLEMENTIZERS 4.1 When a polarity item and its licenser are separated by a clausal boundary, a new dimension of variation is added. Just as for overt movement, the choice of the embedding verb and the position of the polarity item affect the grammaticality of the structure. In addition, it is well known that some adversative predicates taking clausal complements are themselves licensers for polarity items in the embedded CP (for illustrations and discussion in English and other languages, see Laka 1990, Progovac 1994 and Giannakidou 1997). In Italian only a small selection of such predicates license polarity items, and then only in a limited way: N-words are excluded (dubitare 'to doubt' marginally allows them, but not for all speakers), and the acceptability of dependent items varies: concessions' or as an emphatic N-word: (i) *Non ho fatto sconti a ogni candidate. 'I didn't make concessions to every candidate.' (ii) *Non ho fatto nessuno sconto a ogni candidato. 'I didn't make any concession to every candidate.' But if we replace the partitive nessuna di queste domande 'none of these questions' in (ii), the sentence becomes more acceptable under the reading 'not a single one of the relevant questions was asked to every candidate': (iii) ?Non ho fatto nessuna di queste domande a ogni candidato. 'I didn't ask any of these questions to every candidate.' As usual, tutti instead of ogni further improves the structure. Another observation, for which I have no explanation ready, is that sentences with the linear order NOT-ALLN-word are just worse than sentences with the order NOT-N- word- ALL, even though they might have the same scope relation. The ISC is not a sufficient explanation, although I claim it is necessary.
8 Paolo (19) a. Mi sono Acquaviva rifiutato di fare lcunche ?* granche a *niente anything 'I refused to do that much b.Mi [neg]-anything hanno impedito di vedere lcunche chicchessia a *niente anything 'They prevented me from seeing anybody [neg]-anything c. Questa macchina e inadatta a fare 'This machine is unfit to do
*niente anything 1, [neg]-anythmg
\.
lcunche granche . a ?niente anything 'I doubt that the authorities can do that much [neg]-anything A satisfactory description should multiply both the licensers and the polarity items, bringing out the extreme variability of this phenomenon (both lexical and idiolectal).6 For our purposes the relevant point is that, putting aside dubitare, a relevant set of predicates license dependent items to a variable degree but uniformly do not license N-words. Negation, however, is the prototypical licenser for both dependent items and N-words. If the relevant adversative predicates are themselves negated, an interesting fact emerges:
'I didn't refuse to do
6
lcunche ?* granche a ?niente anything that much [neg]-anything
.
The facts are even more complex. To speak of N-words is somewhat oversimplified, since in many cases a simple, non-restricted N-word is tolerated where a restricted one is not. For my judgment, for instance, (19d) is at least marginally acceptable with niente, but with the restricted nessuna decisione 'no decision' the sentence is just plain ungrammatical.
Italianmi b.Non polarity hanno impedito items di 9 vedere ?alcunche ??chicchessia . 'They didn'tprevent me from seeing ?niente anything anybody .' [neg]-anything c. Questa macchma non e inadatta a fare 'This machine is not unfit to do
??alcunche ?*niente .
anything , [neg]-anything .
Licensing by superordinate negation is not unaffected by the matrix predicate. The lexical variability does not obscure the fact that acceptability is slightly degraded. The role of the predicates appears clearly (21) a. by comparison Non with mi the corresponding sono offerto non-adversative di predicates: fare alcunche granche . niente 'I
anything didn't offer to do that much b.[neg]-anything Non mi hanno permesso di vedere alcunche chicchessia niente
'They didn't allow me to see
anything anybody [neg]-anything
c. Questa macchina non e adatta a fare 'This machine is not fit to do
.'
.
.'
alcunche niente .
anything , [neg]-anything .
This is precisely the degrading effect illustrated in the preceding section for double objects and other monoclausal constructions. The parallel with Wh-islands is even closer in that Progovac (1994) has independently argued that such adversative predicates license polarity items not directly, but by taking an appropriately characterized C; thus, the intervener between the licensing negation and the polarity item is not a quantifier, but a particular choice of complementizer. But N-words and dependent items are not alike: impedire 'to prevent', for instance, undoubtedly selects an appropriately characterized C by virtue of its semantics; but the same semantics allows licensing of alcunche and disallows licensing of niente. Why this should be so, and why predicates like dubitare (along with yes/no and rhetorical questions and others) should license
10 Paolo Acquaviva N-words at all, is a conceptually separate problem, although solving it would help clarify matters. For our argument, the conclusion is that neither a quantifier filling a DP-external Q head nor a C selected by an adversative predicate suffice to license N-words, yet both interfere with the relation between negation and N-word: (22) a. b.
NEG
N-word
*Q
1 N-word
C[neg]
c. *NEG
Q
N-word
C[neg]
But this is only one half of the evidence. The intervention effect of (C selected by) adversative predicates results in degraded acceptability, not ungrammaticality. If the paradigm displayed in (20) is really parallel to the ISC effects discussed by Linebarger, we expect a significant discrepancy between polarity items that can be interpreted existentially and others that cannot, and we furthermore predict that this discrepancy should be orthogonal to the distinction between N-words and dependent items. In other words, a polarity item for which existential interpretation is unnatural or impossible should not be licensed by negation across an adversative predicate. As we will see directly, this is the case.
4.2 A suitable polarity item that cannot be existentially quantified is piu di tanto, literally 'more than that much', which in dependence from negation means 'not that much'. (23) and (24) show the contrasting effect of intervening adversative and non-adversative predicates: (23) a. ?*Non mi sono rifiutato di ripagare piu di tanto. 'I didn't refuse to pay back that much.' b. *Non mi hanno impedito di scommettere piu di tanto. 'They didn't prevent me from betting that much.' c. *Questa macchina non e inadatta a fare piu di tante copie. 'This machine is not unfit to make that many copies.' d. *Non mi hanno sconsigliato di scommettere piu di tanto. 'They didn't dissuade me from betting that much.' e. *Non dubitavo di poter scommettere piu di tanto. 'I didn't doubt I could bet that much.' (24) a. ?Non mi sono offerto di ripagare piu di tanto. 'I didn't offer to pay back that much.' b. Non mi hanno permesso di scommettere piu di tanto. They didn't allow me to bet that much.' c. Questa macchina non e adatta a fare piu di tante copie. 'This machine is not fit to make that many copies.'
Italian polarity items
11
d.??Non mi hanno consigliato di scommettere piu di tanto. 'They didn't advise me to bet that much.' e.
Non credevo di poter scommettere piu di tanto. 'I didn't think I could bet that much.'
In (24), the discontinuous dependency non ... piu di tanto is interpretable as a wide-scope complex quantifier: NOT-SO-MUCH [I offered to pay], NOT-SO-MUCH [they allowed me to bet], NOT-SO-MANY copies [the machine is fit to make], and so on. But this interpretation is unavailable in (23): in so far as (23a) is acceptable at all, it cannot mean NOT-SO-MUCH [I refused to pay], or 'the amount I refused to pay was small', and so on. There is nothing incoherent about this proposition, so it is crucially the presence of the adversative predicate that blocks the relation between negation and the dependent operator. (23) and (24) are two contrasting paradigms, opposed just by the choice of the matrix predicates. But (23) should also be contrasted with (20) and (21), where the adversative predicates are the same but the polarity items are existentially quantifiable. The three-way contrast in acceptability shows that our prediction is fulfilled: when no intervener is present, negation can license polarity items whether they are existentially quantifiable (as in (21)) or not (as in (24)). When an intervener is present, existential quantification can rescue the sentence at the price of variably mild unacceptability in (20), but when this is not feasible (as in (23)) the result is unacceptable. To further prove the point, a few contrasts can replace full paradigms: (25) a.
Non mi hanno permesso di ritornare mai piu. 'They did not allow me to come back ever again.' b. *Non mi hanno impedito di ritornare mai piu. 'They did not prevent me from coming back ever again.'
(26) a.
Non e che mi abbiano consigliato di fare tutti 'sti esami. 'It's not that they advised me to undergo all that many tests.' b.?*Non e che mi abbiano sconsigliato di fare tutti 'sti esami. 'It's not that they dissuaded me from undergoing all that many tests.'7
(27) a.
Non mi hanno ancora permesso di fare poi molto. 'They haven't yet allowed me to do much.' b.?*Non mi hanno ancora impedito di fare poi molto. 'They haven't yet forbidden me to do much.'
Furthermore, there are examples of not-existentially quantifiable N-words that, likewise, cannot be licensed by negation if an adversative predicate interposes: (28) a. Non mi hanno permesso di spargere nessuna voce sul suo conto. 'They did not allow me to spread [neg]-any rumours about him.' b.*Non mi hanno impedito di spargere nessuna voce sul suo conto. 'They did not prevent me from spreading [neg]-any rumours about him.' 7
Non ... tutto 'sto N is, literally, 'not ... all this N', where the reduced form 'sto (for questo) forces the idiomatic interpretation as a polarity item.
12
Paolo Acquaviva
(29) a. Non mi permettono di here neanche un goccio di whiskey. They don't allow me to drink [neg]-even a drop of whiskey. b.*Non mi vietano di here neanche un goccio di whiskey. They don't forbid me to drink [neg]-even a drop of whiskey. Note that there is nothing incoherent or odd about the intended reading of the (b) sentences: it surfaces straightforwardly by replacing the N-word with a simple indefinite, just as in Linebarger's original examples: (30) a. Non mi hanno impedito di spargere voci sul suo conto. They did not prevent me from spreading rumours about him.' b. Non mi vietano di bere whiskey. They don't forbid me to drink whiskey. Before conclusing this section, I would like to briefly discuss an alternative that may be inspired by approaches like that in Israel 1996 based on considerations of pragmatics and lexical semantics. It is a fact that 'not to allow' has higher informational value than 'not to forbid'; hence, the argument would run, emphatics like 'not a single rumour' or 'not even a drop' are excluded from the complement of 'not to forbid' for independent pragmatic reasons. The answer is simple: if the solution lay in the informational value, then 'not to forbid' should be compatible with an understating polarity item like 'not that much'. But this is not the case: see (26b) and (27b). On the other hand, the awkwardness of an emphatic idiom in a context with low informational value is probably the correct explanation for contrasts like (31): (31) a. Non devi fare niente (se non vuoi). 'You mustn't/don't have to do anything (if you don't want to).' b. Non devi aprir bocca (?*se non vuoi). 'You mustn't/don't have to open your mouth (if you don't want to).' Deontic dovere can be negated and still allow both scope orders NOT-MUST and MUST-NOT, but a tag like 'if you don't want to' forces the former reading. Both readings are perfectly natural when negation is accompanied by a N-word, as in (3la), but an emphatic VP-idiom like aprir bocca renders NOT-MUST distinctly odd. The contrast might be seen as further evidence that only the existentially quantifiable niente can raise past the deontic operator, and that the NOTMUST-VP idiom is ruled out by the ISC. But this is wrong: other polarity items are acceptable with the reading NOT-MUST even if they are incompatible with existential quantification over individual variables: (32) Non devi mica fare granche/piu di tanto/poi molto, se non ti senti. 'You don't have to do much, if you don't feel like it.' The dependent items granche, piu di tanto and poi molto, all '[not] much', are rather natural in (32), especially if the relevant interpretation is made more plausible by the addition of the presuppositional negative particle mica (cf. Zanuttini 1997, Cinque 1999).
Italian polarity items
13
To sum up: a C selected by an adversative predicate acts as an intervener for the ISC exactly as aQ-level quantifier. In both cases existential quantification, when available, allows the polarity item to raise past the intervening operator head at the cost of what looks like a weak island violation. In both cases the intervening operator head does not have to be a potential licenser for the polarity item. The apparently similar intervention effect of a deontic operator has been argued not to belong in this class of facts.
5 THE SYNTACTIC NATURE OF THE IMMEDIATE SCOPE CONSTRAINT What I have been referring to as "existential quantification", following the analysis of Linebarger (1987), requires the availability of a variable that could be bound. One may be tempted to speculate that polarity items like niente or alcunche can partly escape ISC effects not so much because they are existentially quantified but because they range over individual variables, unlike for instance piu di tanto. If so, this would nicely parallel familiar data about Wh-islands (cf. Hornstein 1995 and E. Kiss 1993). But the examples so far considered (cf. (7) and (17) above) have already shown that individual variable binding alone is never enough to circumvent the ISC: in addition, the interpretation must be such that the operator binding the variable is an existential quantifier immediately inside the scope of negation, and so outside the intervening operator. No empirical differences in scope order are visible when the intervening operator is, as we have argued, a C selected by an adversative predicate, but when the intervener is another quantifier the difference in interpretation is obvious. The whole point of the discussion has been that the cause of these interpretive effects, that is to say the ISC, is a syntactic constraint on LF representations; interveners are appropriately characterized operator heads, and this is a syntactic notion that includes both DP-external quantificational determiners and certain complementizers, although only the former interact scopally (i.e., give rise to distinct readings depending on the order) with an existential quantifier. Two main issues remain to be clarified: what is the appropriate characterization of interveners for the ISC, and just what kind of syntactic object corresponds to what I have so far simply called "existential quantification"; Linebarger (1987) explicitly referred to Quantifier Raising (May 1985), but it is far from obvious that the answer can be so simple. A satisfactory answer to the first question must specify what singles out C's selected by adversative predicates and the particular class of quantificational determiners triggering the ISC. In both cases we are dealing with functional heads hosting a particular choice of features. These features are shared by the (semantically diverse)8 quantifiers in Q and by the relevant complementizers, so it should not be a choice of features too closely associated with one particular interpretation. Following earlier work (Acquaviva 1996, 1999) I will take the relevant feature to be [+operator], a formal characterization accompanying not only quantificational determiners but also negation and certain instances of C. This characterization is more generic than the more specific [+negative] hypothesized by Progovac (1994) for the C selected by doubt, which 8
Note that the relevant class of quantificational determiners does not coincide with the "truly quantificational" determiners interpretable only as generalized quantifiers and not as choice function variables (Reinhart 1996). Among the interveners for the ISC are some weak quantifiers like some N, which are prototypical indefinites. What I am suggesting is rather that the syntax-semantics relation is indirect: all "truly quantificational" determiners appear above DP-level, and some indefinites appear there too for morphosyntactic reasons.
14 Paolo Acquaviva seems desirable given that, as we have seen, most adversative predicates in Italian do not license N-words at all in their CP complements. Moreover, this formulation immediately captures the observation that an interrogative C, which is [+operator], also blocks the relation between a polarity item and a licenser. So, unless C itself is a licenser, a sentence like (33b) is ill-formed because the idiom lift a finger cannot be licensed by negation (nor can it be existentially quantified): (33) a. I never asked you to lift a finger. b.*I never wondered whether to lift a finger. The main advantage of hypothesizing that all interveners for the ISC are [+operator] is that the same feature can very naturally be hypothesized for the licensing expressions of polarity items: if anything is marked as a syntactic operator, negation certainly is; the same applies to other licensers like yes/no interrogative C's or conditionals (the list of licensers varies across languages and depending on the items). Thus, the ISC can be derived from the requirement that polarity items be bound by the nearest [+operator] head.9 By this route we have reduced the ISC to the typical minimality effect on syntactic discontinuous dependencies, regardless of whether we decide to treat them all in terms of "movement".10 The ISC, then, is nothing but the syntactic reflex of the fact that these items are marked as such in the syntax and, for that matter, in morphology. Syntax, however, only "sees" a characterization like [+operator]; there is no syntactic feature shared by all and only licensers for polarity items, contrary to early approaches in terms of [+affective] (Klima 1964). The ability to license polarity sensitive items is rooted in the interpretation of the items involved, of the sentence as a whole, and of its informational value in the pragmatic context. As the ISC shows, the dependency between licenser and polarity item is also represented in the syntax, but there it is represented as a formal relation between a [+operator] licensing head and an element dependent on this head (either forming with it a complex operator or a simple operator-variable structure at LF). The local binding imposed by the ISC is a general requirement on the formal relation, not on the licensing of polarity items. One way to implement this idea is to introduce the requirement of local binding into the definition of Dependency, understood as a formal object corresponding roughly to a representational chain. In a Dependency, but not in a chain constructed by feature transfer, the content features of the whole may be scattered on different links: for example, not (or rather Neg°) and because (C°) may form a Dependency interpreted as the complex operator (=LF binder) 'NOT-BECAUSE'. This is the line pursued in Acquaviva 1999, which also contains an explicit hypothesis about the featural characterization of English and Italian polarity items. The Minimal Link Condition of Chomsky 1995, and the concomitant understanding of movement as feature attraction, may seem to provide the most natural theoretical backdrop. Things are not so clear, however: in Chomsky's system, feature movement respects the Minimal Link Condition as a matter of definition, so that, for example, violations of the Wh-island just do not exist. What look like such violations are actually the result of alternative mechanisms like unselective binding of variables (ranging on individuals). Now, if the licenser L were an attractor for the feature F of the polarity item just like in Wh-movement, either the polarity item should appear in the specifier of L (strong feature on L) or F should raise to L at LF (weak feature on L). But this approximates rather a description of N-words than of English polarity items, which notoriously can be licensed inside syntactic islands provided no syntactic operator separates them from their licenser. In short, if movement (including purported LF movement) is reinterpreted as feature attraction to the closest attractor, then we must remember that polarity items in general do not behave as if they were raised at LF, in so far as their distribution differs from that of Romance N-words. Yet the ISC holds on English polarity items as well as on Italian ones, so whether or not it can be subsumed under Chomsky's (1995) reinterpretation of "movement" is open to discussion.
Italian polarity items
15
That is why interveners do not coincide with licensers: intervention is defined on syntactic (LF) configurations on the basis of syntactic features, while licensing involves additional information. The question as to what precise LF structure reflects "existential quantification" of a polarity item is less directly connected with the analysis developed here: in principle several alternatives may be defended, provided that in the resulting LF structure the relation between licenser and polarity item is one of local binding, and that this result is achieved at the cost of a variably mild violation parallel to that of (some) Wh-island violations. A condition of scope adjacency stated in purely semantic terms would be unsatisfactory, given that the intervener for the ISC may be a complementizer that does not enter into scope relations. Another reason why "immediate scope" must be understood as a syntactic LF concept is the following: suppose we analysed a polarity item of the relevant class (by hypothesis, interpreted as a variable susceptible of existential quantification) in the way proposed by Reinhart (1997) for the subset of indefinites which are not interpreted as generalized quantifiers: a variable ranging on choice functions, which apply to the set indicated by the restriction (say, the set of pens in any pen) and yield a member of that set (say, a pen). Like in Discourse Representation Theory, the relevant indefinites are thus associated with a variable, but the variable ranges on functions and not on individuals. In this way, Reinhart shows, we can obtain the correct interpretation for a wide range of structures where the restricted variable corresponding to the indefinite must be interpreted in situ but at the same time the existential quantifier closing it is arbitrarily far away, in defiance of syntactic locality conditions. Even disregarding that this is presumably not the correct interpretation for polarity items, the point is that existential quantification applying to polarity items, in any case, does not have the unbounded character typical of other indefinites. We have already considered several instances of "marked" or "unnatural" sentences, which in any case contrast with definitely ungrammatical structures when existential interpretation is unavailable. Now consider the following examples where the choice of the hue can vary with the choice of the architect: (34) a. Ogni architetto a cui ho chiesto mi ha consigliato di usare un certo colore per tutte le stanze. 'Every architect I asked advised me to use a certain hue for all the rooms.' b. Ogni architetto a cui ho chiesto mi ha sconsigliato di usare un certo colore per tutte le stanze. 'Every architect I asked advised me against using a certain hue for all the rooms.' In the intended reading, the suggestion being recommended or rejected is using one hue for the whole house. Now, in the appropriate context a sentence like (35) is acceptable, under the interpretation that the rooms are not all painted in the same hue: (35) Non ho usato nessuno di questi colori per tutte le stanze. 'I didn't use [neg]-any of these hues for all the rooms.' The N-word differs from 'a certain colour' because of the near-necessity of a partitive in order to ensure the correct reading. But the difference is sharper still: in (36), a more complex structure parallel to (34), the intervention of a [+operator] C selected by the adversative sconsigliare makes the sentence noticeably less natural:
16 Paolo Acquaviva (36) a. ?L'architetto non mi ha consigliato di usare nessuno di questi colori per tutte le stanze. 'The architect did not advise me to use [neg]-any of these hues for all the rooms.' b. ?*L'architetto non mi ha sconsigliato di usare nessuno di questi colori per tutte le stanze. 'The architect did not advise me against using [neg]-any of these hues for all the rooms.'
This is the expected effect of the presence of an additional intervener C between the N-word and the negation. As in Wh-island violations where the extracted element is interpreted referentially, the sentence remains interpretable, but its acceptability decreases as the number of interveners increases. The lack of any comparable contrast between (34a) and (34b) clearly shows that the existential quantification we have been discussing is a syntactic LF operation, as opposed to the interpretive binding of a (function) variable.
CONCLUSION It is convenient at this point to recap the empirical results and the theoretical hypotheses that have emerged. We have seen that, despite appearances, there are good reasons to accept that the ISC holds on Italian polarity items just the way it does in English. Polarity items must be adjacent to their licensing operator at LF in a syntactic sense: complementizers selected by adversative predicates, which do not interfere with the interpretive scopal relations of quantifiers, count as interveners. This has two consequences: first, Linebarger (1987) was correct in viewing the ISC as a syntactic constraint on LF, given that the ISC is not a special condition on polarity items but just one instance of a pervasive syntactic effect. Second, Italian N-words are in fact parallel to English polarity items in some important respects, although they are obviously different in other important respects. This applies in the same way to N-words and dependent items like alcunche or chicchessia, which are not marked as negative: therefore the negative characterization is irrelevant for the polarity item-like quality of N-words. In a different sense, the negative characterization is irrelevant also for another distinction brought out by the ISC, namely, that between polarity items that can and cannot be existentially quantified. Polarity items, then, are not just restricted variables, or indefinites obligatorily in the scope of a licensing operator, but can be quantified so long as the semantic and pragmatic conditions on their licensing are met. This conclusion is perhaps not surprising in connection with English polarity items, but when applied to Italian N-words it acquires a new importance. The fact that N-words have a different distribution depending on whether they can or cannot be existentially quantified implies that they undergo at LF, hence in the syntax, the "movement" transformations other indefinites undergo when existentially quantified. As already noted, this is different from a generalized movement to Spec NegP for all and only negative words (Romance and Germanic), as envisaged, for example, by Beghelli & Stowell (1997). The evidence we have considered indicates that, whether or not all [-i-negative] elements raise to NegP, some N-words and some non-negative
Italian polarity items
17
11
polarity items are existentially bound within the scope of negation. Such elements raise at LF, which means that existentially quantified N-words construct with the operator binding them a syntactic relation with the properties of an A-bar chain. How this relation is subsumed by a general thory of covert LF-movement, and how it interacts with the relation linking all N-words to the negative operator, over and above existential quantification, are questions best left for further study.
REFERENCES Acquaviva, Paolo. (1996). The Logical Form of negative concord. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics, 6/2, 1-27. Acquaviva, Paolo. (1997). The Logical Form of Negation: A Study of Operator-Variable Structures in Syntax. New York: Garland. Acquaviva, Paolo. (1999). Negation and operator dependencies: Evidence from Italian. Lingua, 108, 137-174. Barwise, Jon and Robin Cooper. (1981). Generalized quantifiers and natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy, 4, 159-219. Beghelli, Filippo and Timothy Stowell. (1997). Distributivity and negation. In Anna Szabolcsi (ed.) Ways of Scope Taking. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 71-107. Chomsky, Noam. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. E. Kiss, Katalin. (1993). Wh-movement and specificity. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 11, 85-120. Giannakidou, Anastasia. (1997). The landscape of polarity items. PhD dissertation, University of Groningen. Haegeman, Liliane and Raffaella Zanuttini. (1991). Negative heads and the Neg Criterion. The Linguistic Review, 8, 233-252. Horn, Laurence. (1989). A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hornstein, Norbert. (1995). Logical Form: from GB to Minimalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Israel, Michael. (1996). Polarity sensitivity as lexical semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy, 19, 619-666. Kamp, Hans and Uwe Reyle. (1993). From Discourse to Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Klima, Edward. (1964). Negation in English. In Jerry Fodor and Jerrold J. Katz (eds.) The Structure of Language. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. 246-323. 1
' That sentential negation should be regarded as a negated existential quantifier is recognized by Beghelli & Stowell (1997:74), although they do not elaborate beyond the comment that a in simple negated sentence (like it's not raining) the negated existential operator binds an event variable. This is also the account argued for at length in Acquaviva 1997. However, Beghelli and Stowell hold that being bound by negation (that is, by a negated existential operator) is a by-product of reaching Spec NegP, which in turn is a by-product of being [+negative]: this is what I have argued against.
18
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Laka, Itziar. (1990). Negation in syntax: On the nature of functional categories and projections. PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Linebarger, Marcia. (1987). Negative polarity and grammatical representation. Linguistics and Philosophy, 10, 325-387. May, Robert. (1985). Logical Form: Its Structure and Derivation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Progovac, Liljana. (1994). Positive and Negative Polarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reinhart, Tanya. (1997). Quantifier scope: How labor is divided between QR and choice functions. Linguistics and Philosophy, 20, 335-397. Rizzi, Luigi. (1990). Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Zanuttini, Raffaella. (1997). Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2
SPECULATIONS ON THE POSSIBLE SOURCE OF EXPLETIVE NEGATION IN ITALIAN COMPARATIVE CLAUSES*
Adriana Belletti
1 INTRODUCTION A large class of comparative clauses in Italian, identifiable with those introduced by the w/z-word quanta being in the subjunctive mood and reduced small clause comparatives introduced by the complementizer che, allow for (sometimes require) the presence of the negative marker non. (1) gives an illustration. (1) a. Gianni legge piu libri di quanti non ne compri Gianni reads more books of how many not of_them buys 'Gianni reads more books than he buys' b. Gianni legge piu libri che non giornali1 Gianni reads more books that not newspapers 'Gianni reads more books than newspapers' Although negation is present in this kind of comparatives the clause or small clause where it appears does not have a negative value. Indeed, this kind of negation is often referred to as "expletive negation". * Previous versions of the present work have been presented in a meeting on clause structure held at the University of Bergamo and in a workshop held at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in the fall of 1995, in class lectures at the University of Geneva in the spring term 1996, in a workshop held at the University of Florence in the spring of 1997. I wish to thank the audiences to these events for their inspiring comments. Special thanks go to Valentina Bianchi, Guglielmo Cinque, Luigi Rizzi. I also want to express my particular gratitude to Lorenzo Renzi for being at the very source of my interest for the intricacies and mysteries of comparative clauses. This paper deals with one of them. 1
To simplify the exposition I will generally use examples where the compared constituent is a noun phrase, assuming that the same analysis should hold in case other constituents are involved.
20 Adriana Belletti In what follows I will sketch out a proposal for an analysis of this phenomenon whereby a source for the presence of negation in comparatives will be hypothesized. I will concentrate the discussion on quanta-comparatives like (la), limiting the discussion of (Ib) to some brief remarks towards the end.
2 ASSUMED CLAUSE STRUCTURE Let us first of all make explicit the clause structure assumed here for ^wa«to-comparatives. Although more structure can possibly be involved, I will insert in the representation only those positions which are "overtly" justified.2 As the presence of the w/z-word quanta indicates, a wh CP level must be assumed. This level is introduced by another CP projection containing the comparative complementizer, realized as di in these structures. I assume the complementizer di to head its CP projection, and to signal the "comparative" nature of the following proposition. Note that its presence is obligatory: (2) *Gianni legge piu libri quanti non ne compri and is completely independent of the presence of the w/z-word quanta per se, which can otherwise survive alone, as in the case of indirect interrogatives: (3) Di libri, non so quanti ne compri of books I don't know how many of-them he_buys 'Of books, I don't know how many he buys' Note finally that the comparative complementizer di only introduces clauses with finite verbal morphology, as the ungrammaticality of (4) indicates. (4) *Gianni legge piu libri di quanti (non) comprarne This distinguishes comparative di from declarative di, which only introduces infinitival declaratives: (5) Di libri, pensa di comprarne mold 'Of books, he thinks to buy many of them' That the necessity of finite morphology on the verb in ^wanto-comparatives is connected to the presence of di and is not related to the presence of the w/z-word is also indirectly suggested by the very existence of infinitival quanta indirect questions: (6) Non sa quanti comprarne 'He does not know how many to buy of them' 2
Beside those commonly assumed within the IP as AgrP, TP...
Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses
21
The above observations lead us to assume that the CP layer of gwanfo-comparatives should at least be constituted by the two levels illustrated in (7), where the w/z-word is extracted from inside the IP clause and ends up in the Spec of the wh CP.
Notice now that the comparative degree adverb piu of the above examples is neither preceded nor followed by a determiner. This is necessarily the case as the ungrammaticality of the examples in (8) shows. (8) a. *Gianni legge i piu libri di quanti... b. *Gianni legge piu i libri di quanti... The data in (8) can be interpreted as the indication that the functional skeleton surrounding the lexical NP is reduced and does not reach the DP maximal projection. Let us assume that the compared noun phrase is associated with a structure like (9).4
3
For the idea that the clause external CP level should be split into several different CP-type projections see Rizzi (1997) (who also gives different labels to the different levels). Current work by Cecilia Poletto provides converging evidence coming from northern Italian dialects. For the sake of simplicity I label all different positions C.
4
All things being equal, equivalent structures should be attributed to other compared phrases corresponding to AP's, VP's, PP's. See the examples in (i)-(vi): (i) Gianni e piu simpatico di quanto non sia intelligente Gianni is nicer of how much he be not clever 'Gianni is nicer than clever' (ii) che non intelligente that not clever (iii) Gianni ha piu letto di quanto non abbia scritto Gianni has more read of how much he has not written 'Gianni has read more than he has written' (iv) che non scritto that not written (v) Gianni ha parlato piu con Maria di quanto non abbia fatto con Piero Gianni has spoken more with Maria of how much he has not done with Piero 'Gianni has spoken more with Maria than he has done with Piero' (vi) che non con Piero that not with Piero
22 Adriana Belletti
The comparative clause of (7) is inserted in the structure (9). For the sake of concreteness, I make the assumption that it is internal to the NP in the form of a X'-complement of N. It should be emphasized that this kind of representation is not meant to indicate any sort of argumentlike dependence, as it is clear that the comparative clause is an adjunct clause, which does not establish any Th-dependence with the compared constituent:5
As the issue whether the adjunct nature of a clause/constituent should be given an explicit structural correlate in terms of representations involving (base-generated) adjunction structures is a fairly complex one, far from being settled, I make the simplifying structural assumption in the text, being aware that it is a first approximation which will most likely need further refinements. The representation in (10) assumes the restrictive hypothesis that the X-bar schema is the only admitted structural skeleton (see Kayne 1994). That more internal structure is likely to be present is suggested by the possibility of sentences like (i): (i) Gianni ha letto piu libri interessanti di quanti non ne abbia comprati Gianni has read more interesting books of how many he not of them has bought 'Gianni has read more interesting books than he has bought' where the postnominal adjective indicates that the noun has raised to a higher functional position. Note furthermore the possibility for the noun to be modified by a (restrictive) relative clause, which also indicates that the structure should have room enough to contain it: (ii) Ultimamente, Gianni ha letto piu libri che gli siano piaciuti di quanti non ne abbia letti io lately, Gianni has read more books that he liked of how many I not of them have read myself 'Lately, Gianni has read more books that he liked than I have read myself These data point to the necessity of refining structure (10). At this stage, I leave the issue open.
Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses
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With these assumptions in mind, we can now move to a closer examination of the internal structure of the IP clause. I assume without discussion that the clause is attributed an articulated structural skeleton as in much current work since Pollock (1989). More specifically, I assume that it is an AgrP. A NegP is located immediately below AgrP; further functional projections related to verbal morphology follow, at least a ModP and a TP.6 This leads to a representation along the lines of (11).
As for NegP, I assume that its head is the negation non, which ends up onto the verb in the final structure.7 The Spec position of NegP can be filled by negative (polarity) adverbs, among which the adverb piu. If we assume piu to be a Q which heads its own projection, this leads to an internal representation of NegP as the one in (12).
6
Possibly other NegP positions can be present in the clause, as in Zanuttini 1997. The higher NegP should better be viewed as a polarity phrase, as proposed in Belletti 1990 among others. For the sake of simplicity, I am using the NegP version since the presence of a NegP is central in the account to be developed below.
7
Through a cliticization process akin to those involved for clitic pronouns. See Pollock 1989, Belletti 1990, 1994a.
24 Adriana Belletti A NegP of this sort can be at the origin of negative clauses like those in (13) (see the detailed discussion in the references quoted in footnote 6). (13) a. Nonparlapiu 'He does not speak anymore' b. Non ha piu parlato 'He has not anymore spoken'
3
ON THE UNIQUE ORIGIN OF PIU AND NON
Let us now make the following observation: the two elements piu and non which form the NegP are the same that are found in the comparative constructions discussed above. Of course they appear to have seemingly unrelated meanings in the two contexts. The following natural question then arises: is the presence of the same words in both negative and comparative clauses just an accident, a pure case of homophony, or can we find some relation between the two occurrences? In what follows I will try to push for the second alternative. Indeed, this alternative should be preferred on principled grounds, especially based on considerations of economy. Let us make some observations in this connection. Assume that the negation non does not have a negative value per se, but the negative meaning is activated only under specific structural conditions: the head non must enter a Spec-Head agreement relation with a negative operator in the Spec of its projection. The negative operator is null in negative declarative clauses as Gianni non parla/non ha parlato, which only contain non as a negative marker. A class of adverbs, often referred to as "negative adverbs" (among which are piu, mai, ...), can take up the role of the negative operator and allow for the necessary agreement relation to be established, as is the case in (13a, b).8 Both the head and the Spec of the NegP must be activated through agreement in order for the negative interpretation to be brought about. We can understand the required agreement relation as a licensing condition for both the negative marker and the negative adverb, when present. Suppose now that, for some reason, the required agreement relation cannot be established. Some other licensing device must be operative then for both negation and the overt adverb.9 With these considerations in mind, I would like to speculate that a standard NegP of the form in (12) be the source for the adverb piu and the negative element non in both negative declarative and comparative clauses. However, only in negative declaratives can the described agreement relation be correctly established thus making the negative interpretation available. In the case of comparatives other processes are at work which make the agreement relation unavailable and consequently the negative interpretation will be so as well. According to this line of reasoning the negative marker non and the adverb piu 8
The necessity of the agreement relation can be formulated in terms of a well-formedness condition as the Negative Criterion discussed in Rizzi 1996 and Haegeman 1995. The idea can be implemented by assuming that the negative marker non has a negative feature which is activated under agreement with the element filling the Spec position of its projection. Only some elements have the property of being able to establish the relevant agreement relation: the negative empty operator and the class of "negative adverbs" which includes piu.
9
The structure would crash otherwise, as it would lead to an uninterpretable sentence.
Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses
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are viewed as functional words whose interpretation is established through the configuration and the interpretive process(es) involved. The adverb and the negative marker are dealt with as the "same words" in both negative declarative and comparative clauses; they appear to have different meanings as the different contexts in which they show up involve different interpretive/licensing procedures. But they originate in the same structural position in both cases: a NegP as in (12). This appears to be the most economical view: the two words are not two unrelated homophonous forms in the two syntactic contexts; they are the same words.10
3.1
The source of piu in comparatives
In (9) above we have established that the compared noun phrase is a DegP (a reduced portion of a DP) headed by the degree adverb piu which linearly precedes the compared noun. We should now make this analysis compatible with the speculation developed in the preceding section where piu is taken to systematically head a QP originating in the Spec/NegP position. In order to achieve this result, we can assume a more refined representation whereby, in compared phrases like (9), piu rather than being the very head of DegP is actually the head of a QP filling the Spec/DegP position (much as it is the head of a QP in (12)). The following questions arise: (i) where is the NegP from which the QP adverb should originate located? (ii) why does the adverb end up in a position different from Spec/NegP? As for question (i), the presence of the negative marker non in the comparative clauses under discussion makes it natural to assume that the relevant NegP is located within the comparative AgrP, analysed as in (11). This in turn implies that the adverb piu must have moved from this position to the Spec/DegP position of the compared noun phrase. I will make this assumption which directly leads to question (ii). Question (ii) can be rephrased as: why does the adverb leave Spec/NegP, what causes its movement to Spec/DegP? Assuming11 that syntactic movement is consistently triggered by the necessity of checking morphological (or quasi-morphological) features, we can make the proposal that the adverb piu moves to check out a degree feature in the head of DegP, which can then be represented as in (14).
The fact of being the "same words" should imply that in the list of the speakers' mental lexicon there is just one occurrence of piu and non. The exact interpretation of both can only be established in the concrete syntactic configuration in which they end up. I make the implicit hypothesis that the "core" meaning of an adverb like piu makes it compatible with both the negative feature of negation and with the degree meaning (feature, see below) involved in the comparison. As in Chomsky 1995, and in the spirit of the "criteria" style well-formedness conditions mentioned in footnote 8.
26 Adriana Belletti
I will make the working hypothesis that, if the feature in Deg is [—], the QP is realized as the word meno yielding comparatives like (15), which only differ from those considered so far in the value of the degree adverb. (15) Gianni legge meno libri di quanti non ne compri Gianni reads less books of how many not of_them buys 'Gianni reads fewer books than he buys.' Note, in particular, the presence of the expletive negation in the comparative AgrP. This suggests a slight refinement of the proposal developed so far, which, for the clarity of exposition, I have systematically phrased in terms of the QP piu. We can think that a QP filling the Spec/NegP position is realized as an adverb of the "negative adverbs" class, which includes piu, but does not include meno. On the other hand, a QP which checks the degree feature can be realized according to the feature expressed by the head, either as piu or as meno. I leave open here the important question as to why only the QP piu should be compatible with negation from a semantic point of view, thus being able to enter the required agreement relation in NegP (see also footnote 8 on this). In conclusion, the proposal runs as follows: a QP originating in Spec/NegP of the comparative AgrP, moves out of the clause to check the degree feature in the DegP of the compared phrase.12 In performing this movement, it leaves behind the negative marker non heading the Note that piu can also appear in a position following the noun and immediately preceding the comparative complementizer di: (i) Gianni legge libri piu di quanti non ne compri Gianni reads books more of how many not of.them he_buys 'Gianni reads more books than he buys' This possible (although, slightly less natural) word order can be interpreted in one of the following two ways. Either, there is a projection above DegP whose head can host the noun which should have the "option" of moving there (thus indicating that the NP extended projection does not end with DegP), or the QP is allowed to stop its movement in the Spec position of the comparative CP headed by the complementizer di. Under the second alternative, checking of the degree feature in DegP should be allowed to be performed at LF. The second alternative is probably to be preferred given the possibility of sentences like: (ii) Gianni legge libri interessanti piu di quanti non ne compri Gianni reads interesting books more of how many not of.them he_buys 'Gianni reads interesting books more than he buys' If N-movement is responsible for the order N Adj -, then the order in (ii) with piu following the adjective could not be obtained through further N movement pass the degree adverb.
Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses
27
NegP of the AgrP comparative clause. Our next question is: what is the status of the negative marker, once the QP has left the Spec position of its projection? This naturally leads to a closer examination of the expletive status of the negation appearing in comparative clauses to which the next section is dedicated.
3.2
On the "expletive" status of the negative marker non
The term "expletive negation" is generally referred to a negation which does not carry a negative meaning. Its presence in the sentence is somehow felt as redundant or anyway "atypical" as the primary value of a negative marker usually corresponds to the negative meaning. Here, I will not try to propose a general account of all instances of expletive negations, but rather I will put forward some speculations as to why and according to which mechanisms the negation present in comparative clauses is not and cannot be a true negation but is an expletive one. In order to do that, let us first discuss some examples where the non-negative/expletive nature of the negation in comparatives emerges rather neatly and in interesting ways. As a point of departure let us first of all point out that the idea of assimilating the negative marker non found in comparatives with the regular negative marker found in negative declarative clauses assumed throughout this work is not just suggested by the fact that they both sound alike and thus appear to be the same word, but also by the observation that they both have exactly the same distribution. This is shown by the fact that both non cannot be present in the same (comparative) clause: (16)*Gianni haletto piu libri di quanti non non ne abbia comprati Gianni has read more books of how many not not oLthem has bought The most direct account of the impossibility of more than one occurrence of non in the same clause consists in assuming that in each clause there is room for just one occurrence/position for a negative marker like non, which in turn implies that the expletive negative marker is indeed the same element as the "real"/negative one. Some reason(s) must prevent the negative meaning of the negative marker non to be activated in the syntactic context of comparatives. Let us first discuss further illustrative examples of the expletive nature of the negation of comparatives and then move to the analysis of the mechanisms responsible for it. Consider the paradigm in (17). (17) a.
Gianni legge piu di quanto Maria non scriva Gianni reads more of how much Maria not writes 'Gianni reads more than Maria writes' b. ??Gianni legge piu di quanto nessuno non scriva Gianni reads more of how much nobody not writes 'Gianni reads more than anybody writes' c. *?Gianni legge piu di quanto nessuno scriva Gianni reads more of how much nobody writes 'Gianni reads more than anybody writes'
28 Adriana Belletti In the above examples the matrix VP is compared with the embedded one. The subject of the comparative clause is the lexical noun phrase Maria in (17a) and the negative quantifier nessuno in both (17b) and (17c). Of all the examples only (17a) is perfectly acceptable; both (17b) and (17c) are marginal. However, (17c) is detectably worse than (17b) and can in fact be considered ungrammatical. This is a surprising judgment. Note that the only difference between (17b) and (17c) is the presence in the former but not in the latter of the negative marker non. Now, it is well known that (declarative) sentences with a negative quantifier as a preverbal subject do not admit the realization of the negative marker non, which is required otherwise, when the negative quantifier linearly follows it, either as a postverbal subject or as an object. More generally, the sequence nessuno non is systematically excluded in Italian. Consider the examples in (18) in this regard: (18)
a. Nessuno scrive 'Nobody writes' b. *Nessuno non scrive 'Nobody (does) not write' c. Non scrive nessuno 'Not writes nobody' d. Non ho salutato nessuno 'I have not greeted nobody'13
The acceptability judgments appear to be reversed in (17b, c) and(18a, b). Why should it be so? And why is (17b) still fairly marginal? As for the latter question, the answer should lay in the theory of locality: w/z-extraction ofquanto at work in the comparative clause involves a violation of what has come to be known as the Negative Island condition (Ross 1983), a case reducible to Relativized Minimality (RM, Rizzi 1990). Of course the same violation is at work in (17c). So, as far as RM is concerned, (17b) and (17c) do not differ. The further question naturally arises: why is (17b) better than (17c) then? Since the two sentences only differ in the presence in the former of the (expletive) negative marker non and its absence in the latter, we must conclude that presence of the negative marker is what makes (17b) more acceptable. We mentioned at the outset that presence of the negative marker non is strongly preferred in quanta comparative clauses in the subjunctive mood. For some speakers, the (expletive) negative marker is quasi-obligatory. This is confirmed by the often detected marginality of (19), which contrasts with (17a): (19) ?Gianni legge piu di quanto Maria scriva Gianni reads more of how much Maria writes 'Gianni reads more than Maria writes (17b) can be assumed to be no exception in this regard and this is why it is more acceptable than (17c). Having established that, we can then rephrase the question raised above as follows: 13
For many speakers: (i) NESSUNO non ho salutato 'NOBODY I have not greeted' with a focalized, proposed nessuno is significantly more acceptable. This probably suggests that focalization allows for an interpretation under reconstruction where the nessuno non sequence is destroyed.
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what makes the sequence nessuno non of (17b) different from the unacceptable one of negative declaratives like (18b)? It seems natural to assume that the different status of the negation in two cases should be held responsible for this difference. In particular, the fact that non is not interpreted as a true negation in (17b) allows for its presence following nessuno. And to complete the reasoning, we can claim that since non is not interpreted as a real negation in the comparatives under investigation this is why, contrary to what happens in negative declaratives, its disappearance does not make the structure acceptable (cf. (17c)). It actually makes it completely unacceptable: only a true negative non can undergo the process responsible for its disappearance. In conclusion, the fact that the contrast between (18a) and (18b) disappears in the comparative environment— and in fact, if anything, the judgment even tends to be reversed ((17b) vs. (17c))— constitutes an interesting illustration of the expletive character of the negative marker of comparatives. The non-negative/expletive nature of the negation of comparative clauses is further illustrated by the impossibility of examples like the following where the comparative clause contains a negative adverb normally licensed by the (truly) negative marker non, as mai or piu: (20) *Gianni legge piu libri di quanti non ne compri piu/mai14 Gianni reads more books of how many not oLthem buys anymore/ever Similarly, the negative quantifier nessuno cannot follow the expletive negation and be licensed by it, as it normally is by a true negation. Consider in this respect the contrast between (21) and (22) and the one between (22) and (23): (21) Gianni ha comprato piu regali a quel bambino di quanti Maria non ne Gianni has bought more gifts to that boy of how many Maria not oLthem abbia comprati a sua figlia has bought to her daughter (22) *Gianni ha comprato piu regali a quel bambino di quanti Maria non ne Gianni has bought more gifts to that boy of how many Maria not oLthem abbia comprati a nessuno has bought to nobody (23) Regali, Maria non ne ha comprati a nessuno Gifts, Maria not oLthem has bought to nobody Assuming that the licensing condition for negative adverbs and negative quantifiers involves their LF movement into Spec/NegP and the establishment of a Spec-Head agreement relation with the negative head (see the discussion above; see also Moritz & Valois 1992, Belletti 1994b), the ungrammaticality of the impossible sentences above can be attributed to the fact that the required 14
Since piu can be shown to have two possible locations in the clause structure (Spec/NegP and some Spec position in the functional domain surrounding the VP area, Pollock 1989, Belletti 1990, Cinque 1999), the sentence containing piu in the comparative clause cannot simply be excluded by the idea that there wouldn't be a source for it under the assumed analysis which raises piu from the embedded comparative AgrP. A possible source would exist (the lower one in the VP area), but the adverb cannot be properly interpreted anyway due to the special, expletive status of the negative marker. The same reason excludes presence of mai.
30 Adriana Belletti agreement relation cannot be properly established in the Spec position of a NegP headed by an expletive negation. Having established the non-negative/expletive value of the negative marker of comparative clauses, we are ready to address the central question of this section which can be phrased as follows: Why does the negative marker non of comparatives necessarily correspond to an expletive negation? In section 3 we have proposed that the negative interpretation of the negation non comes as the result of an established agreement relation with a negative empty operator or an adverb of the appropriate, so called, negative class, filling the Spec position of its NegP projection. In §3.1 we have further proposed that the (otherwise negative) adverb piu moves from the Spec position of the NegP internal to the comparative AgrP into the Spec position of the DegP of the compared (noun) phrase. This movement is motivated by the necessity of checking the degree feature in ' 5 The possibility of sentences like (i), pointed out by Guglielmo Cinque, seems to contrast with (20) and indicate that in some cases negative adverbs can actually be licensed by the negative marker of comparative clauses. This would put into question our conclusion that negation is always expletive in comparatives: (i) Gianni ha guadagnato piu soldi in quel periodo di quanti non ne avrebbe piii guadagnati in tutta la sua vita (Gianni earned more money in that period of how much he would not (any)more have earned in his whole life) 'Gianni earned mroe money in that period than he would have ever earned in his whole life' I would speculate that what distinguishes (i) from (20) is the special sequence of tenses utilized in (i), which should be held responsible for the possible presence of the negative adverb piu within the comparative clause. However, this does not entail that the negative marker non has a truly negative value in these cases. It can be suggested that sentences like (i) illustrate a "polarity" use of the adverb piu (mai works in the same way) but not a "negative polarity" use. Probably, the "polarity" is established with the future tense (realized with the conditional mood in the embedded comparative). That adverbs like piu and mai can be utilized as polarity items in non-negative contexts is a well known fact, typically illustrated by the use of these adverbs in interrogatives like (ii) (note the presence of future in (ii) as well): (ii) a. Chi piu dira che era giusto fare cosi? Who ever wilLsay that it_was right to do that way b. Chi mai arrivera? Who ever wilLcome As a matter of fact, presence of the negative marker non does not seem obligatory in examples like (i). Cf. (iii) in this regard: (iii) Gianni ha guadgnato piu soldi in quel periodo di quanti ne avrebbe piu/mai guadagnati in vita sua (Gianni earned more money in that period of how much he would (any)more/ever have earned in his whole life) 'Gianni earned more money in that period than he would have ever earned in his whole life' This should not be possible if the adverbs piu/mai had to be linked (through agreement) to non in the NegP. (The adverbs must then have a source independent from NegP in examples like (ii) and (iii). E.g., some Spec position in the functional domain surrounding the VP area, cf. the preceding footnote). As a final remark, note that the possibility of finding a negative value to the negation in some interpretive (but unconstrained) paraphrase of (i), which would equate the sentence to the interpretation: 'it will not happen anymore in his life that G. will earn as much as he did in that period', is not sufficient proof that the negative marker has a negative value in (i) as well. It is not inconceivable that it could, however, provide a direction to look for an answer to the important question as to why a negative marker should ultimately be present at all in the comparatives under investigation (even if a negative value is not associated to it there). Here, I will not address the question in this terms but limit the discussion to an account of the illustrated expletive value of the negative marker in these contexts, its source and its correlation with the presence of the (otherwise negative) adverb piu as the degree marker of the compared phrase (cf. §3.1). This does not entail any general statement about other cases of alleged "expletive" negation discussed in the literature, some of which have interestingly been shown to be reducible to cases of "real" negation as those appearing in finche temporal clauses (see Tovena 1994).
Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses
31
the head of DegP, ultimately responsible for the availability of the comparative meaning. We can now propose that, since the adverb has left Spec/NegP the possibility of activating the negative interpretation of the head non is no more available. Note that no empty negative operator can be assumed to be present in this case, as it is in negative declaratives which only contain non as a negative marker, since here Spec/NegP was originally filled by the negative adverb. By hypothesis, the negative empty operator is only present when Spec/NegP is not lexically filled from the outset. In a case, as the one under consideration, where Spec/NegP has been vacated by movement of the adverb originally filling it, it cannot host the negative empty operator. In conclusion, the negative interpretation of the negative marker non cannot be available in the resulting configuration of the comparative clauses under analysis, as the required agreement relation cannot be established with the Spec of its NegP projection.16 If this is the reason why the negative interpretation cannot be activated in comparatives, yet we must assume that some other process is at work here, functioning as a licensing device for the negative marker. We already pointed out in §3.1 that the representation would otherwise lead to an uninterpretable sentence.17 Throughout this work we have mentioned the fact that expletive negation appears in gwanto-comparatives with the subjunctive mood. Indeed, if the same comparatives are in the indicative, as it is possible although may be slightly more colloquial, no expletive negation is available anymore. Thus, (24a) contrasts with (1), repeated here as (24b): (24) a. *Gianni legge piu libri di quanti non ne Gianni reads more books of how many not of_them b. Gianni legge piu libri di quanti non ne Gianni reads more books of how many not of.them
compra he_buysjndic. compri he_buyssubj.
If the negative marker is not present in the comparative clause, (24a) is acceptable (at the relevant "stylistic" level): (25) Gianni legge piu libri di quanti ne compra I would then like to hypothesize that subjunctive is the licenser of the negative marker, yielding its expletive value. Let us now make the proposal more precise. Following various current work (notably Pollock 1997), I have assumed in (11) that clause structure contains a ModP projection, where "mood" is indicated, normally realized in the verbal inflection. Suppose now that a modal operator is present in the Spec of a subjunctive ModP. I would like to propose that it is precisely the modal operator which moves to Spec/NegP and in so doing licenses the negative marker non through the establishment of a Spec-Head agreement relation. Concretely, we can make the hypothesis that the subjunctive modal operator and the 16
Even if a trace is left by the moved adverb, it could not count for the establishment of the relevant agreement relation, which, I assume, must be a local relation, as in the general case of the "criteria" style well-formedness conditions (see Rizzi 1996, Haegeman 1995). Furthermore, the same adverb could not check two different features (degree and negative) in two different positions simultaneously.
17
In other words, we do not want the system to allow for the expletive value of negation to simply be a kind of elsewhere interpretation of the negative marker. This would otherwise lead to a sort of free generation of expletive negations, obviously a wrong conclusion.
32 Adriana Belletti negative marker non have in common an "irrealis" feature. This feature would be at the very source of the possibility that the required agreement relation be correctly established.18 It is tempting to hypothesize that this feature be at the source of the "potentiality" flavor, typically associated with the presence of the expletive negation. I end this speculation here.
4 BRIEF REMARKS ON CHE COMPARATIVE SMALL CLAUSES We noted in § 1 that the negative marker non can also appear in comparative small clauses introduced by the complementizer che as the one exemplified in (1), and repeated here in (26a) together with some other examples: (26)
a. Gianni legge piu libri che non giornali Gianni reads more books that not newspapers b. Gianni e piu simpatico che non intelligente Gianni is nicer that not clever c. Gianni parla piu con gli amici che non con i parenti Gianni speaks more with the friends that not with the relatives
I would like to make the hypothesis that, as for the source of the degree adverb and the expletive negation, these comparative small clauses can be attributed the same analysis as the quantocomparatives analysed so far. This can be done if the assumption is made that a full, although non-overtly realized, AgrP clause structure is attributed to the small clause, also including a NegP projection. The hypothesis is given further support by the observed presence of the complementizer che as the introducer of the small clause, since a complementizer systematically selects a clause, i.e., an AgrP. Of course, most of the AgrP remais silent in examples like (26). But, interestingly enough in the spirit of the account developed here, the negative marker non can be overtly realized. According to the adopted analysis, a NegP headed by the negative marker non is the source of the degree adverb piu (meno) filling the Spec/DegP of the compared phrase. As
Possibly, given a hierarchy of features, "irrealis" could count as a feature subsuming the negative feature of the negative marker non. If the modal operator moves to Spec/NegP, this position cannot host "negative adverbs". This is the precise reason why the negative interpretation cannot be rescued in (20) and (22) discussed above. On the other hand, the "low" negative adverbs could not move first to Spec/NegP past the modal operator in Spec/ModP due to RM. Note that the system does not overgenerate allowing for the expletive value of the negation in subjunctive clauses to be systematically available. This would clearly be wrong as an embedded sentence like the italicized one in (i) is unambiguously interpreted as negative: (i) Di libri, Gianni pensa che Mario non ne compri Of books Gianni thinks that Mario not ofJhem buys The possibility for the subjunctive modal operator to end up in Spec/NegP should be considered a sort of rescuing strategy, only available in cases in which Spec/NegP is empty and not filled by the negative empty operator (or a negative adverb). I assume that this situation is extremely rare, and solely arises if Spec/NegP becomes empty through the application of some process. It happens in the case of comparatives, according to the proposed analysis. Note finally that the proposed analysis implies that the strict cycle must not be considered a relevant notion at LF, the level of application of the "rescuing strategy".
Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses
33
no lexical verb is present within the small clause, the negative marker (phonologically) attaches to the following constituent.19
5 CONCLUDING REMARKS I would like to conclude by pointing out a number of further possible consequences of the overall analysis developed in the preceding sections. I list them below. (i) Since the adverb of degree moves to the Spec position of the matrix DegP to check the degree feature in the head of DegP, it is immediately clear why the degree adverb piu cannot be interpreted as a negative adverb of the matrix clause of (27): (27) Gianni non legge piu libri di quanti non ne compri Since piu undergoes one checking operation in the matrix Spec/DegP it cannot further move to Spec/NegP to establish the agreement relation with the negative head, necessary for its interpretation as a negative adverb to become available. Of course, no such problem involves the first occurrence of piu in (28) since the degree feature in the head of the matrix DegP is checked by the second occurrence of the adverb: (28)
Gianni non legge piu piu libri di quanti non ne compri,
(ii) There exists in Italian a kind of parasitic substandard comparative structure utilizing a relative construction rather than quanto-movement. The mood of the relative/comparative clause is systematically the indicative. We then expect that no expletive negation be possible, which is exactly the case: (29) ?Ha letto piu libri di quelli che ha scritto He Jhas read more books of those that he_hasjncijc written (30) *Ha letto piu libri di quelli che abbia scritto HeJias read more books of those that he_hassubj. written 19
It then behaves as a constituent negation. As such, it is attributed the same pronunciation generally associated with constituent negation and which differs from that of sentence negation, in certain varieties of Italian. In these varieties, in constituent negation the o of the negative marker is pronounced as an open vowel and not as a closed vowel, as in sentence negation: (i) a. Gianni n[o]n e molto simpatico b. Gianni e n[a]n molto simpatico 'Gianni is not very nice' See also Cardinaletti & Guasti 1995 on this. See Starke 1995 and Sportiche 1995 for the hypothesis that the internal structure of small clauses is as rich as the one of full clauses. I make the assumption that in c/je-comparatives the negative marker non is licensed through some non-overt agreement process with an empty modal operator moved to the Spec of its projection, as in the analysis of c/wanto-comparatives above.
34 Adriana Belletti (31)*Haletto piu libri di quelli che non ha scritto20 HeJias read more books of those that not he_hasjnciic. written (iii) As we have seen, the expletive negation corresponds to the weak (clitic) form non in Italian comparatives. The same is true in French where an expletive negation can also occur in comparatives. This expletive negation corresponds to the weak negative marker ne: (32) II a lu plus de livres qu' il n' en a ecrit He has read more books thathe not oLthem has written This can follow from the proposed analysis in the following way. Since Spec/NegP originally contains the degree adverb which then moves to the Spec/DegP of the compared phrase, the overtly realized expletive negation can only be the head of the NegP, namely, the weak form. Predictably, (33), containing the negative adverb pas is impossible in modern French: (33) *I1 a lu plus de livres qu'il n'en a pas ecrit It is interesting to point out that comparable sentences were possible in medieval French ((34) and (35) from Grevisse (1986: 1495) and are possible in modern Catalan ((36) from Espinal (1992)). The relevant examples are those in (34)-(36): (34) Vous avez plus faim que vous ne pensez pas You are more hungry that you not think pas (35) II faut avoir 1'esprit plus libre que je ne 1'ai pas One must have the mind freer that I not it have pas (36) Gasta mas ell en tres mesos que no (pas) tu en tot 1'any He earns more in three months that not pas you in the whole year This possibility does not necessarily constitute counterevidence to the above conclusion. A crucial observation is that the presence of the word pas in medieval French and modern Catalan is not obligatory. Much as non in modern Italian, the negative markers ne and no suffice as the only negative elements of negative declaratives. On the other hand, medieval French and modern Catalan pas seem to have a lower location in the clause structure than modern French pas. This might suggest that lower pas can be interpreted in situ, in a position lower than NegP.21 The overall analysis developed here could then extend to these cases as well.
20
We can still assume that the degree adverb originates in the embedded clause in (29), but the negation is then erased since no adequate licenser exists in the structure. This operation is to be assumed anyway for all quanto-comparatives in the indicative mood if we want to extend to them the analysis proposed for subjunctive <7Manfe>-comparatives involving raising of the degree adverb, as seems natural. Should the indicative ModP also contain an operator in its Spec, this operator would not qualify as a licenser for the negative marker. Indicative can be considered the "realis" mood par excellence.
21
Contrary to piu and mai of (20).
Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses
35
(iv) A crucial aspect of the proposed analysis involves raising of the adverb QP from Spec/NegP of the comparative AgrP to Spec/DegP of the compared phrase. Now, it is easy to show, and has been shown in the literature (Bracco 1980), that the comparative clause is an island for extraction. (37) illustrates the point with one example: (37) *A chi Gianni ha comprato piu regali a quel bambino di quanti To whom Gianni has bought more gifts to that boy of how many Maria non ne abbia comprati Maria not oLthem has bought The question arises as to why the degree adverb can be extracted not giving rise to any problem, as it is hypothesized here. The answer I would like to propose assumes that the crucial difference between the two cases is that the wh Spec/CP position through which the interrogative w/2-word should pass to reach the matrix CP in (37) is filled by the wh comparative word quanta hence it is inaccessible. On the other hand, the degree adverb piu has a different escape hatch available: the Spec position of the comparative CP headed by di. Assuming that it passes through this position to reach the matrix clause, no violation of locality is produced.22 (v) A possible potential objection to the assumed extension of the proposed analysis to French whereby the degree adverb of comparatives and the negative adverb plus are considered the same word originating in Spec/NegP inside the comparative clause is suggested by the following observation. The two occurrences of plus are not phonetically realized in the same way: the final -s is pronounced in the case of "comparative" plus but not in the case of "negative" plus, where it remains silent (thanks to M. Starke for pointing this out). Although problematic at first glance, this property of plus can be considered less surprising if we also observe that there exist other occurrences of the adverb with the same phonetic realization as the one of "comparative" plus. These occurrences correspond to the use of plus as equivalent of the adverb davantage: (38) a. II en dira plus demain He oLthat wilLsay more tomorrow b. Ce soir, je lirai plus Tonight I will_read more 22
A further violation seems to be created though: that of RM, since one Spec position is skipped in this movement, i.e., the Spec position of the wh CP. Why doesn't this constitute a problem? My suggestion is the following. Although movement of the degree adverb could actually be problematic derivationally it is not so representationally. I assume that this suffices. The reason why the output structure is well-formed representationally is related to the further assumption that an LF interpretive process moving the w/z-word quanta to the Spec position of the degree adverb piu is at work. The need of this interpretive process is to assure that the NP modified by quanta be interpreted as equivalent to the one modified by piu. Although the details concerning this interpretive process are admittedly to be further developed, I suggest that the existence of forms like (i) can be taken as an indication that a process along these lines also exists overtly. (i) Gianni legge quanti piu libri puo Gianni reads how many more books he.can In this kind of sentence, the w/z-word quanti probably fills the same position as the quantifier molti in (ii), possibly Spec of the projection headed by piu. (ii) Gianni legge molti piu libri Gianni reads many more books
36 Adriana Belle tti We can speculate that each time the word plus is not associated with a negative meaning but expresses a degree feature it is associated with the phonetic realization of the final -s.23 It is only when plus agrees with the negative feature of the negative marker in the head of NegP that it is associated with the pronunciation where the final -s is not phonetically realized.24 This concludes the list of the more or less direct (or problematic) consequences of the speculative analysis proposed here.
REFERENCES Belletti, Adriana. (1990). Generalized Verb Movement: Aspects of Verb Syntax. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. Belletti, Adriana. (1994a). Verb positions: Evidence from Italian. In David Lightfoot and Norbert Hornstein (eds.) Verb Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 19-40. Belletti, Adriana. (1994b). Pas vs piu: A note. In Guglielmo Cinque et al. (eds.) Paths towards Universal Grammar. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 25-34. Bracco, Claudio. (1980). On the island character of Italian "quanto" comparatives. Journal of Italian Linguistics, 5, 19-46. Cardinaletti, Anna and Maria Teresa Guasti (eds). (1995). Small Clauses, Syntax and semantics 28. New York: Academic Press. Chomsky, Noam. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Espinal, Maria Teresa. (1992). Expletive negation and logical absorption. The Linguistic Review, 9, 333-358. Grevisse, Maurice. (1986). Le Bon Usage. Paris: Duculot. Haegeman, Liliane. (1995). The Syntax of Negation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kayne, Richard S. (1994). The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Moritz, Luc and Denis Valois. (1992). French sentential negation and pied-piping. NELS, XXII. B
I remain agnostic as to the question of the origin of plus in examples like (38). Since there are reasons to believe that also "negative" plus can have a lower location in the clause structure than Spec/NegP (see footnotes 14 and 15 on this point), the option is open that the adverb can be generated independently of a NegP. Some other licensing condition must be operative to justify its presence in the sentence. Its capacity of checking a degree feature should play the crucial role. Intuitively, this feature is involved in both the use of plus in comparatives and its "absolute" adverbial use in (38).
24
Italian has no comparable phenomenon. This could be related to the fact that the absolute adverbial use of piu involves a PP: (i) a. Ne dira di piu domani 'He will say more tomorrow' b. Stasera leggero di piu 'Tonight, I will read more I leave open the appropriate analysis of this particular adverbial expression.
Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses
37
Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1989). Verb movement, Universal Grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 365-424. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1997). Notes on clause structure. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.) Elements of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 237-279. Rizzi, Luigi. (1990). Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Rizzi, Luigi. (1996). Residual verb second and the wh-Criterion. In Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi (eds.) Parameters and Functional Heads. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 63-90. Rizzi, Luigi. (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.) Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 281-337. Ross, John Robert. (1983). Inner islands. Ms., MIT. Sportiche, Dominique. (1995). French predicate clitics and clause structure. In Cardinaletti & Guasti 1995:287-324. Starke, Michal. (1995). On the format of small clauses. In Cardinaletti & Guasti 1995 :237-269. Tovena, Lucia. (1994). Notes onfinche. GenGenP, 2,2, 1-15. Zanuttini, Raffaella. (1997). Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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3
THE POSITION OF TOPIC AND Focus IN THE LEFT PERIPHERY*
Paola Beninca
1 CONSTITUENT ORDER AND SENTENCE FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURE We will assume a theory of grammar that conceives syntactic structure as a theoretical object representing the hierarchical relations between linguistic elements; its output is a linear sequence of unambiguously ordered elements. If the structure is to be the model of a possible mental object, such that it can be part of our actual "knowledge of language", it has to be "simple" in a way to be determined. It can be formed through the strict iteration of a basic module. Let us assume this module to be an X-bar projection in its most restrictive form, i.e., a head governing a maximal X-bar projection as its complement on the right, and specified on its left by another maximal X-bar projection at the X' hierarchical level: a parameter concerning a possible different direction of government is then not admitted.! In the recent past, the X-bar skeleton of the sentence was assumed as specified in three modules: VP, the interface between verb syntax and semantics; IP, expressing the relation of the VP with the syntactic subject and the other arguments; CP, encoding the relation between the
* This work is dedicated to Cino Renzi and to his Grande Grammatica. As other Italian linguists of our generation, we happened to begin our research activity at a time when in Italy Saussure had hardly arrived and Chomsky was already knocking at the door. Cino was the first to understand that we all had to speed up and become teachers of each other, without abandoning, on the way, what our teachers had taught us before. There are many things that I have learnt from Cino and for which I am grateful, but one I particularly cherish and that is the attitude that some of us still maintain of not being ashamed to learn from our students. Part of the arguments discussed in this paper have been presented at the workshop "Focus sul Focus" organised by Annarita Puglielli and Raffaele Simone at the University of Rome III. I have greatly benefitted from the discussion as well as from comments that Guglielmo Cinque, Mair Parry and Cecilia Poletto made on a subsequent written version. 1
I assume the conclusions of Kayne's Antisymmetry theory, which I take as a theory aiming to derive X-bar from more general principles that relate to the geometry of a structure projecting an unambiguous linear order.
40
Paola Beninca
prepositional content of the sentence and what gives a sentence its actual meaning in relation with the discourse or a governing sentence ("type" of sentence, pragmatic value, selection from a governing verb). IP, the functional projection connecting, on the one hand, a Verb and its arguments, and, on the other, the predicate with the utterance time, aspect, event time, modality — has been gradually broken down into smaller components and can now be seen as a very detailed sequence of functional projections, which the Verb climbs to reach higher projections of Agreement, Modality, etc.2 Here, when necessary, auxiliaries or modal supports are inserted; the specifiers host adverbs related to the semantic specificity of the different projections (see Pollock 1989; Belletti 1990, Cinque 1999). The DP has undergone a parallel evolution: the Noun head appears to climb a very detailed functional structure, whose specifiers host adjectives (see Abney 1987, Szabolcsi 1989, Crisma 1990, Cinque 1990, 1994, Longobardi 1996). Different orders of Noun and Adjectives, or Verb and Adverbs, found in different languages and language families, are considered, in this perspective, not the function of a parameter of the type "head first/head last", but of "how high the head (V or N) moves climbing the functional structure" (and also "how high its complements climb to agreement projections"). The most convincing result of this line of research is the extraordinary matching of the functional heads identified, on the basis of multiple evidence, in the functional sequence in different languages. The structure appears extremely detailed and rich, but the complexity is compensated for by the universality of the resulting construct. This is the framework adopted for the observations on Italian syntax I shall present here. They seek to contribute to a better knowledge of the CP functional structure, which, after Chomsky's (1986) Barriers, is conceived as the CP X-bar module, and subsequently has appeared as a sequence of functional projections.
1.1
The elements hosted in the CP field
It has been noted in various studies on Italian3 that the order of constituents on the left periphery 2
Developing this point of view, the syntactic subject is not the only nominal argument that is considered to move to reach its Spec Agr, but other arguments of the verb as well can be considered to move over the functional structure, to reach the Specifier of specific agreement projections.
3
See in particular Cinque 1983 and Beninca 1988 : 143-145.1 wish to draw attention to the fact that the terminology then adopted now appears misleading. Here I shall use the term Focalisation to refer to an operation involving contrast with the context or with active presuppositions, called Topicalisation, in those studies. This term was used then since it appeared structurally parallel to English Topicalisation, which involves movement of a constituent without any resumptive clitic. It was exactly parallel to English Topicalisation, which, however, does not require any pragmatic contrast with the context nor any intonational emphasis, being simply a way of individuating a Topic or a Theme. On the basis of their structural similarity — movement without resumptive clitic, due to the presence of an abstract wh-element, as hypothesised by Chomsky (1977)—two constructions with different pragmatic effects and conditions had received the same name. I will therefore call Focalisation the syntactic operation by which a marked Focus is moved to the left periphery of the sentence. As I hope to show, I think that this phenomenon is not unitary, but covers different operations. In order to avoid any possible ambiguity, I will use the term Thematisation for the cases of pre-position without contrast. Even in this case, we must distinguish between different constructions, in particular Hanging Topic and (Clitic) Left Dislocation (C1LD).
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
41
of the sentence is constrained; Beninca (1996) sketched out a first map of some specific positions and presented some conclusions—concerning the location of complementisers, interrogative and exclamative wh-, left dislocated and focalised DPs. In the meantime Rizzi (1997) established four projections in the CP field, analysing their semantic properties and the evidence for their hierarchic positions. I will first sum up the main lines of his theory, and then discuss some points of his analysis, showing that if we take into account some further data of Italian we obtain both a more constrained theory and presumably a more faithful picture of the "fine structure of the CP" itself. As we will see in §3, Rizzi (1997) identifies and locates four sub-fields in this area: at the right and left boundaries we can reasonably hypothesise functional projections directed outside and inside the sentence respectively: the Complementiser system has to do with what is external to the sentence itself (selection from a governing element or the context): here features determine the "sentence type" or the "force" of the sentence. On the right boundary a projection encodes and sums up the characteristics of the verb, namely, the specifications concerning its "finiteness": features in this position are related to the fact that the verb of the clause is inflected for person, mood, tense, aspect, or is in a nonfinite form (represented in Indo-European languages by the infinitive). Between these two boundaries, Rizzi hypothesises a system of projections related to the informational structure, represented by the interaction of Topic and Focus. He assumes that FocP is a single position, while TopP can either immediately dominate the FocP or the FinP. We will discuss the evidence he gives in order to support this assumption.
1.2 Heads and Specifiers in the CP field Let us sum up the elements that can be assumed to be located in CP—i.e., in the functional field above Subject Agreement—in surface structure. We have a series of elements that certainly are maximal projections: i. interrogative pronouns and phrases; ii. relative pronouns and phrases; iii. exclamative phrases; iv. thematised elements (possibly binding a resumptive clitic); v. focalised elements (with contrastive intonation). All of these elements occupy the Spec of a functional projection. As has been noted, they do not appear to be in complementary distribution except in strict V2 languages, such as German and Dutch. They can generally appear together, and therefore it is not possible to assume a single projection in the left periphery, or rather a single specifier; various mechanisms have been proposed in order to account for the fact that, although certain restrictions are established, many Spec positions appear to be available. Solutions such as recursion of CP, adjunction to the Spec or multiple specifiers, would not lead us to expect any ordering among different elements, unless this was due to independent reasons. If we are able to establish a strict ordering between the elements that can appear in the left periphery, we are induced to hypothesise a fine structure with "labelled" positions, in a way to be determined.
42
Paola Beninca Other elements are located in CP, whose nature is clearly that of a head:
vi. complementisers: of generic subordination (che), of yes/no interrogative (se), of infinitival clause (di, da, per), etc. vii. the inflected verb, which reaches a C head in specific types of sentence (primarily questions), or in all main clauses in V2 languages. Complementisers are in fact in many languages in complementary distribution with the inflected Verb: V2 languages show more or less strong asymmetries between main and dependent clauses, and in dependent clauses between cases with lexicalised and nonlexicalised complementisers. V2 has to be understood as V movement to a CP head, which has to be empty in order to host a verb. V-subject inversion, a well known phenomenon in marked sentences (interrogatives, etc.) in the languages of the world, is the result of V movement to CP, hopping from an Agr head to a C head. This kind of inversion too is largely restricted to main clauses. It is an interesting generalisation that a Complementiser is never incorporated by a verb: this indicates a sort of mutual impenetrability of the CP and IP fields. 1.2.1 Observing the restrictions on the elements in CP. I will analyse data from Italian, a language that freely admits various elements to the CP field: any restrictions on co-occurrence and order that may be observed are therefore significant. The respective ordering of the elements located in CP leads us to hypothesise a more detailed functional structure with specified projections; on the other hand, we will gather restrictive criteria that allow us to define more precisely the nature of the moved elements and the constructions. I will illustrate restrictions on the order of thematised and focalised elements, both with respect to each other and in conjunction with wh-items and complementisers. It is worth remembering, of course, that independent conditions sometimes limit the number of elements that can appear lexicalised in a given field in individual languages; in order to locate the elements it is useful to observe the order of the elements taken two by two; in this way it is possible to construct a very long sequence, combining and testing transitively the restrictions on couples: if A must occur on B's left, and B must appear on C's left, we can infer that A will appear on the left of C and test it as a prediction of our theory. It is possible to construct a theoretical sequence of positions A, B, C, etc., even if the three never appear together. The foundations of this program with respect to the CP field were laid down in the seminal work of Rizzi (1997). I will now consider old and new descriptive data that enable us to contribute further details to the map of CP and the properties of its functional projections. First I will present the diagnostic criteria that permit to identify four different types of pre-posing, which may be used to create marked Themes or Focuses. I will then show that, by distinguishing rigorously between the constructions and using nonambiguous examples, it is possible to reach the following conclusions: (a) C1LD can only move arguments to the Spec of TopicP; (b) a theoretically indefinite number of constituents can be located, however, in the Spec of TopicP, with apparently free order; (c) SpecFocus also can host more than one constituent, but only one of them can receive contrastive intonation;
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
43
(d) what appears on the left periphery and has contrastive intonation is not necessarily located in Spec of FocusP. We can indirectly draw some conclusions regarding the behaviour of exclamative and interrogative wh-: (e) with a particular pragmatic value and broken intonation, the interrogative wh which first moves to a projection quite low in the CP field — can be further moved to a higher Spec (TopicP, presumably, considering the pragmatics of this kind of interrogative; this position could be the same as that of some category of relative wh-, such as the Italian il quale); (f) the exclamative complementiser occupies a low CP; it is possible that its location is the same as that of interrogative wh-, where an interrogative complementiser is inserted in some languages. The exclamative wh- itself, however, lands in a very high specifier. If this hypothesis is confirmed, we cannot envisage an "exclamative criterion" parallel to the wh- criterion, as the head and the specifier involved in exclamatives are not hosted in the same functional projection. 1.2.2 Criteria for the identification of the constructions in Italian. It is often impossible to distinguish between the above constructions, since their differences only manifest themselves in specific circumstances. If we want to locate the position of the elements involved in each construction, we have to choose very carefully the cases in which the constructions do not produce an identical output. In the following paragraphs I will illustrate the contexts where the different constructions can be unambiguously identified. 1.2.2.1 Left dislocation and Hanging Topic. Two different constructions may produce a marked Topic or Theme: Left Dislocation (LD) and Hanging Topic (HT). In many cases it is not simple to decide what construction we are observing; in the appropriate cases they differ in their form and with respect to the requirements of a resumptive clitic (see Cinque 1983, Beninca 1988). We can sum up the diagnostics as follows: With LD the entire argument appears on the left — including any prepositions. A resumptive pronoun is obligatory with direct and partitive objects, optional in the other cases (impossible if the type of argument has no appropriate clitic). If present, the clitic agrees with the Topic in gender, number and case. With HT we have on the left just a DP in all cases, without any preposition. The resumptive clitic expressing the type of argument is obligatory: it only agrees with the HT in number and gender, not in Case. The copy of the HT can be also a tonic pronoun or an epithet: we will not exploit this possibility in our tests, because the conditions for its usage are very delicate.4 In order to correctly identify a LD and distinguish it from a HT it is necessary to use cases where the Thematisation concerns a prepositional complement:
4
Another difference that we will only hint at is the restriction on HT in non-root contexts.
44
Paolo. Beninca
(1) a. Mario, non ne parlapiu nessuno Mario, not ofJiim talks anymore nobody 'Mario, nobody talks of him anymore' b. Di Mario, non (ne) parla piu nessuno Of Mario, not (ofJiim) talks anymore nobody 'Of Mario, nobody talks (of him) anymore'
HT
(2) a. Mario, gli amici gli hanno fatto un brutto scherzo 'Mario, his friends have made him a nasty trick' b. A Mario, gli amici (gli) hanno fatto un brutto scherzo 'To Mario, his friends have made (him) a nasty trick'
HT
LD
LD
In (la) we have a preposed DP, with a resumptive genitive (partitive) clitic; it is an instance of HT, where the Topic has no indices of its grammatical function, with a copy that expresses its relation with the verb in the sentence. In (Ib) the DP on the left is governed by a preposition, and the resumptive clitic is optional. In (2a) we have a preposed DP, with an obligatory resumptive dative clitic; in (2b) a complete PP is preposed, and the dative clitic is optional. The pragmatics of both variants of (1) and (2) is the same, a marked thematisation. In modern Italian, HT is limited to the colloquial style, while LD is very common in the written and formal language too, one difference being only the use of the optional clitic, which in the more formal style is avoided (in all cases, except for the direct object). If the preposed argument is a direct object or a subject, HT and LD become indistinguishable.5 If the aim is to locate, for example, a LD element with respect to other elements in the CP field, one has to avoid these cases, since a presumed LD may be a HT. A direct object offers the possibility of identifying Focalisation. Contrastive intonation has been considered to be immediate proof of Focalisation, but we will show that it is not conclusive; in the case of a direct object, the resumptive clitic, which is obligatory in both LD and HT, is impossible with Focalisation; we will see that apparent exceptions to this generalisation can be dealt with and factored out on the basis of the context that this type of apparent counterexample requires. As usual, capital letters distinguish the constituents which would receive contrastive intonation in the spoken language. (3) a. Mario, *(lo) rivedro LD, HT 'Mario, I will see *(him) again' b. MARIO, (*lo) rivedro Foe 'MARIO, I will see (*him) again' c. Di Kant, (ne) abbiamo gia parlato LD 'Of Kant, we have spoken (of-him) already' d. Di KANT, (*ne) abbiamo gia parlato Foe 'OF KANT, we have spoken (*of_him) already' e. Kant, *(ne) abbiamo gia parlato HT 'Kant, we have spoken *(of_him) already' 5
In Italian, both HT and LD of a direct object show a preposed DP with no prepositions and an obligatory resumptive clitic; in the case of a subject, again no prepositions and no resumptive clitic.
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
45
In (3a) Mario is either a case of LD or HT, with obligatory resumptive clitic (recall that with the direct object we have no means to distinguish between these two constructions); in (3b) Mario, which is intonationally distinguished from the remaining clause (high intonation on the stress), cannot have a resumptive clitic. The pragmatic value of (3b, d) is that of contradicting a context in which the predicate had been associated—either overtly or through an implication— with an argument different from the focalised one. The characteristics that we have been pointing out are in fact an idealisation, in the sense that that is what we observe in a sort of "purified context" of simple contrast; they are not automatically realised in all the cases where a constituent is preposed with a contrastive intonation. I will illustrate a few particular cases that are to be taken into account: they all concern the unexpected presence of a resumptive clitic linked to a focalised preposed element. For complements different from a direct object, Focalisation requires that the focalised XP retain its prepositions. A resumptive clitic is in general not required or impossible, except for two different cases. The first case is that of the Noun governed by a quantifier: if moved on the left periphery, in Italian it always requires a clitic ne: (4) GATTI, ne ho visti molti/tre 'CATS, of_them IJiave seen many/three' The clitic is not obligatory if the quantifier is not lexicalised (it has indefinite interpretation: see Beninca 1980): (5) GATTI, ho visto/ne ho visti 'CATS, IJiave seen/of_them IJiave seen The second case is that of prepositional Dative. While a focalised direct object rejects a resumptive clitic (6c), with a focalised indirect object the resumptive clitic is not obligatory but permitted: (6) a. A MARIO, (gli) regalero un libro 'TO MARIO, (to_him) LwilLgive a book' b. A MARIO, (?gli) ho parlato 'TO MARIO, toJhim IJiave spoken' c. MARIO, (*lo) inviteremo 'MARIO, (*him) we_will jnvite' This fact is not totally unexpected, since it has been noted that a prepositional dative can be doubled even if the dative is apparently not moved at all, in particular in regional colloquial styles: (7) (Gli) diro a Mario di andare subito '(toJiim) LwilLtell to Mario to go immediately' This recalls a characteristics of many Italian varieties (particularly in Northern Italy), namely the obligatory doubling of the Dative. While this property remains unexplained, it has to be taken into account in order to interpret the the constructions correctly.
46
Paola Beninca
1.2.2.2 LD. Foe and Weak Crossover. It was noted many years ago, on the basis of English, that LD and Foe differ with respect to weak crossover effects: A lexical anaphor in subject position is permitted if bound by a LD (or HT) antecedent, but not by a Focalised phrase. As Rizzi (1997) points out, this generalisation holds in Italian: (8) a. Mario;, suaj madre lo; vizia LD/HT 'Mario;, hisj mother spoils him;' b. *MARIO;, sua; madre vizia Foe 'MARlOj, his; mother spoils' (9) a. Mario;, sua; madre non glij scrive mai 'Mario;, his; mother never writes hiny b. A Marioj suaj madre non (glij) scrive mai To Mario;, hisj mother never writes' c. *A MARlOj, suaj madre non scrive mai 'TO MARlOj, his; mother never writes'
HT LD Foe
(10) a. Di Marioj, suaj madre non (ne;) parla mai LD 'Of Marioj, hisj mother never talks (of him;)' b. Marioj, sua; madre non ne; parla mai HT 'Mario;, his; mother never talks of him;' c. *DI MARlOj, suaj madre non parla mai Foe 'OF MARlOj, his; mother never talks' Once we have defined these preliminary criteria for the identification of the constructions from a syntactic point of view, we can try to establish exactly where the constituents involved in each of these constructions are located in the CP field. In order to do so, we will observe their location with respect to one another as well as with respect to other elements that are assumed to appear in CP.
1.3 Elements on the left periphery have ordering constraints As noted in Beninca 1988, we are able to determine the preferred or obligatory order of LD, HT and Foe. LD — even when it involves many constituents — normally precedes Focalised elements: (11) a.
A Giorgio, un posticino, IL DOTTOR PIVA puo trovarglielo! LD, Foe To G., a job, DOCTOR PIVA can find_it_to_him!' b. (*)IL DOTTOR PIVA, a Giorgio, un posticino puo trovarglielo! *Foc, LD 'DOCTOR PIVA, to G., a job, he.could find_it_to_him!'
The ambiguous status of (1 Ib) will become apparent later. HT is normally placed on the outside left and, differently from LD, it cannot be iterated:
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
47
(12) a. Giorgio, ai nostri amici, non parlo mai di lui HT, LD 'G., to our friends, I never talk of him' b. *Ai nostri amici, Giorgio, non parlo mai di lui *LD, HT To our friends, G., I never talk of him' c. Ai nostri amici, di G./Di G., ai nostri amici, non (ne) parlo mai LD, LD To our friends, of G./of G., to our friends, I never talk (of_him)' (13) a. Pietro, TUTTI GLI STUDENTI hanno votato per lui 'P., ALL THE STUDENTS have voted for him' b. *TUTTI GLI STUDENTI, Pietro, hanno votato per lui 'ALL THE STUDENTS, P., have voted for him'
HT, Foe *Foc, HT
Combining the results of the preceding tests, we get the sequence HT, LD, Foe. We can now try to determine the order of these elements with respect to wh-elements and complementisers.6 In a main question, a lexicalised wh- cannot be separated from the verb; they can both be preceded by LD and HT: (14) a. Questo libro, a chi Thai dato? This book, to whom have you given it?' b. *A chi questo libro, Thai dato? To whom, this book have you given it?' c. Con Mario, di che cosa volevi parlare? 'With Mario, about what did you want to talk?' d. *Di che cosa, con Mario, volevi parlare? 'About what with Mario did you want to talk?' A wh- cannot precede a HT: (15) a. Quei soldi, cosa ne avete fatto? That money, what have_you done of_it?' b. *Cosa, quei soldi, ne avete fatto? *wh-, HT 'What, that money, have_you done oLit?' c. Suo fratello, cosa gli avete detto? HT, wh'His brother, what have_you told him?' d. *Cosa, suo fratello, gli avete detto? *wh-, HT 'What, his brother, have.you told him?' We have already fixed an order HT, LD; we can add now the position of wh-, getting the sequence HT, LD, wh-. The respective order of wh- and Foe is still undetermined: both follow HT and LD. 6
I follow Rizzi (1991, 1997), among others, in assuming that in Italian the inflected verb normally moves to CP in main questions, exactly as in English and French (in the relevant cases). The verb is in C, no DP subject can be in Agrs, or IP, as is the case for Romance languages in general. Only a subject clitic can invert with the inflected verb in Romance, so that evidence for V movement to C is only visible in Romance languages with subject clitics. I will not follow Rizzi's (1991) analysis for dependent interrogatives, as I will point out in section 2.
48
Paola Beninca
In relative sentences, the wh- is not in the same position as in the interrogative, but appears to occupy a higher section of the functional field, the section that Rizzi, following Chomsky, calls ForceP; in the same location we find the relative che: (16) a. II ragazzo a cui il libra lo portero domani 'The boy to whom the book LwilLbring it tomorrow' b. *I1 ragazzo // libra a cui lo portero domani 'The boy the book to whom LwilLbring it tomorrow' c. II libro che a Mario non regal ero mai... The book that to Mario I will never give...' d. *I1 libro a Mario che non regalero mai... The book to Mario that I will never give...' Following Kayne (1976, 1978), relative che is assumed to be the same lexical element as the complementiser introducing a subordinate clause; it appears also to occupy the same functional position in CP as the relative wh- pronoun does, namely a position on the far left. The following examples show that it precedes LD (see also Rizzi 1997) and is preceded by a HT:7 (17) a. *Sono certa di questo libro che non (ne) ha mai parlato nessuno 'I am certain, of this book, that nobody (of Jt) has spoken' b. Sono certa questo libro che non ne ha mai parlato nessuno T am certain, this book, that nobody (of Jt) has spoken' c. Sono certa che di questo libro non ne ha mai parlato nessuno 'I am certain that, of this book, nobody (of Jt) has spoken'
LD, che HT, che che, LD
It is interesting to compare a headed relative clause, as the ones we have just seen, with an indefinite headless relative, which uses wh-elements that are lexically the same as the interrogative wh-elements: their position is nevertheless that of the relative wh- and not that of the interrogative wh-: (18) a. Un ragazzo che la fisica la sabenee Mario rel. che, LD 'A boy that physics heJmows it well is Mario' b. Mario, che la fisica la sa bene... 'Mario, who physics heJcnows it well...' c. (Dimmi) la fisica c/n'la sa bene LD, Q wh'(Tell me) physics who knows it well'
7
An unexpected fact regarding relatives, though, is that a HT which we would expect to be possible on the left of the complementiser, is ungrammatical: (i) *Le persone questo libro che ne hanno parlato bene sono poche The persons this book that have spoken well of it are very few This is probably an effect of an interfering block deriving from the structure of the relative clause itself. The result is in fact very much better if we prepose the HT to the whole relative clause, as in (ii): (ii) Questo libro le persone che ne hanno parlato bene sono poche this book, the persons that have spoken well of it are very few
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery d. Interpellero chi queste cose le sa bene 'I will ask who these things knows well'
49
rel. wh-, LD
e. Lo chiedero a chi queste cose le sa bene 'I will ask it to who these things knows well' f. *Interpellero queste cose chi le sa bene *LD, rel. wh'I will ask these things who knows them well' g. *Lo chiedero queste cose a chi le sa bene8 'I will ask it these things to whom knows them well'
2
A DIGRESSION ON DEPENDENT INTERROGATIVES
Unlike in Germanic type languages, in a Romance main question a subject DP cannot appear immediately after the inflected verb.9 The following Italian sentence (19a) represents a pattern that is ungrammatical in modern Romance languages in general; (19b, c) are the well formed variants: (19) a. *Dove e Gino andato? 'Where has John gone?' b. Gino, dov'e andato? 'John, where hasJie gone?' c. Dov'e andato, Gino? 'Where hasJie gone, John?' In Italian, as in French, the verb has to be adjacent to the wh- element in main interrogatives. If we interpret the Italian verb as the equivalent of French V-cl (note that Italian does not possess subject clitics, instead it has a rich inflection), the structural interpretation can be identical: the inflected verb moves to C and no DP can appear in subject position.
2.1
Dependent interrogatives and dependent clauses
Dependent clauses are introduced by an inert complementiser, a head, which can be 0 in English:
8
Rizzi considers ungrammatical the order wh-, LD in main interrogatives (as in the following sentence, a variant of (18c)): (iii) Chi lafisica la sa bene? This order is in fact grammatical, but has a particular pragmatic value, the value of a "rhetorical question" implying a negative answer (which is nobody, in the sentence above). The interrogative wh- is presumably further moved to Spec TopP. We will return to this below.
9
This is possible only in some Ladin and Rhaeto-Romance varieties, as it was in Medieval Romance: these modern Romance varieties preserve a Medieval Romance characteristic, namely a kind of V2 syntax, implying verb movement to a position higher then Agrs: see Beninca( 1983^, 1989, 1994), Salvi (1990) and references cited there.
50 Paola Beninca (20) a. Penso che Mario arrivera domani b. Je pense que M. arrivera demain c. I think (that) M. will arrive tomorrow In dependent interrogatives, a Doubly Filled Comp Filter is active in Standard Italian, where we have complementary distribution of wh- and complementiser in most varieties (yes/no dependent interrogatives have special complementisers). In (2la, b) we have examples of wh- interrogatives, in (22a, b) examples of yes/no interrogatives: (21) a. Je ne sais pas quand (*que/*si) Mario arrivera 'I don't know when (that/if) Mario will arrive' b. *Je ne sais pas quand arrivera-t-il 'I don't know when will he arrive' c. Non so quando (*che/*se) Mario arrivera 'I don't know when (that/if) Mario will arrive' (22) a. Je ne sais pas si Mario arrivera demain b. Non so se Mario arrivera domani 'I don't know if Mario will arrive tomorrow' While verb movement in the space under Agr$ can freely move a verb to a projection whose Spec is occupied (by an adverb, for example) in CP we have restrictions. In standard Italian and French (and English) a wh- pronoun in the Spec of CP excludes the presence of a lexicalised element in its head in dependent clauses (the Doubly Filled Comp Filter), but the same condition (a wh- in the Spec of CP) requires the presence of a verbal element in the same head in main clauses. In nonstandard varieties, both of French and of Italian (and English, including Middle English), the CP of a dependent wh- interrogative can or must have a lexicalised complementiser (not the interrogative, but the declarative one): (23) a. Je ne sais pas quand que/*si Mario arrivera b. *Je ne sais pas quand arrivera-t-il c. Non so quando che/*se Mario arrivera The Doubly Filled Comp filter, that is supposed to be present only in some languages and absent in others, is not sufficient to account for the complete impossibility for the verb to move to C in dependent interrogatives. As far as we know from the immense variation in northern Italian dialects and Romance languages in general, no variety has the verb in C in a dependent interrogative. This impossibility is independent of the presence of a lexicalised complementiser: whether the complementiser is lexical or 0, a verb cannot move to C; on the other hand, the presence of wh- features in this CP head blocks adjunction of the V but not of a complementiser.
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
51
2.2 The Wh-criterion and Italian Dependent Clauses Rizzi (1991), however, considers some facts of Italian and other (null subject) Romance languages as indicating a movement to C of the verb in dependent clauses. The following examples (24)-(26) show a sort of parallelism between main and dependent interrogatives with a preverbal subject, but, while Rizzi idealises the data and considers both cases ungrammatical, I would point out the different degrees of ungrammaticality, arguing that in dependent interrogatives a preverbal subject is not impossible because the verb moves to the left, but just difficult for other reasons: (24) a. b. c. d.
Non so dove ??Mario e andato a'. —"— -"- *e Mario andato —"— -"e andato Mario —"— Mario dove e andato 'I don't know where Mario has gone'
(25) a. b. c. d.
Non so che cosa ?Mario ha fatto —"— —"— *ha Mario fatto —"—• —"— ha fatto Mario —"— Mario che cosa ha fatto 'I don't know what Mario has done'
(26) a. b. c. d.
Non so dove Mario ha/abbia messo i libri —"— ?dove ha/abbia Mario messo i libri —"— dove ha/abbia messo i libri Mario —"— Mario dove ha/abbia messo i libri 'I don't know where Mario has put the books'
(26) a'. b' c'. d!
*Dove Mario ha messo i libri? ?Dove ha Mario messo i libri? Dove ha messo i libri Mario? Mario, dove ha messo i libri? 'Where has Mario put the books?'
*Dove Mario e andato? b' *Dove e Mario andato? c'. Dove e andato Mario? d' Mario, dove e andato? 'Where has Mario gone?' a' b' c! d'
*Che cosa Mario ha fatto? *Che cosa ha Mario fatto? Che cosa fa fatto Mario? Mario, che cosa ha fatto? 'What has Mario done?'
The same pattern (parallelism of main and dependent clauses) is reported by Rizzi (1991) for Spanish (27a, b) and Rumanian (27c, d): (27) a. *Que Maria compro? b. *No se que Maria compro '(I don't know) what Mary bought' c. *Unde Jon s-a dus? d. *Nu ne a spus unde Jon s-a dus '(He didn't tell us) where John has gone' Let us examine Italian: the judgements on preverbal subjects in dependent clauses are in fact similar to those for the corresponding main clauses, but not identical, as shown above by
52 Paola Beninca the examples (24)-(25); moreover, acceptability improves if the verb is subjunctive instead of indicative, as in (26); this suggests that the verb has possibly not moved to C, and it is a different factor that renders the post-verbal position of the subject the preferred one. It has to be noted that a similar (though less strong) effect is found in other wh- constructions in Italian, such as relative clauses and Focalisations: (28) a. II libro che ?Mario ha letto/che ha letto Mario... 'The book that Mario has read/that has read Mario' b. UN LIBRO, ?Mario ha letto!/ha letto Mario! 'A BOOK, Mario has read/has read Mario Verb movement to C has never been postulated for these constructions. On the other hand, if one considers dependent interrogatives with heavier VP, the ban on preverbal subjects is substantially weakened: (29) a. Dimmi dove Mario ha comprato questo giornale 'Tell me where Mario has bought this newspaper' b. Mi hanno chiesto che cosa Mario ha regalato a Maria 'They asked me what Mario gave to Maria' Finally, the crucial case against the hypothesis is offered by Northern Italian dialects: the DP subject is post-posed in dependent questions, as in Italian, but no other evidence of V to C appears.10 While there is variation as to the lexicalisation of the complementiser in dependent interrogatives, suggesting that the wh feature does not exhaustively occupy the relevant head of CP, 10
In particular, verb-subject clitic inversion is never admitted. For example, let us consider a dialect such as Paduan: (i) a. No so dove che ??Mario ze nda a! *Dove Mario ze (lo) nda? b. —" "— *ze Mario nda b! *Dove (lo) ze Mario nda? c. —"— —"— ze nda Mario c! Dove ze (lo) nda Mario? d. —"— Mario dove che el ze nda d! Mario, dove ze-lo nda? e. *No so dove (che) ze-lo nda (Mario) 'I don't know where Mario has gone' 'Where has Mario gone? (ii) a. No so cossa che ?Mario ga fato a! *Cossa Mario ga fato? b. —" "— *ga Mario fato b! *Cossa ga Mario fato? c. —" "— ga fato Mario c! Cossa ga-lo fato Mario? d. —"— Mario cossa che el ga fato d! Mario cossa ga-lo fato? e. *No so cossa (che) ga-lo fato Mario 'I don't know what Mario has done' 'What has Mario done? (iii) a. No so dove che Mario ga/gabia messo i libri b. —" "— (el) ?ga/gabia Mario messo i libri c. —" "— ga messo i libri Mario d. —"— Mario dove che *(el) ga messo i libri e. *No so dove che ga-lo messo i libri Mario 'I don't know where Mario has put the books' The examples are exactly parallel to the Italian ones in (24)—(26) above, and the impossibility of verb subject clitic inversion of (ie) and (iie) shows that the verb has not moved leftward to C.
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
53
the fact that in no Romance language the verb moves to C in dependent interrogatives suggests that the presence of a selected wh feature is incompatible with the presence on the same head of another wh feature of different origin. 11
3
SOME REFINEMENTS OF THE FINE STRUCTURE
Focus Movement is supposed to involve a "covert" wh-movement: it is in fact incompatible with wh-questions and yes/no questions. Rizzi (1997) presumes that they affect the same position.12 The fundamental role of CP is, on the one hand, that of an interface between a prepositional content (expressed by IP and VP) and a supra-ordinate structure (a governing clause or the discourse): this aspect is encoded in a FORCE projection, the highest projection of CP, "facing outwards"; on the other hand, CP is also an interface with what is below it, and as such it presumably encodes a relation with IP (see the distribution of complementiser and finiteness of Inflection): this is expressed in a FINITE projection, the lowest projection of CP, "facing inwards". Between the two interface projections, Rizzi hypothesises two others: the articulation of Focus/Presupposition is expressed in the FocusP, and the Topic/Comment articulation in the TopP. Left dislocated elements are in Spec of TopP, Focalised elements (Focus Topicalisation) in Spec of FocusP.
1
' There exist in fact some varieties (one is that of Turin, Piedmont area) where subject clitic inversion appears in dependent interrogatives, in the presence of a lexicalised complementiser. Interestingly, these varieties confirm the generalisation, because it is possible to argue that subject clitic inversion occurs in a head lower than the interrogative head in CP (see Poletto 2000).
12
One can hypothesise that they affect the same position just for what concerns the abstract wh-element required by Focus (a "Focus companion"), but the specifier where a Focalised element appears might not necessarily be the same specifier where a lexical wh-element is located. Moreover, consider a sentence as the following: (i) QUESTA MACCHINA, chi la vorrebbe, non quel camion! 'THIS CAR, who could want it, not that truck' Its context is a previously uttered sentence with LD or HT, something as Quel camion, chi lo vorrebbe? 'That truck, who could want it?'. We are led to conclude that — as we will see later — it is possible to focalise a Left Dislocated or HT element. Cf. the impossibility of (ii)*QUEL CAMION, chi vorrebbe? 'THAT TRUCK, who could want? Here, both Focus and wh- have to qualify as operators, and this is impossible.
54
Paola Beninca
On the basis of the following examples, we could conclude with Rizzi that TopP can both precede and follow the head C hosting the complementiser, as does the FocP projection, although the judgement is not sharp: (31) a. Penso che questo libra lo leggero 'I think that this book I will read it' b. Penso che QUESTO LIBRO leggero 'I think that THIS BOOK I will read' c. Penso questo libra che lo leggero 'I think this book that I will read it' d. ?Penso, QUESTO LIBRO che leggero 'I think THIS BOOK that I will read'
C, Topic C, Focus Topic, C?? Focus, C??
It seems, then, that we have to admit a loosening of the ordering restrictions on Topic and Focus in CP, deriving for example from a free adjunction to the Spec of some projection in CP. Before accepting this conclusion, we must make sure that we have really observed the proper cases. In order to do so, we can check the generalisation observing other proposed complements, which permit us to distinguish LD and FOC from other kinds of proposing. Only if we use a PP anteposition can we distinguish a LD from a HT: HT is represented by a bare DP only, LD — when it is the case — involves the complete PP. In fact, the following examples, parallel to the ones seen above but involving different types of complements, are ungrammatical: (32)
a. b. c. d. e.
*Penso del tuo libra che (ne) parleremo Penso il tuo libra che ne parleremo *Penso DEL TUO LIBRO che parleremo ??Penso, a Giorgio, che gli diremo la verita *Penso, A GIORGIO, che diremo la verita t
*Topic, C HT, C *Focus, C *Topic, C *Focus, C
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
55
We can conclude, then, that the possibilities seen above derived from the ambiguity of the sentences in (31): (31c) could not be a case of LD Topic preceding the complementiser, but of a Hanging Topic. The complementiser die precedes both TopP and FocP and follows HT. An asymmetry observed in French, first pointed out by Larsson (1979), goes in the same direction, indicating that there is a higher position available for topics which precedes the complementiser position. In French it is only available in main clauses and is blocked in dependent clauses, for reasons that are not clear but we can presume have to do with the presence of the complementiser, which in some way blocks the way to higher projections. In French LD is avoided in main clauses, where HT is possible and preferred; when a phrase is topicalised in a dependent clause, recourse is made to LD since HT is impossible (presumably, more costly in an economy perspective): (33) a.
Ta soeur, je lui donnerai des fleurs 'Your sister, I will give her flowers' b. ??A ta soeur, je lui donnerai des fleurs 'To your sister, I will give her flowers' c. ??Je pense que, ta soeur, je lui donnerai des fleurs 'I think that, your sister, I will give her flowers' d. Je pense que, a ta soeur, je lui donnerai des fleurs 'I think that, to your sister, I will give her flowers'
There is probably a further factor interfering in the sentences in (31): it is possible that the type of bridge verb governing the dependent clause give some further possibility for constituent movement, in particular for anteposition of a bare DP. If we use a non-bridge verb, the parallel of (3Id) is ruled out: (34) a. *Si sussurra, QUESTO LIBRO che addotterai! There is rumour THIS BOOK that you will adopt' b. Si sussurra che QUESTO LIBRO addotterai! There is rumour that THIS BOOK you will adopt
3.1
LD has only one position
Pursuing a closer examination of these constructions, I will now consider the examples that Rizzi (1997, ex. (23)) interprets as suggesting firstly that "the focal constituent can be both preceded and followed by topics," then that TopP can be adjoined to ForceP or to FocP. I repeat them below: (35) a. QUESTO a Gianni, domani, gli dovremmo dire! b. A Gianni, QUESTO, domani gli dovremmo dire! c. A Gianni, domani, QUESTO gli dovremmo dire! To G., tomorrow, THIS we must tell him!'
56
Paolo. Beninca
These examples are again ambiguous: in particular, domani 'tomorrow' and other "scene-setting" adverbs cannot be used as representative of left dislocation, when they appear on the left of the verb: they can be positioned in a functional projection still belonging to the IP system. A very neat piece of evidence comes from Paduan. Paduan has 3rd sg. and pi. subject clitics which only appear in the absence of a lexical subject or when this is LD. A preverbal subject has an optional resumptive clitic (as in (36a)) because a preverbal subject can either be in SpecAgr or LD; if a LD element intervenes between a lexical subject and the verb (as in (36b-d)) a subject clitic is obligatory, signalling that the nominal subject is itself necessarily left dislocated; when a subject clitic appears, it licences a pro in subject position, and the lexical subject is necessarily in the CP field.13 (36) a. Mario (el) me vede volentiera 'M. (he) meets me with_pleasure' b. Mario, mi, *(el) me vede volentiera'M., me, (he) meets me with ..pleasure' c. Mario, a so sorela, *(el) ghe regalara un libro 'M., to his sister, (he) wilLgive her a book' d. Mario, casa sua, *(el) ghe ndara doman 'M., his home, (he) wilLgo there tomorrow' The result is the same also if there occurs an interposed LD element that does not require a resumptive clitic:14 (37) Mario, in camara sua, *(el) scolta la radio M., in his room, (he) listens to the radio If an adverb like doman 'tomorrow', geri 'yesterday' is interposed between the DP subject and the inflected verb, the subject is not necessarily resumed by a clitic, and we conclude that it is in standard subject position (Spec of Agr and not CP). (38) a. Mario doman (el) torna casa 'Mario tomorrow (he) comes back home' b. Mario geri (el) ze partio presto 'Mario yesterday (he) has left early' If we suppose a similar analysis to hold for Italian, we conclude that a DP subject is not necessarily in CP when an adverb like domani intervenes between the subject itself and the inflected verb. This amounts to saying that adverbs of the 'tomorrow' class can appear in preverbal position and still be in the IP field. Going back to Rizzi's example, where three elements precede the inflected verb and the focalised one is in the middle, we can not conclude that we have a case of two elements in two TopPs, one preceding and the other following FocP (hence, the 11
Recall that multiple LD is allowed and perfectly normal, and there are no ordering restrictions, as far as we know.
14
The obligatoriness of a resumptive clitic is related to the argument status of the LD phrase and other less clear reasons: for a description, see Beninca 1988.
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
57
necessity of adjoining the lower one to IP). If the adverb is in a Spec of a functional projection belonging to the IP field, we have only one TopP and one FocP in the order illustrated above: FocP is lower than TopP. If it were possible, in fact, to have a Top following Focus in the CP field, via adjunction to IP, we would expect to find other LD elements in the same place, which does not appear to be the case. If we carefully choose elements that we know must be in TopP when they appear on the left of the inflected verb, we see that they canned be preceded but only followed by a Focus. An element that must be in TopP is a LD direct object with a resumptive clitic; we are not able to substitute domani in Rizzi's example above with a LD direct object: the result, (39a), is ungrammatical, in contrast to the perfectly grammatical (39b), where the order is the reverse (TopP, FocP, as expected): (39)
a. *A GIANNI, un libro di poesie, lo regalerete 'TO GIANNI, a book of poems, you will give it' b. Un libro di poesie, A GIANNI, lo regalerete 'A book of poems, TO GIANNI, you will give it'
What remains to be accounted for in our theory is Rizzi's (23a) — our (35a).
3.2
A special case of in situ Focalisation
Another caveat to be taken into account in order to be sure of the relevance of the sentences was a fact pointed out above: a dative resumptive clitic does not have the same significance as an index of LD as an object clitic. As we have seen, clitic doubling is even possible in the presence of an in situ dative complement, as in (40a), or a focalised dative, as in (40b):15 (40) a. Gli parlero a Giorgio 'LwilLspeak to_him to G.' b. A GIORGIO, gli parleremo! 'TO GIORGIO, we_will_speak to_him' That example (40b) is a spurious Focalisation, in the sense that we are facing a different phenomenon, appears clear if we use a nonambiguous example such as (41), involving the focalisation of a direct object. The resumptive clitic is strictly excluded: the sentence is ruled out. (41) *GIORGIO, lo inviteremo! GIORGIO, we.willJnvite him! 15
As already pointed out, this structure is accepted in regional colloquial Italian; the result is better and accepted by all Italian speakers (for reasons that remain obscure) if the dative is part of a clitic cluster as in (i) a. Glielo daro a Giorgio 'LwilLgive itJiim to G.' b. Gliene parlero a Giorgio 'LwilLspeak oLitJiim to G.'
58
Paola Beninca
A careful selection of the appropriate cases reveals that a LD element can only appear to the left of a phrase in FocP. Let us go back again to what we took as our point of departure, the clear pattern in (42): a LD direct object in Italian has an obligatory resumptive clitic, a Focalised direct object cannot have a resumptive clitic. (42) a. Questo libro, lo compro This book, I buy it' b. *Questo libro, compro 'This book, I buy' c. QUESTO LIBRO, compro 'THIS BOOK, I buy' d. *QUESTO LIBRO, lo compro 'THIS BOOK, I buy it' Some years ago, Giulio Lepschy pointed out to me a precise context in which a focalised direct object appearing in the left periphery is resumed by a clitic. Sentence (43a) is an example of the context in which a sentence such as (43b) — with a Focalised direct object resumed by a clitic — is perfectly grammatical: (43) a. Mi ha detto che il tappeto, lo compra 1'anno prossimo 'He has told me that the carpet he will buy it next year' b. No, ti sbagli, IL DIVANO lo compra 1'anno prossimo 'No, you are wrong, THE SOFA he will buy it next year' The context of this particular case of Focalisation is a sentence with a LD argument as (43a), to which one replies with a symmetrical sentence, with a different LD argument, which is contrasted through intonative emphasis: this argument has — obligatorily as far as I know — a resumptive clitic. This case can then be considered a special case of in situ Focalisation, where in situ means not just that the argument is not moved from its unmarked position in order to receive emphasis (see Frascarelli 1997, for a detailed description of the Italian cases), but that it is not moved from the position in which it has been put for the sake of other types of markedness: in this position it can receive emphasis as well. Let us observe the effect of weak crossover, and see whether it confirms or not this interpretation: (44) a. Giannij, suo; padre Ij'ha licenziato 'G.j, his; father has fired himj' b. *GlANNlj, suoj padre ha licenziato 'GlANNIj, his; father has fired t\" c. GIANNI,, suoj padre Ij'ha licenziato 'GIANNI;, his; father has fired him;' (44c) is only possible in a context where someone has just pronounced a sentence in which the same event was predicated of another Theme, namely that someone else has been fired by his
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
59
father, and moreover used a LD sentence, for example: Mario, suo padre I'ha licenziato 'M., his father has fired him'. In (44b) an element that qualifies as an operator is focalised and binds a variable: weak crossover excludes co-reference between the focalised element and the possessive anaphor; sentence (44c), with an object clitic that resumes the focalised object, which is acceptable only in the context we have outlined, escapes the weak crossover violation; the focalised element in this case then does not behave as an operator that binds a variable. With this in mind, consider now the sentences (45a, b), which again show the order LD, Foe as the first choice order: (45) a.
Questo libro, A GIORGIO, devi darlo! 'This book, TO GIORGIO, you must give it' b. *?A GIORGIO, questo libro, devi darlo! 'TO GIORGIO, this book, you must give it' c. *Ho deciso che A GIORGIO, Piero, lo presentero 'I have decided that TO G., Piero, I will introduce him'
The order in (45b), which is ungrammatical unless particularly marked contexts and intonation are used, suggests that we have a different construction here, the natural order being the one in (45a), LD, Foe. The first order becomes even more difficult in a dependent clause such as (45c). What is more interesting is the fact that a better option exists, exemplified in (46): if we eliminate the resumptive clitic corresponding to the LD element, the sentence becomes grammatical: (46) A GIORGIO, questo libro, devi dare 'TO GIORGIO, this book, you must give What does this new possibility tell us? That LD can adjoin to the IP field, but without the resumptive pronoun? It seems more interesting to explore other solutions, which preserve the properties of the projections we are hypothesising. I will explore two alternatives: (i) Guglielmo Cinque suggests interpreting the focalised A GIORGIO as a LD focalised in situ, as seen in (44); only one element can receive intonative focalisation and, as a consequence, the real FocP questo libro is destressed. We gather that questo libro is a FocP from the fact that it has no resumptive clitic, as it should have if it were LD. As a FocP, it behaves like an operator, and no clitic copy is possible; (ii) another possibility that comes to mind is to suppose that FocP, just like TopP, can host more than one constituent, but only one can receive intonative focalisation. We have seen that weak crossover discriminates between Focus and Topic: we can check its effect in order to obtain evidence in favour of one or the other interpretation. It is possible that all the items in TopP, even if intonationally focalised, escape weak crossover effects, while the elements in FocP fall under weak crossover even if they are not pragmatically focalised. The following pair seems to support hypothesis (ii):
60 Paola Beninca (47) a. *A GIANNI;, queste cose, suaj madre permette 'TO GIANNIj, these things, his; mother permits' b. A GIANNlj, queste cose, sua; madre gliele permette 'TO G;, these things, his; mother permits them_to_him' In (47a), both elements lack a resumptive pronoun, even if just one is intonationally focalised; because of their order, which is the reverse of the supposed order of the projections TopP/FocP, we have tentatively supposed that they are in fact both in FocP, and as such they are not supposed to escape weak crossover effects; if they were — as in Cinque's proposal — in TopP and FocP, respectively, with the intonative Focus independently attributed to the item in TopP, the dative A GIANNI should escape weak crossover effects, which does not seem to be the case. In (47b), if both constituents are, as suggested in hypothesis (ii), in TopP, even if one of them is intonatively focalised, the dative correctly escapes weak crossover effects. It could be interesting to continue testing for more detailed generalisations, but judgements become blurred. Apparently, the preferred order of the preposed constituents is DAT, ACC, but here too intuitions become uncertain.
3.3
Focus and exclamatives
We can now turn to distinguishing the left hand Focus from the focalised constituent of an exclamative clause. One could imagine, in principle, that they occupied the same position in FocP, so it is interesting to show that they in fact occupy different sections of the CP field. For independent—pragmatic—reasons, only some combinations are possible. As we have seen above (in (15) and (18)), the interrogative wh both in a main and dependent interrogative — appears on the right of a LD element. (48) a. A tua sorella, chi vorresti presentare/presentarle? LD, wh'To your sister, who would you introduce/introduce_to_her?' b. Tua sorella, a chi la presentano? LD, wh'Your sister, to whom do.theyJntroduce her?' c. *A chi, tua sorella, la presentano? *wh-, LD To whom, your sister, do.they.introduce her?' d. *Chi, a tua sorella, (le) presentano? *wh-, LD 'Who, to your sister, do they introduce (toJier)?' (49) a. *Vorrei sapere a chi, il premio Strega, 1'hanno dato. *wh-, LD 'Lwanted to know to whom, the Strega Prize, theyJiave given it' b. *Vorrei sapere chi, a tua sorella, (le) presentano. *wh-, LD 'Lwanted to know who, to your sister, they .introduce (toJier)' A different order is possible only with an intonational break after the wh- (indicated with two commas), which suggests a further movement of the wh- to a higher Spec: with this intonation, preferably accompanied with a "heavy" predicate, the starred sentences become acceptable:
The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery
61
they are to be interpreted as rhetorical questions, however, since they imply a "negative" answer, an answer in which the reference of the wh- argument is null (see also above fn. 8). (50) a. Quando,, a tua sorella, gliel'hanno presentato? 'When, to your sister, have.they introduced him.toJier?' b. Perche,, a tua sorella, non gliel'hanno presentato? 'Why, to your sister, they didn't introduce him_to_her?' (50a), with the intonation indicated, means that in fact the speaker thinks that the event has never took place (the expected answer is 'never'); (50b) means that the speaker there was not a reason why the person had not been introduced to the sister of the hearer, etc. An exlamative phrase can, on the other hand, appear on the left of the left dislocated element: (51) Che bel posto, a Giorgio, che (gli) hanno assegnato! Escl, LD 'What a nice place, to G., that theyJhave allotted toJiim' FocP, being on the right of LD, will be also on the right of the exclamative wh-; the following pattern of contrasting constructions is consistent with the conclusions we have reached so far: (52) a. A che brave persone, MARIO hanno presentato! 'To what nice persons, MARIO theyJiave presented' b. *A che brave persone, MARIO gli hanno presentato To what nice persons, MARIO theyJiave presented to_them' c. *A che brave persone, MARIO 1'hanno presentato 'To what nice persons, MARIO theyJiave presented him' d. A CHE BRAVE PERSONE, Mario 1'hanno presentato 'TO WHAT NICE PERSONS, Mario theyJiave presented him' (52a) is a case of wh- exclamative followed by an object in FocP (no resumptive clitic); the possibility that even an exclamative could be placed in TopP and thus endowed with exclamative intonation is excluded by the ungrammaticality of (52b): the resumptive clitic should be possible, if this were the case. The ungrammaticality of (52c) excludes the possibility that the Focalised object be just intonatively focalised, due to the ungrammaticality of the resumptive clitic. Finally, (52d) is a version of the same sentence with the object LD and resumed by the clitic.16
4 CONCLUSIONS As a conclusion, we can draw a map of the syntactic elements we have been dealing with in this paper; the map of these elements in the left periphery can be summed up as follows: 16
In the choice of the relevant examples, one must pay special attention to the fact that many apparent exclamatives are syntactically interrogatives with superimposed pragmatic exclamative interpretation: see Beninca 1996 and, with more precise argumentation based on French, Obenauer 1994, ch. 3, §2.4.
62
Paola Beninca
This does not differ very much from the one sketched by Rizzi (1997). We have pointed out above that TopP is not the only projection where a Theme can be hosted; Hanging Topic has precise characteristics and appears to be higher than TopP; for the time being, we can label this projection Disc(ourse)P. We have provided evidence for a localisation of exclamative wh-: it seems likely that this location be the Spec of ForceP, both for syntactic and semantic reasons. What we wanted most to argue for is more general, namely, that the X-bar module is rigidly repeated and the positions are very strictly allotted to a constituent with certain characteristics of a syntactic or pragmatic or semantic nature; it is not necessary, for the time being, to hypothesise the possibility of adjoining Spec positions to an already present Spec; contrastive intonation does not reveal a syntactic position activated, on the contrary, it is able to attribute a contrastive interpretation to a constituent, even if it is not moved from its basic position, or is moved to Topic. The aim of this paper was to support a syntactic treatment of the CP funtional structure and to narrow the possibilities open to it.
REFERENCES Abney, Steven P. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Belletti, Adriana. (1990). Generalized Verb Movement: Aspects of Verb Syntax. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.
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Beninca, Paola. (1980). Nomi senza articolo. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, 5, 51-63. Beninca, Paola. (1983-84). Un'ipotesi sulla sintassi delle lingue romanze medievali. Quaderni Patavini di Linguistica, 4, 3-19. [Reprinted in Beninca 1994, ch. 8.] Beninca, Paola. (1988). Costruzioni con ordini marcati degli elementi. In Lorenzo Renzi (ed.) Grande Grammatica italiana di consultazione. Vol. I. Bologna: il Mulino. Beninca, Paola. (1989). Le lingue romanze medievali. Paper presented at the Round Table "L'ordre des mots dans les langue romanes", Universidade de Santiago de Compostela [In R. Lorenzo (ed.) Actas do XIX Congreso Internacional de Linguistica e Filoloxia Romdnicas (Santiago de Compostela, 1989) Vol. I. 1061-1073. A Coruiia 1997]. Beninca, Paola. (1994). La variazione sintattica. Studi di dialettologia romanza. Bologna: il Mulino. Beninca, Paola. (1996). La struttura della frase esclamativa alia luce del dialetto padovano. In Paola Beninca, Guglielmo Cinque, Tullio De Mauro and Nigel Vincent (eds.) Italiano e dialetti nel tempo. Saggi di grammatica per Giulio C. Lepschy. Roma: Bulzoni. 23-42. Chomsky, Noam. (1977). On wh-movement. In Peter W. Culicover, Thomas Wasow and Adrian Akmajian (eds.) Formal Syntax. New York: Academic Press. 71-132. Chomsky, Noam. (1986). Barriers. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1983). Topic' constructions in some European languages and Connectedness. In Konrad Ehlich and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.) Connectedness in Sentence, Discourse and Text. Tilburg. [Reprinted 1997 in Elena Anagnostopoulou, Henk van Riemsdijk and Frans Zwarts (eds.) Materials on Left Dislocation. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 93-118.] Cinque, Guglielmo. (1990). Types of A1-dependencies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1994). On the evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance DP. In Guglielmo Cinque, Jan Koster, Jean-Yves Pollock, Luigi Rizzi and Raffaella Zanuttini (eds.) Paths toward Universal Grammar. Studies in honor of Richard S. Kayne. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crisma, Paola. (1990). Functional categories inside the noun phrase: A study on the distribution of nominal modifiers. Laurea dissertation, Universita di Venezia. Frascarelli, Mara. (1997). L'interfaccia sintassi-fonologia nelle costruzioni di focalizzazione e topicalizzazione dell'italiano. PhD dissertation, Universita di Roma Tre. Kayne, Richard S. (1976). French relative que. In Fritz Hensey and Marta Lujan (eds.) Current Studies in Romance Linguistics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Kayne, Richard S. (1978). Le condizioni sul legamento, il Collocamento dei clitici e lo Spostamento a sinistra dei quantificatori. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, 3, 147-171. Larsson, Eva (1979). La dislocation en fran9ais. Etude de Syntaxe Generative. PhD dissertation, University of Lund. (Etudes Romane de Lund 28.) Longobardi, Giuseppe. (1996). Reference and proper names. Linguistic Inquiry, 25, 609-665. Obenauer, Hans. (1994). Aspects de la syntaxe A-barre. Effets d'intervention et mouvement des quantifieurs. These de Doctorat d'Etat, Universite de Paris VIII.
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Poletto, Cecilia. (2000). The Higher Functional Field: Evidence from the Northern Italian Dialects. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Rizzi, Luigi. (1991). Residual verb second and the wh-Criterion. Technical Reports in Formal and Computational Linguistics, 2. Universite de Geneve. Rizzi, Luigi. (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.) Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 281-337. Salvi, Giampaolo. (1990). La sopravvivenza della legge di Wackernagel nei dialetti occidentali della penisola Iberica. Medioevo Romanzo, 15, 177-210. Szabolcsi, Anna. (1989). Noun phrases and clauses: Is DP analogous to IP? In John Payne (ed.) The Structure of Noun Phrases. The Hague: Mouton.
4
ASPECT PREFIXES IN VERBAL PERIPHRASES IN ITALIAN AND OTHER ROMANCE LANGUAGES*
Franco Benucci
0 INTRODUCTION In Benucci (1990, Table I) and (1997 : 95, fn. 14) we observed, mainly on the basis of historical data from French and from some texts of "popular" Italian, an apparent diachronic solidarity between the syntactic behaviour of pronominal clitics and that of aspect prefixes in verbal (modal, causative, perceptive and temporal) periphrases of Romance languages. Our claim was that in the early languages both clitics and aspect prefixes related to infinitives, gerunds or participles depending on a (semi-)auxiliary1 could only appear linked to the latter, (la), thus constituting the clearest evidence of what we called the "monosentential" syntax of those constructions. On the contrary, in modern languages both clitics and prefixes are inseparably linked to the most embedded verbal element, (lb), 2 which highlights the passage of verbal periphrases to a "bisentential" syntactic status. We also claimed that the evolution from the old stage to the modern one takes place through a period of oscillation in which both constructions are possible: this normally * I am indebted to Cecilia Poletto and Guglielmo Cinque for the informal talks (and e-mail messages) on the subject of this paper which have helped me focussing and going into some of my basic intuitions. Their revision of a previous version of the paper was also useful and highly appreciated. I should also thank Mair Parry for the careful revision of the English form of the text and for her effective assistance with Piedmontese data. Of course, the responsibility for the final content and form of the paper is mine. 1
We use this as a general label for both auxiliaries proper and main verbs forming the above-mentioned periphrases. For the structures we proposed to associate with the different kinds and stages of verbal periphrases, cf. Benucci (1990, 1993, 1997).
2
Examples (la, b) directly contrast Old French with the modern standard language, where the low placement of clitics is coherently fixed only w.r.t. modal constructions. In Benucci (1993, 1997), however, we showed that in many non-standard Romance varieties (including popular French) the evolution of clitic placement also concerns causative, perceptive and temporal periphrases.
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Franco Benucci
shows up as a free variation of the two constructions (as in standard Italian, mainly w.r.t. clitic pronouns), but it is not rare to find "aberrant" (w.r.t. the standard norm) phenomena such as the splitting or the repetition construction of clitics and prefixes, (Ic). (1) a. Tu me redevroies dire [... ] que tu quiers (Chevalier au lion 356/7) b. Tu devrais me redire ce que tu veux 'You should tell me again what you want' c. Sento [... ] che presto sin'potremo rzvedere. [... ] Se volete rzvedermi n'tornare arztrovarvi ungiorno mzdovete spedirmz pachi di pane pane pane. [... ] Non vz'poso farvz niente perche sono tropo lutano da voglialtri 'I hear that we will be able to see us again soon. If you want to see me coming back to see you again some day you should send me parcels of bread. I cannot help you anyhow because I am too far away from you' (letter from Mauthausen to Pontremoli, in Spitzer 1976 : 163) If we analyse the syntax of clitics in the terms of Kayne (1991), i.e., (roughly) as their placement in the head of an empty agreement projection to which the verb subsequently incorporates, it follows that the impossibility for a verbal form to bear its own complement clitics can be interpreted as a lack of the relevant AgrP in the structure dominating the infinitival (participial, etc.) VP.3 In the same vein, we can assume that the impossibility for a verbal form to bear its own aspect prefixes is a consequence of the lack, in the dominating structure, of the AspP where the verb should incorporate to such morphemes. The lack, in constructions like (la), of the agreement and aspect projections which are relevant for the placement of clitics and of aspect prefixes related to the embedded verbal element, seems to confirm, in the first instance, what we have assumed in our previous works, namely that such a verb is not associated with a complete sentence structure, but with a bare VP transformationally joined to the (semi-)auxiliary one, forming with the latter the complex nucleus (VP*) of a single sentence structure, where all the functional projections (including the above-mentioned AspP and AgrP) are single and shared by both the verbal elements, and as such, they can (must) host also the syntactic items related to the embedded verb. Constructions like (Ib) on the other hand show the presence also of a complete and autonomous sentential structure corresponding to the lower verbal element of the periphrasis, which is by now "destructured" with respect to the old situation. Transitional constructions like (Ic) represent in our opinion the spelling-out of all the links of the transformational chain connecting the departure and arrival positions of clitics and prefixes in a structure where both high and low sets of funtional projections are present: it is a "strengthening" strategy for that chain, whose formation is made difficult by the ongoing syntactic change (cf. Benucci 1997: 95f)In this paper we intend to take up and deepen our previous intuitions concerning the structural solidarity between clitics and aspect prefixes in Romance verbal periphrases,4 taking a 3
Cf. in this vein the analyses of Italian bisogna 'be necessary' in Beninca & Poletto (1997 : 108) and of supine and bare infinitive costructions in Rumanian in Motapanyane (1992), none of which allows for the presence of clitics and all of which are analysed in terms of a lack of the relevant AgrP.
4
The syntactic solidarity of AspP and AgrP seems to be confirmed by the shared treatment of pronominal and (aspect) auxiliary clitics in Slavic languages and in Rumanian (in "Wackernagel" and adverbality terms, respectively), both in simple sentences and in periphrastic constructions. Due to reasons of space and theme, we will not pursue this aspect further here.
Aspect prefixes in verbal periphrases in Italian and other Romance languages
67
closer look at the situation of Old Italian and of other "Cisalpine" varieties and comparing it to the situation of Old French (section 1). The differences we shall notice will allow us to elaborate a more detailed analysis of the monosentential periphrases in the varieties considered, taking into account also recent proposals by Cinque (1997) on the functional structure of the sentence (section 2). The links between the former and the general destructuring process which affected in different ways and to different extents the various periphrastic constructions in all the Romance languages, as well as a series of matters directly related to the syntax of aspect prefixes, will be finally addressed in section 3.
1 VERBAL PERIPHRASES AND ASPECT PREFIXES IN OLD AND MODERN ROMANCE LANGUAGES 1.1
Old French
As we have mentioned in the previous section, Old French presented complete symmetry in the syntactic behaviour of pronominal clitics and aspect prefixes: both categories are united to the (semi-)auxiliary in all the types of periphrastic constructions (modals and assimilated, causatives, perceptives, temporals), cf. (2). Besides the iterative prefix re,5 also the completive one (par) is to be found in a "high" placement, cf. (3). (2) a. D'icest honur nem revoil ancumbrer 'I don't want to be hampered again with this honour' (St. Alexis 166) b. Les marcheans les revenoient vendre en Egypte The merchants came to resell them in Egypt' (Joinville Vie de St. Louis 280) c. Mes de ce ne me restuet deffendre, que tu de hai'ne m'opposes 'But I need not to defend myself again from what you are opposing me out of hatred' (Roman de la Rose 5726-7) d. Une dolors [... ] lor refait lor joie oblier 'A pain made them forget their joy again' (Ch. au Lyon 3818-9) e. Damediex me confonde, se j'enfouir ne le revois 'God confound me if I don't see him flee again' (Fabliaux III, 378-9) f. Oste la selle [... ] puis la ra mise 'He removes the saddle, then has put it again' (Am. et Am. 166-7)
5
We will deal here only with the really iterative uses of the prefix re, meaning 'again, once more', and we will leave aside its counterdirectional uses, meaning 'back, away' as in retorner 'come back', repairier 'repair to', retrere 'take back' (which appeared united to the lexical verb already in the Serments de Strasbourg (A.D. 842): si io returnarnon I'intpois 'if I cannot dissuade him from that'), as well as the occurrences of the same prefix that appear to be lexicalized since the Romance origins, as in repauser 'rest', recovrer 'recover', remembrer 'remind', recorder 'remember', reprover 'reprehend', etc. Cases likeparjurer 'perjure' will also be left out of consideration.
68
Franco Benucci
(3) a. Helas ! Com parpuis estre dolans et engramis ! 'Alas! How can I be in such a deep sorrow!' (Courtois d'Arras 427) b. Nule merchi ne truis: ne vive eschaper ne li puis, ne il ne me parvelt occire 'I can't find any mercy: I cannot escape him alive, nor does he want to finish me off (Perceval 3763-5) Constructions such as (2) and (3) are quite frequent in Old French up to the 14th c. and no other structures are found in the oldest texts; yet since the 12th c. one can also find "modern" prefix constructions as in (4). The old prefix syntax completely disappears in the 15th century (Middle French period) and only the modern situation is documented afterwards: aspect prefixes inseparably fix onto the lexical verb they refer to, yielding lexicalization processes, often with a semantic specialization (rasseoir 'settle', rechercher 'hunt/search for', recommencer 'start again', redire 'report', refondre 'rewrite', remettre 'deliver, forgive, postpone', revendre 'resell', revenir 'be due', parachever 'complete', parcourir 'go along', parfaire 'perfect', parfondre 'mix, blend', parsemer 'scatter, strew', parvenir 'reach', pourchasser 'pursue', pourfendre 'attack', se pourlecher 'lick one's lips', se pourpenser 'reflect', poursuivre 'persecute', etc.). When no semantic evolution took place, the prefixed verbs often became a lexical doublet of the simple ones, which they often replaced in 16th c. usage:6 (4) a. Onques li ronchis ne se muet, n'esperoner tant ne le puet que il le puisse removoir 'The horse did not move anymore, nor could he spur it as much as to move it again' (Perceval 7341-3^8523) b. [Renart] /wrpensez s'est de grant voidie 'Renart has reflected in a hurry' (Roman de Renart XXIII, 957) c. Or se commence a/wrpenser comment se porra vers lui tenser 'Soon he begins to reflect how he would behave with him' (Roman de Renart I, 497-8) Aspect prefixes, then, display an apparently free alternation between the two possible constructions three centuries earlier than pronominal clitics: the latter begin to appear with the modern construction right in the 15th c., and oscillate between the old and the modern placements up to around 1660 (and marginally even later); moreover, unlike clitics, aspect prefixes do not show any transitional construction, such as splitting and repetition, in our large Old French corpus.
1.2 Italian and other Italo-Romance varieties The situation in the Italo-Romance domain is completely different, already in the early period;7 this seems to belie our previous assumption that the early syntax of aspect prefixes was a panRomance phenomenon which we have outlined above in sections 0 and 1.1. Indeed, medieval 6
The lexicalization of intrinsically or predominantly pronominal verb forms took place in some cases englobing the clitic concerned between the aspect prefix and the verbal base (re-lui-demander 'ask him again', (y) rey-aller 'go there again', etc., cf. Morin & St. Amour 1977: 148f), contrary to the normal syntactic order (Cl—Pref—V: le revoir 'see him again', le recommencer 'begin it again', le parachever 'end it up', etc.).
7
For the special position of Old Piedmontese, see section 1.3 below.
Aspect prefixes in verbal periphrases in Italian and other Romance languages
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texts of Tuscan as well as of the other Padan and peninsular varieties already present the "modern" placement of aspect prefixes: they are linked to the lexical verb form and thus diverge from the placement of pronominal clitics, for which the "high" position is confirmed for the whole of old Romania:8 (5) a. Questi la caccera per ogni villa fin che 1'avra r/messa nello 'nferno, la onde invidia prima partilla (Tuscan; Divina Commedia I.I, 119-21) 'He will hunt high and low for her, until he will put her again into the hell, whence the envy took her out first' b. Cio esser non puo, se li 'ntelletti che muovon queste stelle non son manchi, e manco il primo che non li haperfetti (Divina Commedia III.VIII, 109-11) 'This cannot be, unless the minds moving these stars are deficient, as well as the Prime (Mover) that has not perfected them' c. El crucia 1'erb e i arbori che conven refrescar 'He frosts herbs and trees which one should make cooler' (Lombard; Bonvesin de la Riva, Disputatio mensium 83) d. L'imperator a pena poevan pervem al leg o'l corp d'Alexio devevapermagni 'The emperor could hardly reach the bed where Alexis' body had to remain' (B. de la Riva, Vita B. Alexii 500) e. Se una persona, per poverta constretto, vendera una soa possessioncella [...], ol la pora reavere in drio per quello medeximo prexio (Venetian; Bibbia Padovana, Lev. 88) 'If somebody, compelled by poverty, should sell some property of his, he will be allowed to have it returned again for the same price'
8
The situation of Old Italian is shared by Old Occitan and the old Ibero-Romance languages, as the following examples from Old Provenfal show: (i) a. Pus vezem de novelh florir pratz e vergiers reverdezir (Guillem de Peitieus, Pus vezem 1-2) 'Since we see meadows bloom once again and orchards blossom again' b. Totz lo segles es encombratz per un albre que-i es nascutz [... ] et a si tot lo mon perpres The whole century is hampered with a tree that was born there and then has occupied the whole world' (Marcabru, Pois I'inverns 8-12) In modern Ibero-Romance languages aspect prefixes have been replaced by periphrases (iterative: volver/ voltar a + inf., completive: te(ne)r + pp.): prefixed verbs are completely lexicalized (and often semantically specialized, e.g., rematar 'finish (off), stitch up, award, destroy, stop the horse') and there is no productive use of prefixes. The same holds for many Italo-Romance varieties (with tornar a + inf. and tener + pp., respectively) where the iterative periphrases of the tornar a + inf. type have often evolved into simple constructions with an adverb torna 'again'. In example (5b), the interpretation of perfetti as a verbal participle ('perfected') is inferred from the context and is assured by the presence of 'have', as opposed to the presence of 'be' when perfetto is used as an adjective, as in (iia). The potential verbal value of perfetto in Old Italian (or at least in Dante) is confirmed by its use in passive constructions, as in (iib). (ii) a. Ivi e perfetta, matura e intera ciascuna disianza (Divina Commedia III.XXII, 64—5) 'There every desire is perfect, ripe and entire' b. Si tosto come al feto 1'articular del cerebro e perfetto, lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto [... ] e spira spirito novo di vertu repleto (Divina Commedia II.XXV, 68-72) 'As soon as the brain is perfected to the foetus, the Prime Mover gladly turns to him and sends out a new spirit full of truth'
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(5) f. Duafiadau trea de 1'omo rechedere lo soe amigo (Emilian; Formule di Guido Fava X) 'The man should ask his friend again twice or thrice' g. Gia mai no mi comfortto ne mi volglio ralegrare 'I never console myself, nor do I want to cheer up again' (Latian; Rinaldo d'Aquino, Gia mai... 1-2) h. Quando vegio rmverdire giardino e prato e rivera, gli auscelletti odo bradire 'When I see gardens and meadows and rivers turn green again, I hear the nestlings twittering' (Apulian; Giacomino Pugliese, Quando vegio... 1-2) i. Avanti foss'io aucisa ca nulla bona femina per me fosse rrprisa Td rather be killed than any good woman be reproved through my fault' (Sicilian; C. d'Alcamo, Rosafresca aulentissima 36-7) It thus seems that one can not speak, as far as Italo-Romance varieties and aspect prefix placement are concerned, of an early stage as opposed to a modern one. On the contrary, prefixed verbal forms seem to have lexicalized quite early (cf. e.g., the numerous series in re- in all the authors and pertrattare 'discuss in depth', pernottare 'stay overnight' and permettere 'allow' in Dante, percazzare 'besiege' in Cielo d'Alcamo, perire 'kill' in Ciacco dell'Anguillaia, moreover, the current perfezionare 'perfect', percorrere 'go along', pervadere 'permeate', pervenire 'reach', persistere 'persists', perseverare 'persevere', persuadere 'convince', perseguire 'pursue', etc.), in many cases deriving directly from Latin forms and meanings.9 If there has been no diachronic evolution from a "high" to a "low" placement of aspect prefixes in verbal periphrases, it is straightforward that cases like (Ic), which we could only find in 20th c. texts, cannot be considered as transitional constructions, contrary to what is documented and is still valid for pronominal clitics. Rather, if we carefully consider the (socio-)linguistic characteristics of the speakers who produce such "aberrant" tokens, we see that these can be ascribed to a sort of uncertainty and awkwardness in the use of the linguistic code, namely, to an incomplete mastery of the standard language, or to the coming together of several contemporary varieties whose syntax radically differs right in the domain of verbal periphrases, which provokes some syntactic transfer from one variety to the others. For instance, all the series in (Ic) is taken from the letter of an Italian soldier, prisoner of the Austrians during the first World War: he came from Pontremoli, that is, from Lunigiana, a small region in the Province of Massa-Carrara, at the linguistic boundary of Tuscan, Ligurian and Emilian, whose local dialect is labelled "misto, di complessa classificazione" by Pellegrini (1977); compelled to use of a written code, he tries to translate his dialectal thoughts into Italian imitating the bureaucratic register, the only one he really knows from his military life, but anacoluthons and clumsinesses immediately start to appear (cf. the beginning of the letter: Cam Padre! Oggi medesimo rispondo alia vostra lettera della datta 12 Luglio, dove sento che midite che vidispiace molto del mio buon apetito che tengo, ma io invece sono adirvi che idispiaceri saranno tanti, ma i pachi che miavete spedito fino adesso sono pochi). Not surprisingly then, syntax (as well as orthography and (reflected) phonology) pays for this situation, especially in its most sensitive areas, such as the verbal periphrases, which are bisentential in the base dialect, but 9
Both in modern Italian and French prefixed verbs with per-/par-/pour- are completely lexicalized in a closed list: the only productive aspect prefix is ri-/re-, which can enter into new formations with denominative and loan verbs (riformattare 'format again', rischedulare 'schedule again', rinotiziare 'inform again', etc.)
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10
tendentially monosentential in the standard language: the variation in clitic placement (7 ModInf-Cl vs. 3 Cl-Mod-Inf and 7 Cl-Aux-Pp in the letter) led to the repetition constructions in (1 c), carrying over to the aspect prefixes (2 regular cases in the letter). The same kind of consideration holds for the example in (6), uttered by a Sicilian woman, married to a Paduan and living now in Camposanpiero (Province of Padua) after working for many years in Switzerland, Germany and other Italian regions. The contrast between the monosentential dialect of her origins, the bisentential dialect of the social and family context and the frequent change of language during her life have led to a strong uncertainty in the use of the standard code and to the following lame and "half-climbed" performance. (6) [The old inn Locanda S. Antonio has opened again with a trattoria and pizzeria, but the name locanda is improper because the lodging does not exist:] Ma non e detto che se le cose vanno bene di poter r/farla funzionare (// Mattino di Padova 19.9.97, p. 30) 'But it is not ruled out that if things run well of being able to make it function again' Indeed, some degree of uncertainty in the placement of aspect prefixes in standard Italian verbal periphrases seems to be rather generalized also among cultured Padan speakers. In a paradigm like those in (7), Tuscan speakers only accept sentences (7a) and (7b), displaying the well-known free variation of clitic placement in Italian modal periphrases, but definitely rule out both (7c) and (7d), where the prefix has also "climbed". (7) a. Lo voglio n'vedere/Ti vengo a rzprendere tra un'ora b. Voglio nvederlo/Vengo a nprenderti tra un'ora 'I want to see it again/I will call for you again in one hour' c. *Lo nvoglio vedere/Ti n'vengo a prendere tra un'ora d. */?rvoglio vederlo/7?zvengo a prenderti tra un'ora On the other hand, the same paradigms submitted to Padan speakers (Paduan, Genoese and Milanese informants) receive a less clear-cut judgement: the preferred pattern is (7b), which is consistent with the bisentential situation of periphrases in the corresponding regional Italian and in the underlying dialects. (7d) is unanimously rejected, but both (7a) and (7c) generally receive a judgement of marginal acceptability: the conscience of the possibility of clitic climbing in standard Italian, even if not shared by the everyday language of such speakers, seems to drag the climbing of re as well, but the prefix cannot climb alone leaving the pronominal clitic in its lower position. The Padan situation may be summarized as in (7'). 10
Due to the statistical predominancy of the monosentential pattern of temporal and causative periphrases over the alternance of monosentential and bisentential constructions in modal and perceptive domains, and more so in 1915-18 than nowadays. A similar variation in clitic placement (with the same phenomenon of repetition) holds in the modern dialects of Lunigiana reported by Maffei Bellucci (1977 :54, 62, 154, 161): (i) a. A n'a/pudev maser, a n'gu ste 'ndar (Pontremoli) 'I could not kill it, don't go there' b. Po dop, a tocca darghe tant oldam (Filattiera) 'Then it is necessary to manure it a lot' c. Noi a se doveven issase da letto aa matina ae see (Lerici) 'We had to get up from the bed in the morning at 6'
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(?') a. ?Lo voglio nvedere/Ti vengo a nprendere tra un'ora b. Voglio r/vederlo/Vengo a nprenderti tra un'ora 'I want to see it again/I will call for you again in one hour' c. ?Lo r/voglio vedere/Ti n'vengo a prendere tra un'ora d. */?z'voglio vederlo//?zvengo a prenderti tra un'ora Data from popular and "Padan" Italian, then, show that even if clitic climbing and prefix climbing cannot be directly equated in Italo-Romance, nevertheless one can claim that at least an indirect link between the two phenomena exists, under the general label of "clause union" or monosentential syntax. Significantly, there is wide variation among Padan speakers as regards the acceptability of "doubly climbed" constructions: the main criterion seems to be the choice of the semi-auxiliary triggering (clitic and) prefix climbing (which is strongly reminiscent of, but not exactly coextensive with, the phenomenon of lexical government on clitic climbing itself), 11 but the choice of the embedded infinitive seems to be relevant as well. A sentence like (8a) is judged perfect by most informants (cf. fn. 11), but (8b) receives a worse score than the corresponding (7'c) (see also the contrast in (8c, d)). (8) a.
Ci n'devo tornare domani 'I must return there again tomorrow' b. ??Lo n voglio fare/mangiare 'I want to do/eat it again' c. ?Lo n'ho messo al suo posto 'I have tidied it up again' d. ?*Lo r/ho fatto/visto 'I have done/seen it again'
1.3 Old Piedmontese Between the two opposite poles, represented by Old Italian (and possibly most early Romance varieties) on the one hand, where no aspect prefix seems to climb in periphrastic contexts, and Old French on the other, where both re and par do climb to the (semi-)auxiliary, a special position is occupied by Old Piedmontese. As can be easily predicted, what we find in the oldest texts of 11
Prefix climbing seems to be at least marginally acceptable with most of the so-called "restructuring" verbs of Modern Italian (volere 'want', dovere 'must', venire 'come', andare 'go', cominciare a 'begin'), as well as with most causative and perceptive verbs and with the 'have' auxiliary (fare 'make', vedere 'see', sentire 'hear', avere 'have') while it is nearly unanimously excluded with some other verbs of the same classes (potere 'can', finire di 'end', stare (per) 'be + -ing, be going to', lasciare 'let', essere 'be'). Significantly, for many speakers prefix climbing is more acceptable with some tenses and moods of the triggering main verbs than with others (cf. lo ridovrd/ridovrei/ridovevo/?ridevo/*rihodovuto studiare 'I will have/would have/ had/have/have had to study it'): a similar restriction holds for marginal clitic climbing in Padan dialects (and the corresponding regional Italian), which confirms the existence of some sort of link between the two phenomena.
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Piedmontese (the Sermoni Subalpini, late 12th c., whatever their precise localization: cf. Gasca Queirazza 1996) is indeed an intermediate situation between Old French and Old Italian: only the iterative prefix re climbs to the (semi-)auxiliary in periphrastic contexts, while the completive prefix per remains in the lower position, i.e., linked to the lexical verb. Examples (9a, b) show that also passive periphrases allowed prefix climbing, which completes the Old French set in (2). (9) a. Tant fist lo mal angel per son engeig [... ] qu'el refu gitez de paradis [...], dunt el era chait per superbia (Sermo de decimis etprimiciis 13-6) 'The bad angel got up to so many mischiefs that he was expelled again from the paradise, whence he had fallen through his pride' b. Quil son apelai avar, qui presten a usura [...]. E quil reson apelai avar, qui tut temp amason aver e non an autre penser (Dominica III in Quadragesima 40-4) 'Those are called stingy, who lend on usury. And those are called stingy as well, who always accumulate riches and think of nothing else' c. Nula ren que viva no'l po perpenser ne dire, en qual visa el [lo saint Esperit] ven el cor o el deigna venir e maneir (Sermo in die sancto Pentecosten 96-8) 'No living being can conceive and say it, how does the Holy Spirit come to the heart where he deigns to come and remain' d. Tuit cil que al reg de De voldran pervenir, per qualque guisa lor besoigna travailler 'All those who would like to reach the kingdom of God, they need to labour somehow' (Sermo cotidianus 89-91) As (9c) shows, clitic climbing holds in Old Piedmontese as in all the early Romance varieties: it remained the only possibility of clitic placement in periphrastic contexts till the end of the 15th c., when the first examples of low clitic placement (i.e., of bisentential periphrases) appeared and soon spread throughout the language.12 Yet, the diachronic evolution of prefix syntax shows no symmetry in time with that of pronominal clitics: already by the second decade of the 14th c. re also appears united to the embedded verbal form, which shows the same process of lexicalization and semantic specialization we have seen in French and in Italian. Once again, as the aforeseen asymmetry between re and per already suggested, the link between clitic and prefix syntax is not direct and equative, but rather indirect and "imitative": as in Old French (even if in different ways and in different epochs), Piedmontese prefixes move to (and reach) a "modern" syntax earlier than pronominal clitics:13 12
For instance, the Pastorella Semplice, possibly a later copy of a late 15th c. laud (Pacotto et al. 1967:133140), already presents a statistical prevalence (10:7) of low or repeated clitic placement in all kinds of periphrases, including temporal ones.
13
It is possible that the "high" placement of re remained viable for much longer in some peripheral (=Alpine) dialects, such as the Oncino one (Po valley, not far from the springs) documented by Biondelli (1853:520), which translates questo tuo fratello era mono ed e tomato in vita, era perduto ed e stato ritrovato 'Your brother was dead and came to life again, he was lost and was found again' (Lc. 15 :32) as in (ia) and (ib) respectively: (i) a. Chest tio fraire a 1'era mort e a Fe n'torna a vive b. A 1'era perdu e a 1'e sta torna truba Of course, ritornare exists as an independent verb in many modern Romance varieties, often as a lexicalized doublet of tornare, but this particular dialect seems to translate all the occurrences of (ri)tornare in the
74 Franco Benucci (10) a. Gle reziogl de la compagnia [... ] debyen mynch an [... ] fer appeler e recercher [... ] i dit quatrcent The rulers of the company must have the above-mentioned 400 (men) called and registered again every year' (Costituzione e statuto dell'ospizio della Societa di San Giorgio del popolo di Chieri (25.7.1321) 5) b. Gnesun no po percurar alcun offici, se al no e alezu como e scrit desore 'Nobody can enter upon any office, if he is not elected as is stated above' (Ordinamento dei disciplinati di Dronero (15th c.) A.213-4)
1.4 General considerations At the end of our excursus on the syntax of aspect prefixes in early Romance languages, let us summarize the situation and draw some factual considerations upon which we are going to develop our analysis in the next section. First of all, we notice that among all the early Romance languages aspect prefixes only appear in a "high position" in Old French and (to a lesser extent) in Old Piedmontese, i.e., in those languages that underwent "destructuring" of their verbal periphrases at an earlier date and sustained the deepest consequences of such a process, as far as the breaking up of the temporal periphrases (i.e., the compound tenses) in modern colloquial Piedmontese and mfrancais avance (cf. Benucci 1993, 1997). One is then led to ask the question whether the old high placement of aspect prefixes might somehow be connected with the triggering of the whole destructuring process. The second consideration is that the crosslinguistic distribution of phenomena that characterize in general the monosentential syntax of verbal periphrases is neither monolithic nor random, but rather implicationally ordered. As far as the phenomena we are focussing upon are concerned, we notice that all the early Romance languages display clitic climbing, but only a few (French and Piedmontese) allow high placement of the iterative prefix re, and only one (French) allows high placement of the completive prefix par. This can be schematized as follows: (11) clitic climbing c high re c high par But if we enlarge our observational field to modem Romance and to the other macroscopic phenomenon characterizing monosentential structures, i.e., to the so-called change of auxiliary, we notice that a further implicational chain can be established.14 The languages (or utterances) that display clitic climbing (and allow syntactic alternation of 'be/have' auxiliaries in compound tenses), also display the prevalence of the embedded verb of modal periphrastic constructions in the choice of the overall auxiliary, when this contrasts with the auxiliary which would otherwise parable of the prodigal son with the simple tornare (cf. (ib)). On the other hand the prefixed verb rivivere 'live again' (for tornare in vita 'come back to life', resuscitare 'resuscitate') is documented by Biondelli (1853 : 530, 533, 545, 547) in many local dialects of the Canavese area (central Piedmont): contrast in particular (ia) with a I'e torna mvivar from Rueglio (Biondelli 1853 :454). 14
We will leave aside other phenomena related to the syntax of verbal periphrases, such as passivizing si constructions, verb and past participle agreement, etc., whose analysis would lead us too far away from the scope of this paper both for their factual distribution and their theoretical analysis. Nevertheless, we think that such phenomena could be easily incorporated into the implicational chain at issue.
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be selected by the modal verb; the process shows that the embedded verb behaves like the head of the monosentential complex VP and thus selects its syntactic features. This is generally documented as a 'have > be' change, as in (Old and modern Standard) Italian, in Old/Middle Occitan, in Old/Middle French, etc., (12). Yet, a subset of the languages that display the 'have > be' change of auxiliary, also display the opposite process, with a 'be > have' change under the same conditions. To the best of our knowledge, the process is documented in Old French and (with special characteristics) in Old Piedmontese, but it is very possible that some other varieties also share this peculiar phenomenon, (13). (12) a. Ho potuto andarci/Ci sono potuto andare 'I have been able to go there' b. Vou n'ey ren pouei venir (St. Etienne, 17th c.) 'You have not been able to come' c. Hz y estoient cuide entrer pour y trouver aise (XV Joies de Manage XIII, 110-1) 'They had thought to enter there in order to get their eases' (13) a. Amis, ou est li reis ? Molt I'ai alet querant (Pelerinage Charlemagne 279) 'My friend, where is the king? I have gone a long time looking for him' b. Ch'ela gli debia apresenter queste preere que sum encoy avue fayte en chesta casa 'That she should present him the payers that have been done today in this house' (Recomendaciones di Saluzzo, 133) This can be schematized as in (14): symmetrical change of auxiliary implies the presence of asymmetrical one, which in turn implies the presence of clitic climbing. (14) clitic climbing C have>be C be>have The two implicational chains in (11) and (14) may tentatively be unified as in (15), based on the statement that high placement of re is only possible in those languages (at least Old French and Old Piedmontese) that allow symmetrical change of auxiliary. (15) clitic climbing C have>be C be>have C high re C high par
15
The change of auxiliary in compound passive constructions in (13b) seems to be consistent with the placement of aspect prefixes onto passive auxiliaries in (9a, b): in Old Piedmontese passive auxiliaries were treated on a par with temporal ones. As Mair Parry points out to me, in the Saluzzo text avuo 'had' seems to be generally used as the past participle of 'be' even in non-periphrastic and absolute contexts (cf. Gasca Queirazza 196566 :1, 37): preerema [ . . . ] per tute quelle persone le quagl son avue de questa fraternita [...] per le anime de nostrifreegl e soror, avuy de questa disciplima 'We will pray for all those people that are had by this fraternity, for the souls of our brothers and sisters, had by this discipline' (Recomendaciones 106-14). We would rather analyse these examples as instances of a proper ("possessive") use of 'have', which is more likely to appear in absolute (adjectival) constructions and is compatible with the generalization of the preposition de in all the uses of Italian di and da (namely, agentive, as in the quoted examples, and ablative: only 1 da vs. 9 de's in our text) (and even in some uses of Italian and Piedmontese per (instrumental, modal, destinative: 5 da's vs. 4 per's)).
76 Franco Benucci One thus has the clear sensation that monosentential syntax of verbal periphrases is a complex and layered phenomenon, only the lower step of which (clitic climbing) is widely spread troughout old and modern Romania, while the connected but higher-ranked steps are progressively restricted in their geolinguistic distribution, highlighting Old French as the "most complete" language in this domain, which is the mirror-image of the claims of our previous works, according to which French is the leading language of the whole Romance group, and its diachrony recapitulates the synchrony of the whole family, as far as verbal periphrases are concerned. This leads to the question whether the factual implications we have noticed may be consistently "translated" into a detailed structural analysis of monosentential syntax in the various languages, and of its diachronic evolution to bisentential syntax. In the next sections we shall deal with the two questions we have asked here, trying to provide an answer mainly based on the recent proposals of Cinque (1997) about the functional structure of the sentence.
2 MONOSENTENTIAL PERIPHRASES AND MULTILAYERED FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURE 2.1 The traditional analysis of clitic climbing and related phenomena, dating back to Rizzi (1976a, 1978) and Burzio (1986), on which we elaborated in Benucci 1987-88, 1990 and subsequent works, assumes that the structural constituency level of the lower part of verbal periphrases (i.e., the non-finite verbal form and its arguments) is a bare VP, which is raised to and amalgamated into the higher (semi-)auxiliary VP (in a clausal context of ECM,16 then by-passing the embedded (accusative) subject), so that together they form a complex VP (VP*), headed by the embedded verb, and share the sentence functional projections that are relevant for clitic placement, auxiliary generation, etc. Of course, this analysis is too rough and oversimplified in the present "implicational" perspective, and is therefore not tenable as it stands. Yet, in our opinion, the finer-grained analysis we need may be developed along the same general lines by taking into account recent proposals about sentence structure articulation. The current trend in generative syntax is to consider that the traditional functional labels as IP and CP do not correspond to single projections, but rather to full series (or "circuits") of specialized functional projections, each giving its own contribution to the overall syntax and semantics of the sentence and each supplying two positions (X° and Spec) for the generation or the movement of the various constituents (the so called "split-IP" and "split-CP" hypotheses). A very detailed attempt to specify the number and the hierarchy of the functional projections included in the "IP domain" was accomplished by Cinque (1997), who, on solid cross-linguistic bases, proposes (section 4.30) an approximate (and admittedly incomplete) number of 32 mood, tense, modality and aspect projections, each hosting a specific (and semantically related) class of adverbs in its Spec position, covering the space between VP and (the split-)CP. The resulting structural hierarchy is rather informally divided into two subsets of "lower" and "higher" projections, characterized by the language-specific and tense/mood-sensitive limit between the 16
To be analysed as a case of incorporation of the abstract or prepositional complementizer into the governing verb, as in Benucci 1992 (cf. also Baker 1988:488f, fn. 4).
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obligatory vs. optional raising of verbal forms to the various heads; the structure is moreover assumed (chapter 5) to be interspersed with DP-related (or agreement) projections, also semantically and syntactically specialized. Some of the resulting 64 projections are of direct interest for our present purposes, since they are (or may be considered) directly relevant for the placement of the items that are involved in the syntax of verbal periphrases, in both monosentential and bisentential stages. Consider in (16) a standard periphrasis in modern Italian,17 where we selected the appropriate verbs in order to show all the items we have discussed in the previous sections. (16) Per averlo dovuto ripercorrere a passo d'uomo, Gianni arrivo tardi in ufficio 'Having had to cover it again at man's walking, G. arrived late in the office' The first thing we notice is the enclisis of the climbed clitic to the auxiliary verb: this is the normal position of clitics in Italian (and many other Romance varieties) when they are linked to an infinitive (or, generally speaking, to a non-finite verb form, such as gerunds, participles and imperatives): we will adopt Kayne's (1991: 648-651) analysis for this phenomenon, according to which in infinitival enclitic constructions the clitic is left-adjoined to an empty head position of the relevant type, that is skipped over by the infinitive, which in turn left-adjoins to the single-bar projection of that functional head. This shows the existence of a DP-related projection, which is specialized for clitic placement: for convenience, we will label that projection as AgrciP, and will try to determine its position in the sentence structure, using Cinque's (1997) tests based on the reciprocal position of the verb and adverbs. We notice then that adjunct infinitives as in (16) behave like argumental ones in obligatorily raising past mood adverbs such as evaluative (purtroppo 'unfortunately') and speech act (francamente 'frankly') ones, i.e., as far as the highest position of Cinque's functional structure (cf. Cinque 1997, ch. 2, app. 1). (17) Per (*francamente/purtroppo) averlo (francamente/purtroppo) dovuto ripercorrere a passo d'uomo, Gianni arrivo tardi in ufficio If the phonological word averlo in (16) is an X' projection (Agrci') in Kayne's (1991) terms, we cannot think of the derivation of (17) as a movement of the infinitive to a highest functional head, since an X' could not land in any X° position: rather (17) shows that the structural position of AgrciP is at the top of the IP "circuit" outlined by Cinque (1997), close to the canonical position of the Subject (PRO in a control construction like (16)). The next step would be raising
17
The choice of an infinitival construction allows us to by-pass in the first instance the regional variation concerning clitic placement, since infinitival periphrases seem to need (or at least easily allow) clitic climbing even in the restrictive Padan varieties of Italian (cf. (16), to be contrasted with (i)). We choose this solution for the sake of argument only, and we are going to show that our conclusions hold also in other grammatical arrangements. (i) ?Per aver dovuto ripercorrerlo a passo d'uomo, Gianni arrive tardi in ufficio
18
The same analysis carries over to Piedmontese and to all the Romance varieties that display the Inf-Cl order. In French and in all the varieties with Cl-Inf order, the adjuction at X' level does not hold and the verb simply occupies the X° position of the relevant projection, with the clitic left-adjoined to that position, as is the case for finite verbs (cf. Kayne 1991: 649).
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to C° in an Aux-to-COMP construction, which is only available for bare infinitives, due to the X' status of Inf+Cl sequences: (18) a. Per aver francamente dovuto ripercorrere a passo d'uomo tutto 1'itinerario, Gianni... 'Frankly, having had to cover the whole route again at man's walking, G. . . . ' b. Per aver Gianni francamente dovuto ripercorrere a passo d'uomo tutto 1'itinerario, Maria... 'Frankly, having G. had to cover the whole route again at man's walking, M. . . . ' Continuing in the analysis of the structural pieces that are relevant for the syntax of verbal periphrases, we should consider the position in which the auxiliaries are generated, namely TP, which in Cinque's system is specified as PastTP (as opposed to FutureTP and AnteriorTP) and placed a bit lower than AgrciP, still embedded in the "subcircuit" of MoodP's. If we join Cinque's structure with Kayne's (1993) modular analysis of auxiliary selection, we will find another of the DP-related projections that, according to Cinque (1997), are interspersed in the functional structure of a sentence. According to Kayne (1993), the basic auxiliary is always 'be', and the selection of 'have' in the relevant contexts is but the phonological (and lexical) result of the incorporation of an abstract prepositional D° (D/Pe) into the verbal form, from a structure like (19), yielding D/Pe+BE = have. (19) . . . [TP Spec BE [DP Spec D/P° . . . [VP . . . ]] The three projections we have identified so far (AgrciP TP and the connected prepositional DP) may also be recognized in the lower part of the periphrasis in those languages/utterances that allow a bisentential syntax, as (20a) and (20b) show.19 (20) a. Vorrei averlo francamente ripercorso con piu calma 'I would like to have covered it frankly again taking more time' b. Vorrei esserci francamente ripervenuto da tempo 'I would like to have reached it frankly again for a long time' Up to now, the two sentential segments can be assumed to be structurally symmetrical, as is expected in a language like modern Italian that allows both monosentential and bisentential periphrases, and we can assume a one-to-one correspondence between the relevant syntactic items and the functional projections. In modern Italian (and Romance), however, it is more difficult to associate the aspect prefixes per and ri with a specific functional projection, since they appear to be completely lexicalized and to have no syntactic autonomy at all. Yet, it seems quite reasonable to assume that at least in those medieval varieties that allowed for a ' 'high" 19
Both (20a) and (20b) are possibly more natural with the adverb placed between the two verbal forms, as in (i). (i) a. Vorrei francamente averlo gia ripercorso con maggior calma b. Vorrei francamente esserci ripervenuto da tempo We take francamente to be placed here in the corresponding MoodP of the matrix (as it is clearer in Non so francamente cosa dirti 'Frankly, I don't know what to tell you', Cominci francamente ad essere insopportabile 'Frankly, you begin being insufferable', where the intervening CP is lexicalized) and the result to be more natural due to the scope on the speech act as a whole that is more easily obtained in (i) w.r.t. (20).
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placement of the prefixes (possibly also in early Romance as a whole), the prefixes were in fact linked with some sort of independent specialized functional projections, to which the verbs could move in a way to be determined. If one thinks of the meaning of the two prefixes, repetition and completion respectively, in the performance of an action or in the realization of a state, one can easily verify that those meanings have precise counterparts in Cinque's (1997) system of functional projections, namely, the AspP's specialized for repetitive and completive aspects. Indeed, Cinque assumes (sections 4.14, 4.24, 4.27 and 4.28) that each of those projections (as well as others, such as frequentative and celerative AspP's) occurs twice in the sentence hierarchy, with different scope domains: the first and higher occurrence of each projection would quantify over events (understood as a complex of interrelated and finalized actions and situations),20 while the second and lower one would directly quantify over the punctual and discrete act (process or state) denoted by the predicate, i.e., over the VP itself. The reciprocal ordering of these projections in Cinque's overall sentence structure is the following, with completive AspP's nested between repetitive ones, and the whole series located quite far down in the representation, from half-way downwards, spanning throughout the whole AspP's subcircuit, which in turn begins under the ModP's subcircuit (I = event scope, II = act scope, . . . = omitted projections): (21) . . . Repetitive (I) > . . . Completive (I) > . . . Completive (II) > Repetitive (II) . . . If our hypothesis of matching the early Romance aspect prefixes each with an AspP is correct, and if the reciprocal order of those prefixes in modern Romance lexical entries (riper vs. *per-ri) can be taken as a clue of their reciprocal structural order at the moment of lexicalization,21 it is easy to see that the attested order of prefixes is neutral as to the event or act interpretation of per/par (which will be neutralized in what follows, but cf. fn. 28), but is crucially compatible only with an event interpretation of rilre. Assuming for the moment that this is true (we are going to check the situation in our corpus in section 3.1), and that the abstract representation in (21) is available in both the embedded and the matrix sections of a Romance verbal periphrasis, let's summarize the structural situation we have outlined so far. If every syntactic item that intervenes in Romance verbal periphrases is to be matched with an appropriate functional projection in Cinque's (1997) system, as integrated with Kayne's (1991, 1993) specific proposals about infinitival enclisis and auxiliary selection, the following projections are minimally to be taken into account: (22) ... AgraP > ... TPpast > prepositional DP > ... AspPrepetitive (!)>••• AspPcompletive > ... VP 20
As far as the completive AspP is concerned, the higher occurrence is further split into two adjacent projections, labelled "plural completion" ("the plural [definite object] set has been totally affected (i.e., each member of the set has been affected)," corresponding to the Italian adverb tutto 'all') and "singular completion" ("each member of the set has been totally affected," corresponding to Italian completamente, del tutto 'completely'): for ease of discussion we will ignore here this subtle distinction and simply assume the existence of a single completive (I) AspP.
21
We have no instance of cooccurrence of the two prefixes in our early Romance corpus, at least not in those "high" placement contexts where they can be more surely associated with independent functional projections.
80 Franco Benucci As one can see, the hierarchy of relevant functional projections, which corresponds to the linear order of the items in a simple sentence (Cl-Au\-ri-per-V), is also exactly parallel to the implicational chain of monosentential phenomena in (15). This strongly suggests the hypothesis that the presence of such phenomena in the various early and modern Romance varieties corresponds on the representational level to an incomplete (but cross-linguistically and diachronically differentiated) projection of the IP section of the embedded sentence, which translates into finergrained and more refined terms the traditional analysis according to which the relevant part of the embedded sentence is a bare VP. This hypothesis is implemented in the next subsection. 2.2 Let us first assume that the relevant structure of a bisentential periphrastic structure consists of two sets of functional projections like (22), in an abstract (simplified)22 representation like (23). In a full-fledged structure like (23), the two sentential segments are complete and independent: each verbal element will move from its V° base position to the relevant slots of the matrix or embedded "IP", thus selecting its appropriate auxiliary and bearing its own grammatical elements (clitics and prefixes), which yields sentences of the kind of (24). (23) [ Ag r s P DPS [AgrclP AgrCi° [TP BE [D/pp D/P° [AspP(rep. I) " [AspP(compl) per [VP V° [Cp P/C
[Agrsp DPS [Agrclp AgrCi° [TP BE [D/pp D/P° [Aspp(rep. i) n [Aspp(compi) per [Vp V° DP0 ]] (24) a. Gianni e andato a ripercorrerlo a passo d'uomo 'G. has gone to cover it again at man's walking' b. Gianni avrebbe dovuto esserne ripartito gia da un'ora 'G. should have already left from there one hour ago' c. Jean vient de 1'avoir reparcouru au pas d'homme 'J. has just covered it again at man's walking' This is the standard situation in strictly bisentential languages and constructions, such as modern standard French (modal and perceptive periphrases), popular French, modern Piedmontese and all the Padan and Alpine varieties that do not allow monosentential syntax (cf. fn. 2), etc. Yet, one can imagine that the structural situation is (or was) somehow different in those old and modern Romance varieties that display (to various extents) a monosentential phenomenology. Our hypothesis is that in these languages the embedded clause is not completely projected, i.e., its constituency level is not a full fledged "IP", but rather a subset of the functional projections in (23), which corresponds to the rank of implicated phenomena displayed by each language. Consider first the easier and possibly more frequent case, i.e., a language that optionally allows for clitic climbing but not for any kind of change of auxiliary (e.g., Venetian regional Italian, the typical paradigm of which is in (25), or Ibero-romance languages):
22
For the sake of simplicity (and without any theoretical implication at all), here we will give each maximal projection with a single branching (and constituency) level, which is to be interpreted as X' (branching X°) or XP (branching Spec) according to the cases. Also, the final closing brackets are marked in bold and reduced to one for each sentential segment.
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(25) a. Oggi non voglio andare a scuola Today I don't want to go to school' b. Oggi non voglio andarci/non ci voglio andare Today I don't want to go there' c. Oggi non ho/*sono voluto andare a scuola Today I didn't want to go to school' (cf. Ho voluto ~ Sono andato) If we analyse (25b) along the lines of Kayne (1991), we should say that (25a) admits a double structure: a "complete" one (as in (23)) yielding non voglio andarci, and a "reduced" one (as in (26)), where the embedded Agrc1P is missing and thus the only possible target for clitics is the higher AgrclP, to which the modal verb incorporates, yielding non ci voglio andare.23 On the other hand, the embedded TP is regularly projected and the auxiliary selection properties of the embedded verb can only go as high as that projection (cf. Avrei voluto essere andato ieri 'I would like to have gone (there) yesterday'), thus ruling out a change of auxiliary in (25c). (26) [ Ag r s p DPS [AgrciP AgrC1° [TP BE [D/PP D/P° [Aspp(rep. I) ri [AsPP(compl) per [Vp V° [Tp BE [o/PP D/P° [AspP(rep. I) ri [AspP(compl) Per tvP V° DPO ] [cP UgrsP D?S
1
Imagine now another (group of) language(s) where the embedded section of the structure in (23) may be lacking not only AgraP, but also TP, being projected only up to D/PP, as in (27): besides clitic climbing, such language(s) would display some phenomena concerning auxiliary selection. (27) [AgrsP DPS [Agrcip AgrC[° [Tp BE [D/PP D/P° [AspP(rep. i> ri [Aspp(ComPi) per [Vp V° [D/PP D/P° UspPCrep. I) ™ [AspP(compl) Per tvP V DPo ] [CP [AgrsP DPs — ]
In a derived structure like (27), the auxiliary selection characteristics of the embedded verb cannot be completely satisfied (i.e., till the spelling out) in its clause, since no embedded TP is present: auxiliary selection will then percolate up to the matrix TP. Consider now the various possibilities, mindful of the modularity proposed by Kayne (1993) for the process of auxiliary selection: (i) both matrix and embedded verbs select 'be': no incorporation of D/P° into BE takes place and the overall auxiliary is correctly spelled out as 'be'; (ii) both matrix and embedded verbs select 'have': the matrix D/P° incorporates into BE, which is correctly spelled out as 'have' ; (iii) matrix verb would select 'have', but embedded verb selects 'be': the latter behaves as the head of the derived complex structure and its percolated features block the incorporation of the matrix D/P° into BE, the overall auxiliary is then "changed" from 'have' into 'be'; (iv) matrix 23
The latter is also the only possible structure for temporal and causative periphrases in standard Italian, standard French and many other Romance varieties. In the vein of our previous works, we will also assume that clitic climbing (and all the related phenomena) is possible only in "CP deletion" contexts (cf. fn. 16) yielding an ECM configuration, and that the first derivational step is the raising of the incomplete embedded "IP" to the matrix one, past the embedded (accusative) subject (a null anaphora in modern Romance modal periphrases): this can possibly be interpreted as a last resort strategy to save an otherwise badly formed sentence with a parasitic use of the matrix functional projections by elements of the embedded clause. For the sake of simplicity, in (26) and subsequent structural schemes the first part of the derivation is noted with an empty CP and the symbol "— " for the trace of the raised "IP".
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verb selects 'be' but embedded verb would select 'have': the selection feature first meets the embedded D/P° which is activated for incorporation into BE, but the only available BE is too far away in the structure and incorporation cannot actually take place, the overall auxiliary remains unchanged and is then spelled out as 'be'. This asymmetrical change of auxiliary ('have' > 'be' but not vice versa) is not just a theoretical possibility, but actually corresponds to the situation of Old and modern (normative) standard Italian, Old/Middle Occitan, etc. (28) a. Sono venuto a morire al sole 'I have come to die in the sunshine' b. Ho voluto comprare un libro 'I have wanted to buy a book' c. Sono/*Ho potuto partire solo nel pomeriggio 'I have been able to leave only in the afternoon' d. Sono/*Ho andato a comprare un libro 'I have gone to buy a book' The next step in the structure reduction of the embedded clause is the lack of D/PP, as in (29). In such a structure, the auxiliary selection features of the embedded verb entirely percolate up to the matrix D/PP and TP and will be entirely satisfied at that level, prevailing, if necessary, over the potential selection by the matrix verb. In the case of (iv) above, no configurational difficulty arises for the incorporation of D/P° into BE, and the change of auxiliary is expected to be symmetrical ('have' > 'be' and 'be' > 'have'). (29)
[AgrsP DPS [AgrclP AgrCi [TP BE [D/Pp D/P
[AspP(rep. I) « [AspP(compl) per [vp V [AspP(rep. I)
"' [AspP(compl) P^ [VP V DP0 ] [cP [AgrsP DPS — ]
As we have seen in (12c) and (13) (in section 1.4), this was the actual situation in Old French and Old Piedmontese (and possibly in other varieties, unkown to us). In fact, both languages display one further step in the structure reduction of the embedded clause, as in (30). (30)
[AgrsP DPs UgrCIP Agra [TP BE [D/pP D/P [AspP(rep. I) "' UspPCcompl) P?r [VP V [AspP(compl)
per [VP V° DP0 ] [Cp [AgrsP DPS — ] The lack of an embedded repetitive (I) AspP triggers the "high" placement of the relevant prefix re in the corresponding matrix projection (in fact a head position), into which the (semi-)auxiliary then incorporates (much in the same way it incorporates into the Agr head bearing pronominal clitics), yielding le revunt envai'r, la ra mise, lor refet oblier, le revois enfouir, refu gitez, reson apelai, etc. In a structure like (30) the completive prefixes are bound to appear on the embedded verb since the relevant projection subsists in the lower clause. Indeed, this corresponds to the situation of verbal periphrases in Old Piedmontese (with voldran pervenir, devem perpenser, etc.), for which (30) can be assumed as the final structure. Old French still goes one step further with a reduced structure like (31), which also lacks the embedded completive AspP.
Aspect prefixes in verbal periphrases in Italian and other Romance languages
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(31) [AgrsP DPS [Agrc,P AgrCi° [TP BE [D/PP D/P° [AspP(rep. I) « [AspP(compl) per [VP V° [VP V° DP0 1 [CP [AgrsP DPS — 1
As above, a "bare VP" embedded structure like (31) triggers the "high" placement of the completive prefix as well, in the relevant matrix head position, into which the (semi-)Auxiliary incorporates in a clitic-like way, yielding me parvelt occire, par puts estre, etc. As matters stand, our hypothesis of matching the implicational chain of monosentential phenomena observed at section 1.4 with a progressive reduction of the functional structure projected in the embedded clause of Romance periphrastic constructions seems verified. Yet, the analysis developed in this section has raised a series of questions directly related to the syntax of aspect prefixes, which we are going to address in the rest of the paper.
3 DETAILS AND RELATED MATTERS 3.1
Ri/re as an event related prefix
The analysis developed so far crucially depends on the assumption that the iterative prefix ri/re can be interpreted as an event related prefix, i.e., the repetition it expresses concerns the whole complex of interrelated and finalized actions and situations, rather than the punctual and discrete act (process or state) denoted by the predicate (cf. section 2.1). Indeed, the latter meaning should be encoded by another (homophonous) prefix, which should occur, according to Cinque's (1997) proposals, in a low AspP (repetitive II, in Cinque's terms, cf. (21) above), following the completive one(s). From the linear point of view then, an action/state repetition prefix should be expected to occur between the completive prefix per/par and the verb root, but of course no (lexicalized) perri-V form is attested in Romance languages (nor can it be "created", as in a hypothetical verb *perricorrere, potentially meaning 'run again till the end' or 'appeal till the last resort'): this could be interpreted as meaning that any re/ri prefix, irrespective of its climbed or low syntactic position, is in fact an event prefix; but this could also depend on some kind of idiosyncratic incompatibility between completive and action/state repetitive prefixes, so the nonexistence of the ordering *per-ri is not really significant. But, apart from the interpretation of any single occurrence of climbed re/ri as referring to the overall event rather than to the specific action/state (which is possible, but sometimes undecidible and always has a subjective and random character), the structural analysis we outlined in the previous section in Cinque's (1997) framework makes two explicit predictions, which can help in deciding the actual position of a repetition prefix (whether AspP repetitive I or repetitive II). Namely, if the repetition prefix is related to the event, i.e., it occurs in AspP (rep. I), it is expected to precede in the linear order any adverb that is linked in Cinque's (1997) structure to a lower functional projection, such as TPanterj0r and frequentative (I), terminative, continuative, (im)perfect, retrospective, proximative, durative, progressive, prospective, etc. AspP's: in a(n Old French monosentential) periphrastic construction that kind of adverb is in turn expected to occur between the two verbal items, since all the above-listed T/AspP's are lower than repetitive I
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but higher than completive AspP, i.e., in our hypothesis they are not projected in the embedded clause and can only be associated with the matrix one. And this is what we find in our Old French corpus:24 (32) a. TP anterior: Ge m'en devoie ja aler (Roman de Renart I, 502) 'I already had to leave from there' b. AspP frequentative (I): Isorie, la suere le roy, le soleit souvent visiter e conforter 'I., the king's sister, often used to visit and console him' (Fouke Fitz Warin 75, 16-7) c. AspP terminative: Lassez fu en petit d'ore, si qu'il ne se pot plus tenir (Perceval 8408-9) 'In short he was tired, so that he couldn't stand any longer' d. AspP continuative: S'en veil encor faire un sermon (Roman de la Rose 4676) 'Then I still want to make a speech about it' e. AspP (im)perfect: Pense, s'il en puet garir mout la voudra toz jors chierir 'He thinks that if he can recover he would always love her very much' (Fabliaux II, 229-30) f. AspP proximative: Li juges [... ] le conmanda tantost a prendre The judge ordered to seize him soon' (Roman de la Rose 5640-1) g. AspP durative: Or te vueil briement recorder ce que t'ai dit (Roman de la Rose 2225-6) 'I now want to briefly remind you what I told' Besides many examples of interpolated adverbs in monosentential constructions that only attest clitic climbing, we are fortunate enough to have in our corpus at least one example of interpolated adverb cooccurring with both clitic and re climbing, which clearly shows that climbed re is an event related prefix, even when the corresponding interpretation is not immediately perspicuous ('reminding' as a complex factual and psychological event rather than a punctual action/state?).25 (33) Si la revueil or ramentoivre por toi faire miex aper§oivre (Roman de la Rose 6811-2) 'So I want to remind it again soon to let you better understand' The analysis of climbed re as an event related prefix seems to be confirmed from the interpretational point of view in cases like the following, where the embedded verb clearly denotes
24
The proposed analysis appears to be confirmed by the rare cases of bisentential constructions like (i), to be directly contrasted with (32b). When the infinitive retains its own complement clitics, it also precedes aspect adverbs like the frequentative sovent 'often' in (i). Both phenomena show that in these cases the infinitive is associated with a full-fledged embedded functional structure. On the contrary, where the order Cl-Aux-AdvInf is attested such structure is missing. (i) Je avoie apris a veoir les sovent et a avoir lor compaignie 'I had learned to see them often and to enjoy their company'
25
(Quests del St. Graal 17, 10-2)
We assume here and everywhere that the initial r- of remembrer/ramentoivre and the like is neither an event nor an action aspect prefix, but simply a part of the lexical entry (cf. fn. 5). Even if it was to be considered an aspect prefix ('bring again to one's mind'), it should rather be analysed as an action related one (see below in the text), which would confirm the event related analysis for the climbed re ('bring again to one's mind again').
Aspect prefixes in verbal periphrases in Italian and other Romance languages
85
a complex of interrelated actions and stages (the same holds for the Old Piedmontese examples we have seen in (9a, b)). (34) a. De tutes parz le revunt envai'r 'They go and invade him again from all sides' (Chanson de Roland 2065) b. Par lor conseil le roy me renvoia querre 'On their advice, the king sent for me again' (Joinville Vie de Saint Louis 546 « 577) On the other hand, our analysis predicts that since action/state related repetition prefixes are linked to the repetitive (II) AspP, which is immediately lower in the tree than the completive AspP's (cf. (21)), and since we have assumed the embedded clause of Old French monosentential periphrases to be projected only up to that very level (i.e., under completive AspP) such a prefix should occur in a low position (i.e., united to the lexical verb) also in those contexts that otherwise display climbed prefixes (namely, climbed par). This prediction is borne out as well, in examples like (35). The analysis of (35) shows that the level of projection of the embedded clauses in Old French monosentential periphrases is not simply VP, as we have assumed in (31) above, but rather includes a little part of the functional structure above VP, as high as repetitive (II) AspP, as it is schematized in (36). This is confirmed by the low position of the prefix in those contexts where the embedded verb clearly denotes a punctual and discrete action, as in the enumerations in (37). (35) Molt par se set bien tresmuer quant ele se veult remuser (Roman de Renart XXIII, 991-2) 'She can completely transform herself very well when she wants to hide herself again'26 (36)
[Agrsp DPS [AgrclP AgrCi° [TP BE fo/PP D/P° [AspP(rep. I) « [AspP(compl) P«r [VP V° [AspP(rep. II) re [Vp V° DP0 ] [CP [AgrsP DP$ — 1
(37) a. [1'espee] La le porriez faire rebatre et retremper et faire saine (Perceval 3676-7) '(the sword) There you could strike it again and harden it again and make it sound' b. Et quant il relever se quide, si rechancele et rechiet jus (Perceval 7024-5) 'And when he thinks of standing up again, then he staggers again and falls down again'
3.2
The "extended VP" hypothesis
The analysis developed in section 2, as integrated in (36), clearly shows that the traditional view of embedded clauses in monosentential periphrases as bare VP's is not tenable. Their level of projection is rather variable cross-linguistically (and diachronically), but it includes in any event a (smaller or larger) part of the sentence functional structure, i.e., of the IP circuit. Yet, they
26
We assume here that remuser is not a lexical entry of its own, i.e., re- does not belong to the lexical projection (VP) but to the lower layers of the functional structure. Indeed, no such verb is attested in Old French dictionaries and the most obvious analysis is that it indicates the repetition of the action of hiding oneself (re+muser). As for the ordering par se set in the first part of the example, see below in section 3.4.
86 Franco Benucci never arrive at a full-fledged IP: when this happens (as in modern French), then the syntax of periphrases radically changes and one finds bisentential constructions (i.e., none of the "restructuring" phenomena we are considering). So, the question can be asked whether these "incomplete" IP's can be labelled sentences in spite of everything, or rather they could be considered as a sort of "extended VP's", thus recovering at least the spirit of the traditional analysis. The latter could seem a straightforward hypothesis in the case of Old French above, since the repetitive (II) AspP is a very low functional projection, quite close to the VP (the second above it in Cinque's (1997, 4.30) scheme) and having direct scope on it, as all the nearby action related AspP's do. But the "extended VP" hypothesis would be harder to keep for the other languages we considered in this paper, whose embedded functional structure is richer and progressively closer to a full-fledged IP, with a scope progressively wider and farther from VP. Nevertheless, we would like to maintain a clear demarcation between the latter "complete" structure, yielding bisentential periphrastic syntax, and the whole graduated series of "reduced" structures, triggering the various monosentential phenomena. We have no obvious (nor fully developed) solution to offer, partly due to the great variability of the levels of projection in the various languages, which prevents us from attributing a unified label to the various functional layers involved. But it seems clear to us that the whole "IP space" constitutes a large transition zone in the sentence representation, which can be projected "in batches" rather than as a whole: the "circuit" reaches its own syntactic self-sufficiency only when it is completely projected, while the previous stages can reach PF realization only if they can exploit a hierarchically higher full-fledged "circuit" of the same kind (cf. fn. 23) and on their own they can indeed be considered as (provisional) "extensions" of the lower complete circuit, i.e., VP.27 One can also wonder if the single projection "batches" are arbitrary or, rather, have some regularities or principled reasons. If we look at the general architecture of Cinque's (1997) functional structure, a plausible answer to this question could be that the single "batches" roughly correspond to the various subcircuits that can be recognized in the overall IP space: beginning from downstairs, action related AspP's (up to VoiceP), event related AspP's (including Anterior TP), ModP's, MoodP's (including Future and Past TP's and epistemic ModP), the whole system being interspersed with DP-related phrases (AgrP's) and topped by AgrciP and AgrsP. Cinque's system is admittedly not complete and possibly needs some refining (especially for the tentative labelling and/or ordering of irrealis MoodP, which occurs after epistemic ModP and the two TP's, cf. Cinque 1997, 4.8-4.10, 4.29), but the recognizable internal organization of the IP space in Cinque's proposal presents a striking parallelism with the segmentation in the progressive projection of functional structure we have noticed in section 2.2 in connection with monosentential periphrastic phenomena.
27
As Cecilia Poletto has suggested me, the rather informal statement in the text can be better dealt with in the recent Optimality framework, for instance assuming that since (at least some) functional projections can be ambiguous between two pertinences (in our case between VP and IP), the human language (device) economizes the classifying and the cutting out of a new syntactic space until it is completely projected. In our case, completeness would then be reached with the projection of AgrsP (which "closes" IP): this seems quite natural if one considers that AgrsP is the canonical final position for the subject, whose generation position is in one of the highest (possibly the highest) functional projections of the lower syntactic "circuit", VP. Due to space limits, we will not pursue this subject here.
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One is also tempted to trace back to the same subcircuit segmentations the variability of Romance languages in the level of obligatory and optional raising of verbs along the functional structure of the sentence, which is studied by Cinque (1997, ch. 2, appendix) "with special reference to Italian past participles and some cursory remarks on other verbal forms and other Romance varieties." Using the same tests as Cinque (1997), based on the possible reciprocal positions of verbs and (classes of) adverbs, we can show for instance a limit (and at the same time a requisite) for the raising of finite verbs in Italian, at the level of habitual AspP, which is above repetitive (I) AspP and corresponds to the top limit of the event related AspP's subcircuit: Gianni di solitol*di nuovo mangia di nuovol*di solito banane. On the other hand, French infinitives and past participles are (correctly) reported to need to move between bien and tot, that is up to VoiceP, at the top limit of the action related AspP's subcircuit.28 In conclusion, the overall picture of the sentence functional structure that results from the analysis we have sketched in this subsection appears to be characterized by the presence of "subcircuits", that are relevant for a series of syntactic phenomena but at the same time do not configurate as complete and self-sufficient syntactic "spaces". One can then think of syntax as reproducing at the appropriate level the same multiplicity of boundaries of progressive strength that are currently assumed in phonology: syntax would have phrase, subcircuit and circuit (instead of syllable, morpheme and word) boundaries, but a similar selective principle for the relevance of each of them w.r.t. single phenomena can be assumed to hold in both components.
3.3
Prefix climbing and destructuring
We observed in section 1 that the presence of prefix climbing, in the early stages of a language, is characteristic of those languages (French and Piedmontese) that underwent the earliest and deepest destructuring of their verbal periphrases (1.4); it is also remarkable that the appearance of prefixes in low position had anticipated by some centuries the analogous evolution in the placement of pronominal clitics (1.1). The same precocity characterizes the loss of symmetrical auxiliary change, since the 'be > have' change disappeared from Old French by the 13th c. and from Piedmontese by the 16th c.; on the other hand, the opposite 'have > be' change remains
28
Actually, at a closer investigation (or, rather, at one based on a larger observational corpus) it could well turn out that the level of projection of the embedded clause in Old French periphrastic constructions corresponds to the same subcircuit, i.e., it includes the action related completive (II) AspP. One would then be led to assume that the par prefix in porpenser 'reflect' (cf. (4b, c)) occurs in a low position not because of a diachronic change being implemented, but simply because of the low position of the corresponding projection: on this view, penser 'think' would be a simple action, as opposed to remembrer and ramentoivre 'remind', which we have already interpreted as a complex event (cf. (33)). The example in (35), where par (clearly an event related prefix) occurs in a high position and the semi-auxiliary set is separated from the lexical infinitive by the intervening adverb bien (which in Cinque's (1997) system is located in Spec-VoiceP, in the present hypothesis the highest projected position of the embedded clause), could lead to the same conclusion. This move is very tempting, but the scarcity of par/par prefixes in our corpus (as well as the admittedly tentative and nonself-evident link between adverbs of the class of 'well' and VoiceP, cf. Cinque 1997, 4.25) prevents us from adopting such a generalization, and we will keep to the analysis in the text. Also, the variegated situation of even closely related Romance varieties w.r.t. the level of past participle rising, shown in Cinque's Appendix, suggests the possibility of an even finer-grained (or more flexible) segmentation of the various subcircuits.
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active in the language as long as clitic climbing does: till the 17th c. (and marginally in the 18th c.) in French, till nowadays (as a possibility) in standard Italian, etc. In the framework of our analysis, the parallel early loss of prefix climbing and of symmetrical auxiliary change is expected because both can be analysed in terms of (successive) reprojection of the relevant XP's in the embedded clause of the periphrasis, which represent the lower part of our (simplified) scheme in (23) (as integrated in (36)). Similarly, a late (or only optional) reprojection of the upper XP's can account for the protraction of asymmetrical auxiliary change and clitic climbing in the languages: of course, these solidarities are not absolute, but rather scalar, with a maximal resistance of marginal clitic climbing (i.e., of the last XP to be reprojected in the embedded clause) even when auxiliary change is completely lost, as modern French and "Padan" Italian show. The scalarity of the reprojection process also accounts for the differences between temporal/causative and modal/perceptive periphrases that have been observed in many Romance languages and varieties, mainly w.r.t. clitic climbing. This dynamic of successive reprojections in the embedded clause can also explain in a rather natural way the transitional phenomena of splitting and repetition constructions, which we have noticed (in section 1.2) indirectly link clitic climbing and prefix climbing, especially in "spontaneous" and uncertain use of a language. The introduction in the embedded clause of a position that was earlier only available in the matrix clause can create at the beginning the need to strengthen (by spelling out) the chain between the two slots, and this can span throughout the set of relevant projections, yielding the repetition of both clitics and prefixes. Only in standardized and "mature" systems (like modern Italian) are the two positions (and the corresponding two configurational situations) kept separate and used as alternative syntactic possibilities, triggering free variation between restructured and non-restructured constructions. Apart from the internal structural dynamic of destructuring, we should still answer the first question we have asked in section 1.4, i.e., whether the old "high" placement of aspect prefixes may be linked to the precocious appearance of non-climbed prefixes and to the beginning of destructuring as a whole. In our opinion, such a link exists and it may be identified from the point of view of semantics (i.e., of mapping the linguistic utterance onto the extralinguistic reality). Indeed, the high placement of prefixes (onto the (semi-)auxiliary) triggers in many cases the utterance of composite verbal forms which are homophonous of other, independently existing, lexical verbs, whose meaning is completely different: we think particularly of the very frequent cases of ravoir = re + 'have' or 'get back, recover', revouloir = re + 'want' or 'want back', redevoir = re + 'must' or 'owe', revenir = re + 'come' or 'come back, be due', renvoyer = re + 'send (for)' or 'chase away, dismiss, reject' (generally speaking we could term these cases "counterdirectional" w.r.t. the meaning of the basic verb, cf. fn. 5), parvenir = par + 'come' or 'reach', parfaire = par + 'cause' or 'perfect, improve', etc.
29
The opposite (i.e., the maintenance of symmetrical auxiliary change together with clitic climbing) is also true, as the conservative variety of popular French reported by Frei (1928: 86) and Damourette & Pichon (1936, §1638) shows: (i) a. Je I'ai venu faire visitor parcequ'elle ne profile pas 'I have come and let her be seen because she does not recover' (oral utterance of 1931) b. Yai parvenu a avoir votre adresse 'I have managed to get your address' (letter of a war prisoner of WW1)
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The potential (or actual) clash between the intended (prefixed (semi-)auxiliary) meaning of the uttered verbal form and the latent (lexical) one could certainly cause difficulties and misunderstanding in the decoding of prefixed periphrases and it was then an important spur to optimize the communication by leaving the prefixes united to the verb they referred to, i.e., by reprojecting the (missing) corresponding XP's of the embedded clause. In other terms, prefixed periphrases could often trigger troubles in the representation of the reality as expressed by linguistic means, and this needed to be corrected from inside the linguistic system: prefixed periphrases can then be considered as the forerunners, at their own syntactic level, of the first attested cases of low placement of pronominal clitics in the history of French, which were also characterized by representational troubles.30
3.4
Prefixes or clitics?
One final point needs to be clarified before we conclude, namely the syntactic nature of aspect prefixes and their exact position w.r.t. the verbal forms they appear linked to. The terminology we have adopted so far (i.e., the very term "prefixes") is possibly inaccurate and, from a certain point of view, it could be taken as contradicting the factual parallelism with pronominal clitics we observed and tried to account for in this paper. In fact, our only explicit statement about the status of aspect prefixes (cf. (30) and (31) in section 2.2) has been that they occupy the head position of the relevant AspP "into which the (semi-)auxiliary incorporates, much in the same way it incorporates into the Agr head bearing pronominal clitics": a deliberately informal statement that stresses the above-mentioned parallelism and may raise the question of whether Romance aspect prefixes are to be considered as "normal" syntactic clitics, on a par with pronominal and adverbial ones (ci/y and nelen). The latter sounds an odd hypothesis if one considers it from the point of view of the modern (standard) situation, but it may be more acceptable if we take into account the phenomena of Old
-l0 As we showed in Benucci 1987-88, 1990, the triggering contexts for early destructuring were those in which clitic climbing yielded "heteroverbal" clitic clusters, i.e., a non perspicuous linguistic representation of the intended reality, as in the following examples (respectively of a semi-auxiliary also bearing an argumental clitic of its own and of coordinated but argumentally incompatible lexical verbs): (i) a. Querons lors qu'il le nos ai'ent aconquerre 'Let's ask them to help us to conquer it' (Villehardouin, La Conqueste de Constantinople 63) a! Non pas qu'il me faille gens d'avantaige pour me ayder a le conquester 'Not that I need more people in order to help me to conquer it' (Rabelais, Pantagruel XXI, 18-9) b. Je/ ne te wel ne contredire ne desfendre (= te + te le) (Perceval 6788-9) 'I don't want to contradict you nor to forbid it to you' b! Mon vilain baschaz se vouloit tuer de ma broche et i 'en percer le coeur 'My bad pacha wanted to kill himself with my spear and to run through his heart with it' (Rabelais, Pantagruel X, 106-7) b!' Devant que la porter au clocher, voulut en donner une aubade par la ville et la faire sonner par toutes les rues (Rabelais, Pantagruel VII, 16-8) 'Before taking it to the bell tower, he wanted to play a morning-song with it through the town and make it sound in every street'
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French, Old Piedmontese and popular and "Padan" Italian dealt with above. A couple of interesting remarks by Cinque (1997, 3.6), which we are going to quote here with slight adaptations to our subject, show that the hypothesis is worth considering, also from a theory-internal point of view: "the prefixes appear to directly reflect the order of functional heads, with [Repetitive (I)] to the left of [Completive], itself to the left of [Repetitive (II)]. [... This] seem[s] to provide a challenge to the Mirror Principle, at least under a restrictive theory [... ] which only allows raising (and no lowering), and left-, but no right-, adjunction. [ 3I . . . ] A more plausible analysis would consist in treating them as free morphemes (particles) clitic on the verb." We are then led to look for arguments that could support the analysis of aspect "prefixes" as clitic particles: if such an analysis could be sustained, then our above-quoted informal statement would allow for a more weighty and technical interpretation; moreover, the actual ordering of prefixes and verbs would raise no theoretical difficulty, since it would exactly correspond to the respective ordering of pronominal clitics and (finite) verbs, which would then be analysed with Kayne (1991) in terms of incorporation. Indeed, the desired arguments actually seem to exist; as Cinque (1997) puts it, "possible support for th[e clitic] analysis is the fact that [ . . . 'prefixes'] can also appear separated from the verb, being in fact cliticized to some other constituent." This can be taken as predicting two distinct syntactic possibilities for "aspect prefixes", apart from the standard one of being directly linked to the verb. On the one hand, if "prefixes" are to be analysed as clitic particles on a par with pronominal/ adverbial clitics, it is expected that they all form an ordered cluster, just as standard clitics do when occurring in multiple instances on the same verb. The internal order of the cluster as documented by most old and modern occurrences is, generally speaking, pronominal-adverbialaspectual (e.g., Glie-ne-ri-parlero 'I will talk to him about it again', Je l'y-r-amenerai 'I will take him there again'), but it is well known that in some contexts the overall order can be altered (e.g., Ti-ci-ri-portero 'I will take you there again' vs. Ce-lo-ri-portero 'I will take it there again'), as the internal order of the single components also can (e.g., Je le-lui-donne 'I give it to him' vs. Je te-le-donne 'I give it to you'). A major change in the history of Romance (at least French and Italian) clitics occurred between the 14th and the 15th centuries, when the internal order of the pronominal component changed from lo-ti/le-te to te-lolte-le, and the adverbial component also changed from ne-cilen-y to ce-nely-en. Interestingly enough, our corpus contains a couple of examples (also dating back to the 14th c.) in which the aspect prefix occurs in the first position of the supposed cluster, being separated from the verb by the intervening pronominal clitics. (38) a. L'empereriz et 1'empereries et 1'arcevesque re s'assistrent (P. Gat. St. Mart. 847) 'The emperor and the empress and the archbishop sat down again' b. Molt par se set bien tresmuer (Roman de Renart XXIII, 991: ms. M, 14th c.) 'She can completely transform herself very well' We could take this as a clue to the fact that the aspect prefixes of Old French were indeed clitic particles, and as such included in the overall clitic cluster, together with pronominal and adverbial clitics: the examples in (38) would then show that aspect particles have also undergone the beginning of the general change in the ordering of clitic clusters, oscillating between 31
In such a restrictive theory, the expected order of the elements should be the opposite of the actual one, i.e., *V-per-ri (or possibly *ri\-V-per-ri\\) instead of ri-per-V.
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the last and the first position.32 Contrary to the internal order of the pronominal and adverbial components, the position of aspect particles w.r.t. the other components could not get fixed in the "modern" order in (38) due to the contemporary major changes in their syntax (reprojection of functional XP's in the lower clause of periphrases, etc., see below), which led to their lexicalization. As we have mentioned in fn. 6, lexicalization has taken place in some cases in the sequence re-Cl-V, which also shows that a reordering of the components within the supposed clitic cluster was active at that time. On the analogy of Old French, the clitic analysis of aspect "prefixes" could be carried over to Old Piedmontese and possibly to other Romance varieties: a clue for the latter step could be seen in the re-Cl-V construction reported by Rohlfs (1949, §1027) for the verb aresse 'be again' in the Marche dialect of Arcevia (province of Ancona). (39) Chiarc'era? 'Who was there again?' On the other hand, Cinque's reported statement can be taken as predicting the possibility for aspect "prefixes" to occur cliticized to other (non-verbal) consituents. As it is well known, repetition particles can occur linked with almost all kinds of constituents in both French and Italian (cf. Morin & St. Amour 1977 : 148f, Rohlfs 1949, §1027), as in the following examples: (40) a. J'ai refaim/refroid/resoif/rechaud 'I am hungry/cold/thirsty/hot again' b. C'est re-a toi/re-a ton tour de jouer/re-pour moi 'It is your turn (to play)/for me again' c. Le revoici/revoila 'Here/there he is again' d. Et de rechef a grimper/Et reboum ! 'And climbing once again/Pull the other one again!' e. /?zbuongiorno/7?Jciao/^?/grazie 'Good morning/hallo/thank you again' f. ^'eccomi qui 'Here I am again' g. Su, giu, n'su, rigiu 'Up and down, up and down again' h. Anda e nanda (Tuscan vernacular) 'Return ticket' Cases like (40c, f) are possibly the most expected due to the remote verbal origin of the presentational phrases ecco and voicilvoila, which is also made evident by the cooccurrence of pronominal clitics (cf. Portuguese ei-lo aqui, Spanish he(te)me aquf, etc.), but the other examples are also 12
Alternation in the orders re-Cl-V and Cl-re-V could also be compared to the oscillation in the ordering of the negative clitic within the Old French clitic cluster, which has no standard sequel in Modern French. (i) a. Tent une cartre, mais na li puis tolir (= ne la lui) 'He holds a charter, but he can't take it away from him' b. Je/ ne te wel [... ] desfendre (= le ne te) 'I don't want to forbid it to you'
(St. Alexis 355) (Perceval 6788-9)
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quite natural in everyday language. Cases like (40b, g), where the aspect particle is linked to a PP or a local adverb, are strongly reminiscent of the analogous possibility of pronominal clitics, which could occur in Old Italian, as well as in modern Padan dialects (and the corresponding regional Italian), linked to local PP's and adverbs (cf. Rohlfs 1949, §471, ASIS).33 (41) a. Essa incontrog/z da tre gradi discese 'She got down off three steps towards him' (Boccaccio, Decamerone 2,5) b. allatog/z 'next to him', controg/z 'against him', in corpog// 'into his body', (d)entrovz' 'inside there', pressomz 'next to me', accantofe 'next to her' (Old Italian) c. acbl-me 'round my neck', dreve 'after it', arv^em-je 'together with him' (Piedmontese) d. dregghi 'after him', rentimz 'next to me', motta scia//a 'put it here' (Borgomanero (Novara)) e. Fame ciaro che meno i bo in stala; e ela drioghe 'Light me up that I take the oxen into the stable; and she (went) after him' (Folk tale from Treviso 1892, same oral use in the Province of Padua, 1991) f. Questa pietra fu posta con soprav/ la seguente iscrizione 'This stone was placed with the following inscription on it' (G. Nuvolato, Storia di Este (Padua) 1851) Once again, the syntactic behaviour of aspect "prefixes" is very similar to that of pronominal clitics, and one could be led to assume that, at least in early Romance languages, they could best be analysed as clitic particles, as suggested by Cinque (1997). Yet, if the aspect "prefixes" were clitics with the same status as pronominal and adverbial ones, one would expect their syntax to be exactly the same, including the postponed placement with Italian infinitives, which of course is not the case (rimangiarlo 'eat it again'). Not only do aspect particles not postpone with infinitives, but neither do they when they are linked to non-verbal constituents as in (40e-h) and (41), which share the infinitive feature of enclisis. The natural conclusion is then that aspect "prefixes" cannot be straightforwardly equated to "standard" Romance clitics, not even in the old stages of the languages (cf. fn. 34). Rather, Cinque's suggestion is to be taken in its literal meaning: in early Romance aspect prefixes were free morphemes (particles), endowed with a degree of syntactic autonomy, but requiring at least phonological clisis onto a verb (or another constituent). This amounts to assuming for (medieval) aspect particles an intermediate status between bare (lexical) prefixes and clitics in their 3
' A use comparable to (40a, e) may possibly be recognized for completive particles in cases like Old Piedmontese perfunt, Milaneseparfond, Sicilianprifunnu 'deep(ness), hell', Sicilian (s)pirlungo 'very long', Calabrian prisiccu 'very thin, skinny', etc. (cf. Rohlfs 1949, §1022-6).
34
The solidarity of nominal, prepositional, etc. constituents and infinitives w.r.t. enclisis (to be analysed as in Kayne 1991, cf. section 2.1 here) is shown for Italo-Romance varieties by all the examples in (41) and by cases like eccomi/eccolo: the latter is also confirmed by the Ibero-Romance counterparts ei-lo/heme, that correspond to matd-lo 'kill him', comedo 'eat it', etc. We will not speculate on the reasons for left-adjunction to Agrci' (possibly the "weakening" (as far as negative value) of the verbal feature), which would be beyond the scope of this paper, and will rather come back to presentational phrases like rieccolo/rieccomi (40f), that clearly show (on a par with rimangiarlo) the diverging syntactic behaviour of pronominal clitics and aspect particles in (Italian) infinitival and assimilated contexts. The independence of the "rules" of clitic vs. aspect particle placement in such contexts is confirmed by French: as it is well known, both pronominal clitics and aspect particles come in proclisis with French infinitives (le remanger 'eat it again'), and the same is true
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35
own right: in a period of language instability (such as late Old and early Middle French) this situation could evolve towards one or the other direction. Indeed, the noticed 14th c. reordering of aspect particles w.r.t. clitic cluster can be interpreted as an abortive evolution of the particles in the clitic direction (which might also be taken as a palliative against the representational troubles we have discussed in the previous subsection, by separating the particle from the (semi-)auxiliary in periphrastic contexts). Yet, the opposite direction of evolution has prevailed, possibly due to the standard position of aspect particles, close to the verb: in middle and modern Romance languages, after the reprojection of embedded clause functional structure in periphrastic contexts, the particles have turned into bare lexical prefixes, thus leaving the head position of the relevant AgrP's and becoming an inseparable part of the lexical entry, fixed in preradical position. In many Padan and Ibero-Romance varieties the evolution has entailed the nearly complete disappearance of aspect prefixes, which have been replaced in the relevant heads and in the subsequent derivation by aspect semi-auxiliaries (cf. fn. 8), as the following Piedmontese examples show (also notice the repetition of pronominal clitics on both verbal items):36
in cases like me revoici/revoila (40c); but in Old French both infinitives and presentational phrases triggered enclisis in particular contexts. (i) a. Si monte [... ] por tenir le par mi les flans Then he climbs to hold him by the hips' (Queste del St. Graal 30, 14-5) b. Ves me chi/Ves le chi 'See me/him here'
(Adam le Bossu, Jeu de la Feuillee 518, 940)
Yet, even in Old French infinitival and presentational contexts, aspect particles always kept the preposed position. 35
Notice that this intermediate status cannot be identified with that of "weak" elements in the sense of Cardinaletti & Starke (1993), since Romance weak pronouns like Italian and Old French loro/lor also appear postposed in infinitival contexts: (i) a. Ritengo che confidare low ogni cosa sarebbe pericoloso 'I think that it would be dangerous to tell them everything' b. L'empereor Federic [... ] laissa en son leu gens por [... ] livrer lor les chasteaus The emperor F. let some people in his stead in order to hand the castles over to them' (Ph. de Novare, Memoires II, XLV) This is also expected on theoretical grounds since "weak" elements are generally analysed as "light" (i.e., missing a functional projection) XP's rather than heads. Indeed, a closer comparison of aspect prefixes could be established with the negative particles non/ne, that are currently (since Pollock 1989 :413-418 and Belletti 1990: 29-32) analysed as (clitic) heads, but do not show any inversion phenomenon (*parlare non, *parler ne pas): as we mentioned in fn. 32, negative particles also took part in the attempts of cluster reordering in Old French. Moreover, just as aspect prefixes, negative particles are currently linked to non-verbal constituents (non violenza 'non-violence', non luogo/non-lieu 'nonsuit', non-vue 'fog', non-nanti 'have-not', non raro 'frequent', non-pareil 'peerless', non iolnon-moi 'non-ego', nondimeno/neanmoins 'however', nonpertantol neporquant 'nevertheless', nonche 'as well as', nonnullalneant 'trifle', etc.), often with a lexicalized semantic specialization. The exact and formal meaning of the "intermediate" status we are assuming for particles remains to be ascertained: for the time being we will be content with the above-reported definition by Cinque.
36
The evolution to lexical prefixes has crucially concerned verbs and (deverbal) presentational phrases, while colloquial use has conserved the possibility of attaching aspect particles (especially re/ri) to other kind of constituents (cf. (40)-(41)), without turning them into lexical items.
94 (42)
Franco Benucci a. E me surela m'a turno a mandeme indre (Dialect of Cairo Montenotte, courtesy of M. Parry) 'And my sister has sent (it) back to me again' b. Butand ancor lacrimasse, d'intant intant se tenia voltasse (Pastorella Semplice 139-40) 'And still sheding scalding tears, from time to time she had turned back'
4 CONCLUSION The analysis developed in this paper, centred on the syntax of aspect prefixes in old and modern Romance verbal periphrases (with a special stress on Italian, French and Piedmontese), connects it in a systematic and significant way with some other macroscopic and well known phenomena occurring in the same contexts (clitic climbing, change of auxiliary, adverb interpolation, etc.) and outlines at the same time a coherent and nuanced reconstruction of the diachronic processes that led verbal periphrases from the old to the modern syntactic situation. The whole analysis is based on and further develops the ideas incorporated in the extremely rich sentential functional structure suggested by Cinque (1997): if the results we achieved are correct, then our work can constitute an independent supporting evidence for Cinque's proposals. On the other hand, it seems to us very probable that the scheme we have adopted, possibly in an even finer-grained version than we could achieve here, would allow one to account in a satisfactory way for other phenomena that occur in the same syntactic contexts, such as those related to the so called passivizing si in early and modern Romance languages (which depend on the presence/absence and on the intrinsic features of Agr$P in both the matrix and the embedded clause of the periphrasis, cf. Rizzi 1976b, Benucci 1990:79-82), the French phenomenon of L-tous, a special case of Quantifier Floating occurring in periphrastic contexts (cf. Kayne 1978, 1980, Pollock 1978, Benucci 1987-88: 154-157), which also interacts with Cinque's analysis of sentential functional structure (cf. Cinque 1997, 5.4) and may therefore be included in the scheme we developed, and possibly more (cf. fn. 14). Of course, all this is beyond the scope of this paper and we leave it for future research.
REFERENCES ASIS = Atlante Sintattico dell'Italia Settentrionale. Unpublished materials, CNR Centro di Studio per la Dialettologia Italiana, Universita di Padova. Baker, Mark C. (1988). Incorporation. A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Belletti, Adriana. (1990) Generalized Verb Movement: Aspects of Verb Syntax. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. Beninca, Paola and Cecilia Poletto. (1997). The diachronic development of a modal verb of necessity. In Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent (eds.) Parameters of Morphosyntatic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 94-118.
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Benucci, Franco. (1987-88). Les constructions modales du fra^ais des Serments de Strasbourg a nos jours. Une analyse syntaxique. Laurea dissertation, Universita di Padova. Benucci, Franco. (1990). Destrutturazione. Classi verbali e costruzioniperifrastiche nelle lingue romanze antiche e moderne. Padova: Unipress. Benucci, Franco. (1992). Romance infinitival particles as specifiers of CP. In Elisabetta Fava (ed.) Proceedings of the XVII Meeting of Generative Grammar (Trieste, 1991). Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. 23-51. Benucci, Franco. (1993). Temporal periphrases and clitics in central Romance languages. Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics, 3.1, 51-83. Benucci, Franco. (1997). Destrutturazione due. Padova: Unipress. Biondelli, Bernardino. (1853). Saggio sui Dialetti Gallo-italici. Milano: Bernardoni. Burzio, Luigi. (1986). Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: Reidel. Cardinaletti, Anna and Michal Starke. (1993). On dependent pronouns and pronoun movement. Talk delivered at GLOW, Lund. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1997). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Ms., published in 1999 by Oxford University Press. Damourette, Jacques and Edouard Pichon. (1936) Des mots a lapensee. Essai de grammaire de la langue francaise V. Paris: D'Artrey. Frei, Henry. (1928). La grammaire desfautes. Introduction a la linguistique fonctionnelle. Paris: Gauthner. Gasca Queirazza, Giuliano. (1965-66). Documenti di antico volgare in Piemonte. Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo. Gasca Queirazza, Giuliano. (1996). Un'ipotesi sulla localizzazione dei Sermoni Subalpini. Studi Piemontesi, 25, 105-110. Kayne, Richard S. (1978). Le condizioni sul Legamento, il collocamento dei Clitici e lo spostamento a sinistra dei Quantificatori. Rivista di Grammatica generativa, III.2, 147-171. Kayne, Richard S. (1980). Vers une solution d'un probleme grammatical: *Je 1'ai voulu lire, J'ai tout voulu lire. Langue franc aise, 46, 32-40. Kayne, Richard S. (1991). Romance clitics, verb movement and PRO. Linguistic Inquiry, 22.4, 647-686. Kayne, Richard S. (1993). Towards a modular theory of auxiliary selection. Studia Linguistica, 47, 3-31. Keyser, Samuel Jay. (1978). Recent Transformational Studies in European Languages. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Maffei Bellucci, Patrizia. (1977). Lunigiana (Profilo dei dialetti italiani 9/1). Pisa: Pacini. Morin, Yves-Charles and Marielle St. Amour. (1971). Description historique des constructions infinitives du fran§ais. Recherches Linguistiques a Montreal/Montreal Working Papers in Linguistics, 9, 113-152. Motapanyane, Virginia. (1992). Two Agr-less Constructions in Romanian. Talk delivered at the XVIII Incontro di Grammatica Generativa (Ferrara, 1992).
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Pacotto, Giuseppe, Camillo Brero and Renzo Gandolfo. (1967). La letteratura in piemontese dalle origini al Risorgimento. Torino: Casanova. Pellegrini, Giovan Battista. (1977). Carta dei dialetti d'ltalia. Pisa: Pacini. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1978). Trace Theory and French Syntax. In Keyser 1978 : 65-112. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1989). Verb movement, Universal Grammar and the structure of the IP. Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 365-424. Rizzi, Luigi. (1976a). Ristrutturazione. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, I.I, 1-54. Rizzi, Luigi. (1976b) La Montee du Sujet, le si impersonnel et une regie de restructuration dans la syntaxe italienne. Recherches linguistiques, 4, 158-184. Rizzi, Luigi. (1978). A restructuring rule in Italian syntax. In Keyser 1978 : 113-158. Rohlfs, Gerhard. (1949). Historische Grammatik der Italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten. Bern: Francke. Spitzer, Leo. (1976). Lettere di prigionieri di guerra italiani 1915—1918. Torino: Boringhieri.
5
"PROPULSIVE" TENSES IN MODERN ITALIAN FICTIONAL PROSE
Pier Marco Bertinetto
1
TEMPORAL REFERENCE AND ASPECT IN FICTIONAL PROSE
The use of tenses in literary works has been the object of quite a number of studies, especially since the seminal monograph by Weinrich (1964). It has been known for quite a while that the use of tenses varies with style and type of text. Written, as opposed to oral French, for instance, makes greater use of the Simple Past as compared with the Compound Past (Engel 1996).1 Furthermore, it may easily exhibit gerundial constructions, much less frequent in spoken language, and even the Past Anterior, which is virtually absent from oral usage. By contrast, Supercompound tenses hardly occur in written texts. Very much the same may be said with respect to Italian, making due allowance for the nonexistence of Supercompound tenses (vernacular dialects aside), as well as for regional differences in the respective roles of the Simple and Compound Pasts (Bertinetto & Squartini 1996). Again, in both oral and written communication, ' I wish to thank Mario Squartini for his comments on a previous version of this paper. Throughout this paper I shall use capital letters to designate the various tenses. As a consequence, I shall make a distinction between "Past", as for instance in Simple Past, and "past", as for instance in the expression "past reference". In the key that follows, the abbreviations are illustrated using the relevant forms of the verb amare (the inflected forms are given in the first person singular): CCD CF CGR GIF CP IMP IPF IPT PA PPF PPT
= Compound Conditional (avrei amato) = Compound Future (avro amato) = Compound Gerundive (avendo amato) = Compound Infinitive (avere amato) = Compound Past (ho amato) = Imperative (ama) = Imperfect (amavo) = Imperfective Participle (amante) = Past Anterior (ebbi amato) = Pluperfect (avevo amato) = Perfective Participle (amato)
PR = Present (amo) SCD = Simple Conditional (amerei) SF = Simple Future (amero) SGR = Simple Gerundive (amando) SIF = Simple Infinitive (amare) SP = Simple Past (amai) SJ-CP = Subjunctive Compound Past (abbia amato) SJ-IPF = Subjunctive Imperfect (amassi) SJ-PPF = Subjunctive Pluperfect (avessi amato) SJ-PR = Subjunctive Present (ami)
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Pier Marco Bertinetto
the type of text may heavily influence tense choice: consider for instance the rather special case of summaries and vignettes, studied by Miklic (1991, 1998a, 1998b). This certainly applies to literary texts too, to the extent of course that we may speak of these as clearly identifiable objects. In reality, the notion of literary language is a fairly abstract one, for there is no clearly defined boundary between literary and non-literary language (Fludernik 1996). Indeed, the former may imitate any sort of linguistic usage. If we limit our attention—as I am going to do in this paper — to fictional prose, things improve only slightly, in that novels and short stories are typical arenas of linguistic experimentalism. Indeed, I shall show that even in this restricted domain there is a considerable amount of variation in tense usage. Nevertheless, I believe it does make sense to ask whether some general feature characterizes the use of tenses in fictional prose, just as it is possible to investigate the distinctive features of the system of deictic reference in fiction (Fludernik 1993). One possible characterizing feature might of course be the use of Past tenses as the "core" narrative tense. This observation needs qualification. First, by the notion "core narrative tense" I refer to the "propulsive" function performed by the tenses designating the events that make up the plot. I thus disregard the tenses specifically employed in the descriptive intervals that form the "background" of a narrative. Second, it should be observed that this core role is not performed by any Past tense, but rather by perfective (and more exactly, "aoristic") Pasts, or — in languages with unclear boundaries between the main aspectual categories—by those Past tenses which are typically used in aoristic contexts. Indeed, for reasons that will soon become clear, it is important to stress the aspectual nature of the tenses employed. Bearing this in mind, aoristic Pasts may be said to be the unmarked member in the Past/ non-Past opposition in fictional prose, contrary to what happens in more neutral modes of communication, where the default tense is of course the Present (Bache 1986; Fludernik 1993). This is so because, owing to the modifications in deictic reference occurring in the fictional narrative mode, Past tenses (whether perfective or imperfective) do not convey the notion of pastness with respect to the activity of writing, but are simply part of the literary convention, presupposing the existence of a ficticious "speech time". However, this convention may easily be (indeed often is) abandoned by writers, who occasionally choose to shift the orientation of the tense system from the neutral to a more marked arrangement. This typically occurs when the focus of the narrative shifts from Past to Present, as in the well known and much cited example of the "historical" Present, which is hardly representative, however, as it is often found in oral narratives too. In reality, as I shall show in the following sections, literary texts may go several steps further in subverting the basic convention of the fictional mode, by attributing the core role to other tenses than the aoristic Past. However, this reinforces the conclusion that in fictional prose the temporal
2
By "aoristic" I mean "purely perfective", excluding the "perfect" aspect, which also belongs to the domain of perfectivity. The typical aoristic Past in Romance languages is of course the Simple Past. As to the corresponding English tense, this is much more ambiguous from the aspectual point of view, as we shall see in fn. 4, for it may also be used in contexts where Romance languages would employ the Imperfect (although the primary connotation of the English Simple Past is perfective, in contrast to the Progressive Past; cf. also fn. 3).
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3
coordinates of verbal tenses undergo a dramatic rotation in their basic orientation. As Bache (1986:87) puts it: "in the fictional mode, tense typically undergoes category suspension: the distinction between deictic present and past time is frequently neutralized." The next question to ask ourselves is whether there is a comparable "category suspension" in the domain of Aspect. According again to Bache (1986: 95), this is indeed the case. He bases his conclusion on the fact that the English Simple Past, which in his opinion "is typically perfective in meaning in the normal, referring mode," is "aspectually more unmarked in the fictional mode." In particular, it may convey the effect of "vision from the inside of the event" to be detected in the following example, quoted from John Updike's Marry me (Bache 1986 :94): (1) He climbed the steep dune before him hurriedly, not taking the time to remove his shoes and socks. His panting under the effort of running uphill seemed delicious to him; it was the taste of his renewed youth, his renewed draft of life. Here the event of climbing is seen as it were from the inside, and the psychological state of the character as he climbs is carefully described. Yet, this should not be regarded as a sort of "literary deviation" from the norm. Exactly the same skeleton of tense structure might be found in a spontaneous oral narrative, which might differ only in its degree of lexical and syntactic sophistication.4 On close inspection, it turns out that this must inevitably be the case. The adjustment of the Temporal Reference parameter is hardly surprising in fictional texts, which are essentially based on the reorientation of the deictic axes. However, the aspectual properties of the tenses should
3
This is the appropriate place for a few clarifications concerning the conceptual framework used here. For a thorough illustration of my position, cf. Bertinetto (1986, 1997). First of all, I make a sharp distinction between the notions of Temporal Reference, Aspect and Actionality. The latter concerns the relevant classes of predicates, very much in the sense of Vendler (1967); but since I am not going to deal with Actionality in this paper (for it has no relevance for the problem I am going to address), I shall disregard it here. By Temporal Reference I mean the dimension of specifically temporal information (past, present and future), which is ultimately deictically anchored in the Speech Time. By Aspect I mean the perspective adopted by the speaker. The main aspectual categories are perfective and imperfective, each comprising a number of subcategories. Roughly speaking, the perfective aspect entails an "outer" (or "global") view on the event, while the imperfective aspect involves an "inner" (or "partial") view. For a technical use of these notions, cf. Delfitto & Bertinetto (2000) and Lenci & Bertinetto (2000). Note further that I do not use the term "tense", as is often done, as a synonym for Temporal Reference. In my view this notion stands for the concrete morphological "coalescences" manifesting themselves in each verbal system. Thus, by tense I mean for example the Present, the Simple Past, etc. The important consequence of this view is that each tense, without exception, conveys both temporal and aspectual values; possibly conveying ambivalent values, due to temporal or aspectual neutralization (see for example the situation of the English Simple Past as described in fn. 4). In addition to temporal and aspectual values, a tense may also convey modal values (indeed it necessarily belongs to a given Mood). However, in this paper, I shall not deal with Mood and modality.
4
Note, especially, that the second and third verb are stative. Given the context, they could not possibly appear in any other Past tense. In Romance languages, on the other hand, we would find the Imperfect here. However, in Romance languages even the first verb, though non-stative, would be in the Imperfect rather than in the Simple Past, for the situation is clearly imperfective. Thus, the example proposed by Bache merely shows that the English Simple Past, unlike its morphological equivalents in Romance languages, is aspectually ambiguous, as argued in Bertinetto 1997.
100 Pier Marco Bertinetto not alter, for Aspect is not based on the feature of "deictic orientation", but rather on the notion of "perspective on the event" (cf. fn. 3). I believe that this remark has more general implications. Aspect is on all counts more basic and more stable than Temporal Reference, for it is the first element to emerge in both the filogenetic (Lazzeroni 1980, 1997) and ontogenetic domain (Antinucci & Miller 1986). More specifically, consider indefinite tenses, such as the Infinitive in Italian:5 (2) La signora Isabella piangendo mi confesso SP di tutto cotesto disordine colpa il marito, il quale fittosi in capo di essere ormai sano aveva voluto PPF ad ogni patto si invitassero a colazione certi suoi amici vecchi, ch'egli non aveva piu visto dacche si era messo a letto, ed ella per non inacerbirlo averlo contentato GIF: supporre SIF, anzi credere SIF fermamente, che, gia poco di buono prima, in questo intervallo di tempo cotesti uomini fossero diventati SJ-PPF pessimi; a mani giunte pregarmi SIF la liberassi da loro. (Guerrazzi, // buco nel muro: 125) Here, the Infinitive clearly maintains its aspectual value, as may be inferred from the contrast between the Simple and the Compound Infinitive, whereby the latter preserves its perfective (more precisely, perfectal) meaning and the former conveys imperfective meaning. On the other hand, the temporal information is entirely neutralized and can only be recovered by implication, from the surrounding context. Suppose that rather than under Past tenses (confesso, aveva voluto}, these Infinitives were embedded under Future tenses (confessera, avra voluto): the temporal orientation would change accordingly, but the aspectual interpretation would remain the same.6 Thus, in the semantics of verbal tenses the "perspectival" (or aspectual) dimension seems to be more primordial and resistant than the deictic one, to which the temporal domain is ultimately tied. Indeed, in the fictional mode the whole deictic system undergoes drastic revision. This 11
For the abbreviations, see fn. 1.
6
Mario Squartini has pointed out to me that this may not be accurate, for the reason that the aspectual values of the tenses often appear to be inherently neutralized, and this also seems to be true of the Italian Infinitive. Indeed, just as the Present—imperfective, in its default value—may easily take on perfective values (e.g., in performative contexts), the Simple Infinitive appears to be aspectually ambiguous, as is shown by the following sentences: (i) Mi promise di venire (ii) L'ho visto fumare to me promised of come-lNF him I_have seen smoke-iNF 'S/he promised to me that s/he would come' (perfective) 'I saw him smoking' (imperfective) The actual aspectual value needs to be inferred through the appropriate context. This is certainly true. Nevertheless, I would like to insist that in the Italian Infinitive there is, so to say, a lack of balance between temporal and aspectual values. The former are radically absent, for they could never be inferred without a context. The latter, on the other hand, are preserved to some extent (though somewhat blurred in the case of the Simple Infinitive), for the contrast between Simple and Compound Infinitive is fairly stable. One way of expressing this unbalance might be to say that while the aspectual values may be neutralized in the case of the Simple Infinitive, the temporal values are abolished altogether in both the Simple and the Compound Infinitives. These two tenses never present a default temporal value of their own. Note, now, that the absence of temporal values is a typical feature of all indefinite tenses, such as the (Simple and Compound) Participle and the (Simple and Compound) Gerund. Ultimately, therefore, the relevant fact seems to be that while the temporal values are deeply neutralized, or better abolished altogether, among indefinite tenses, there does not seem to exist a comparable set of tenses in which the aspectual values undergo a similar downgrading.
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mainly affects the temporal domain, but possibly other domains too, such as those of spatial and personal relations (as is typically the case in "free indirect style"). On the other hand, the aspectual dimension, or more precisely the various aspectual perspectives adopted on the single events composing the narrative, remains a basic prerequisite of the verbal tenses in the fictional world. The somewhat paradoxical consequence of this, as we shall see, is that even when the author does not impose a unitary vantage point on the events narrated, the tenses supply a sort of "local" surrogate, by virtue of their own default aspectual endowment. With this in mind, let us now consider the different solutions proposed by Italian writers with regard to the choice of the core narrative tense.
2 SHIFTS IN THE FUNCTION OF "CORE" NARRATIVE TENSE The use of verbal tenses by Italian writers has occasionally been the subject of specific investigations, particularly—though not exclusively—with respect to earlier authors.7 However, while the stylistic characteristics of a number of authors have been described, I am not aware that the use of verbal tenses has ever been said to be of special stylistic relevance in precontemporary literature, apart from the observation that some writers (such as Boccaccio) make use of a fairly complex syntactic structure, where indefinite tenses play a prominent role. The use of the tenses has long been governed by the "rationalistic" view that each tense should be used within its default semantic limits. This is not to say that Italian writers have never departed from the most obvious and conventional tense arrangements. No doubt, they often exploited the "historical" Present metaphor (as Weinrich (1964) views this particular stylistic device). However, no special attempt was made to subvert the basic convention, whereby the Simple Past performed the role of unmarked narrative tense, the Imperfect that of "background" tense, and the Pluperfect that of Past-in-the-past (to name only the most frequently employed tenses). This was especially the case in the early period, when the literary use of these grammatical tools still had to be developed. As Herczeg (1972 : 34, 51) points out, for instance, it was only after the beginning of the 14th century that relatively frequent use began to be made of the Past Anterior. In this respect, the main task of Italian authors up to the 16th century was to develop a sufficiently flexible and precise set of grammatical tools, capable of expressing all the nuances of temporal depth and syntactic embedding necessary for the art of narration. The most conspicuous innovation in contemporary Italian narrative has been the attempt to demote the Simple Past from its traditional "core" function. One obvious means to achieve this was, of course, that of promoting the Compound Past to the core role. Now, it is tempting to refer this phenomenon to the complex sociolinguistic competition between these two Past tenses in spoken Italian (Bertinetto & Squartini 1996).8 However, this is unsatisfactory as an explanation, although there are novels where the prominent role played by the Compound Past does in fact depend on the explicit intention of the writer to adhere to a more or less identifiable Northern variety of the language. One such case is the novel // padrone sono me! by Panzini, 7
Cf. Ageno 1964, Ambrosini 1960-61, Herczeg 1972.
8
For a detailed study of the use and distribution of Simple and Compound Past in Romance, cf. Squartini & Bertinetto 2000.
102 Pier Marco Bertinetto where the colloquial register of the narrating self imitates the language of a person with little schooling from North Italy (who benefits from a completely unexpected opportunity for social advancement). Here a few examples: (3) Una volta s'incapriccio SP dell'asinello che la somara aveva partorito. Appena 1'ha veduto CP con quel musino, e tutto bel tondo col suo bel pelo, che saltava IPF nell'aia, 1'ha voluto. [...] E lei e Robertino si sono messi CP a far la scuola al somarino. Ma appena gli e venuto via CP il pelo da latte, non le e piaciuto CP piu. Robertino poi si e preso CP un calcio che non poteva stare in piedi, e piangeva dal dolore. Panzini, II padrone sono me!: 83 (4) La Dolly si e ricordata CP anche di noi, che ci mando SP un cartone. [. .. ] E ho preso CP il cartoncino e 1'ho inchiodato CP con quattro brocche su 1'uscio. Dopo che si sono sposati CP, lei ha voluto CP fare il giro del mondo, e lui I'haaccontentata CP. Panzini, II padrone sono me!: 107 (5) [... ] poi han fatto CP una processione per la spiaggia del mare e per la borgata cantando le loro canzoni, che e durata CP finche ando SP giu il sole. Panzini, // padrone sono me!: 142 In this novel, the Compound Past is the main propulsive tense, though this role is sometimes performed by the "historical" Present. The occasional reappearance of the Simple Past is only meant to remind us of the standard convention, thus enhancing the innovative character of the style adopted by Panzini. If some of my examples give the impression of a sort of free alternation between Simple and Compound Past, it is because I deliberately selected excerpts where the Simple Past appears; the impression is certainly a false one. However, precisely this phenomenon of relatively free alternation is not infrequently found in other contemporary Italian writers, a usage unexpectedly anticipated in the late 18th century writer Piazza. Other authors that make use of this device include:9 Guerrazzi and Tabucchi, in whom alternation between the two tenses tends not occur at short intervals; Praga, Pavese and Rigoni Stern, where the intervals separating alternate occurrences are very short; and Tarchetti, who occupies a sort of middle ground. It is quite clear, in any case, that the free alternation of Simple and Compound Past has more to do with the renewal of the morphosyntactic repertoire, than with mimetic aims inspired by oral usage. No variety of Italian does in fact admit unrestricted oscillation between the two Pasts. A fairly special case is that of Dacia Maraini's La lunga vita ..., which features a radical demotion of the Simple Past. Interestingly, this tense appears here almost exclusively in direct speech (e.g., pp. 56, 65, 111, 112), a fact that reverses the traditional literary convention, but corresponds to the speech of Southern Italians (the novel is set in Sicily, and the author is herself of Southern origin). Otherwise — but I found very few examples of this sort — this tense is used to outline a self-contained story embedded in the main plot, such as that of the ancestors of the Ucria family told on pp. 51-52. Apart from such exceptions, the function of propulsive 9
These data are taken from an unpublished study of mine, analysing the usage of Simple and Compound Pasts by 19th and 20th centuries writers. Needless to say, the range of usages to be found in the authors consulted is much wider and multifarious than suggested by these brief remarks, but this is sufficient for my present purposes.
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tense is performed by the Present or the Compound Past. It should be pointed out that this choice determines a systematic ambiguity in the Compound Past, which fulfils the roles both of "core" narrative tense and of Past with respect to the Present (the latter being a perfectly standard attribute of the Compound Past). Needless to say, the solution adopted is perfectly adequate to render the peculiar psychological atmosphere of the novel, in which the main character is a woman who has become totally deaf to external sounds and voices.10 This leads us to those narrative texts that adopt the Present as the main (although by no means the only) propulsive tense. This is, of course, not unique to modern Italian literature. Similar examples are also found in other literary traditions. This has the appearance of a development which the art (or craftmanship) of narrative had necessarily to go through, whatever the language or the cultural background.11 Since the term "epic" Present has been coined to designate this particular use of the tense (Stanzel 1981),! shall retain it here for convenience, although it should not be taken literally. For the "epic" Present may sometimes take on a lyric flavour, as in Buzzati's II deserto dei Tartari, where it is often employed to introduce reflective passages, or the narrator's somewhat compassionate comments on the main character's pitiful situation. This creates a very close perspective on his psychological state; a sort of emotive underlining of his feelings. Needless to say, this should not be confused with the traditional "historical" Present; indeed, this use of the Present tense could not possibly be translated into the aoristic Past. Similar, though somewhat different, are Rigoni Stern's // sergente nella neve and Primo Levi's Se questo e un uomo.12 It should not go unnoticed that both these works are autobiographic memoirs rather than novels in the usual sense. In both texts the repeated use of the Present has the effect of annulling the perception of space and time, which in Levi accompanies the loss of individual identity, and in Rigoni Stern expresses the fear, pain and exhaustion experienced by the narrating self. Although here the Simple Past is not completely demoted from its traditional propulsive function, as in the novel by Maraini cited above, it certainly plays a minor role.
3 ON THE "STRATEGIC" USE OF THE TENSES (WITH REMARKS ON THE "AORISTIC" PLUPERFECT) The works just mentioned provide a convenient bridge to the next phenomenon I wish to consider. I cited them as instances of texts where a tense other than the Simple Past — the prototypical aoristic Past — is selected for the "core" narrative function. However, they should also be regarded (to some extent at least) as instances of texts where verbal tenses often tend to be employed with the purpose of delimiting separate narrative sections. Indeed, as noted above, the "epic" Present alternates with other tenses, most frequently the Compound Past, but also (to a 10
Marianna Ucria, however, is strangely capable of "hearing" the thoughts of the people around her; which I am afraid severely reduces the artistic quality of the novel. However, I would like to stress that my purpose here is not to discuss the literary value of the works examined, but simply to analyse one relevant aspect of literary language.
" This phenomenon has been studied by a number of scholars; for some references cf. Fludernik 1993, and in particular Fludernik 1991, 1992. 12
For an analysis of the use of the Present in modern Italian literature, cf. Bertinetto 1993.
104 Pier Marco Bertinetto lesser extent) the Simple Past and (still less often) the Pluperfect. I shall call this the "strategic" use of verbal tenses: strategic in the sense that the tenses are meant to partition the narrative into distinct diegetic portions, each with its own "colour". This clearly does not imply that the correspondence between the tense shifts and the boundaries of each episode are always perfect. The shifts may also occur (when indeed they do) in the neighbourhood of — rather than at — these boundaries. For the purpose of this study, it should be stressed that the ultimate result of this procedure is that the various tenses lose part of their inherent semantic force. Rather than their intrinsic temporal-aspectual meaning, what comes to the fore is the transition between the textual sections they contribute to highlight. The novel by Maraini cited earlier is again a case in point. The Pluperfect here occasionally has the traditional role of delimiting a flash-back (e.g., pp. 16-17, 31-34, 103-104). Yet there are also more complex situations, such as in chapter 8 (pp. 37-42), where most of the narration is cast in the Pluperfect (with Imperfects interspersed here and there), while the last section features a shift towards the Present, and the Compound Past reappears at the very end. Again, in chapter 9 (pp. 44-49) the backbone of the narrative is in the Compound Past, interrupted by a flash-back section in the Pluperfect and a story-in-the-story cast in the Simple Past. The strategy of the author appears to be quite explicit: the "core" narrative function is alternatively assigned — in decreasing order of preference—to the Compound Past, the Present and the Pluperfect (never to the Simple Past, as noted above), thus creating an effect of variatio. Another example of the strategic use of the tenses is Umberto Eco's L'isola del giorno prima, although the procedure is far from systematic here. Indeed, Eco alternates sections characterized by a fairly traditional system of temporal reference with others where this new technique is exploited. We thus find the following sequence, for instance: first, a story-in-the-story cast in the "narrative" Imperfect (pp. 52-55, fairly unusual, considering that this grammatical device is normally employed for very brief stretches); then, immediately after this, an episode belonging to the main line of the plot (pp. 56-58) where the author shifts to what I propose calling "aoristic" Pluperfect.13 Another relevant example is a battle episode narrated in the Pluperfect (pp. 69-71), sandwiched by sections narrated in the Simple Past. Incidentally, as this last remark suggests, this text does not totally exclude the Simple Past from the "core" function, as was the case in Maraini's novel. Yet this tense obviously has to compete with others, most notably the Pluperfect. The following passage features the rapid alternation of the two tenses, which might be regarded as a special case of the "strategic" technique. Indeed, the quick succession of competing tenses is yet another way of characterizing a given diegetic section and assigning it a specific "colour": (6) Ma se ho visto proprio ieri un girifalco divorarsi un topo volante! lo sto popolando PRProg una stiva che non ho ancora visitato CP e lo faccio PR forse per rassicurarmi, visto che mi atterrisce trovarmi abbandonato tra cielo e mare. Signor Roberto de la Grive, s[ ripeteva IFF, tu sei solo e solo potresti rimanere sino alia fine dei tuoi giorni, e questa fine 13
By "aoristic" Pluperfect I mean the use of this tense as a possible substitute of the Simple Past, rather than as a true Past-in-the-past. Example (6) below provides an illustration of this phenomenon. This matter is discussed at length in Bertinetto 1999.
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potrebbe anche esser prossima: il cibo a bordo e PR molto, ma per settimane e non per mesi. E dunque va' IMP piuttosto a mettere sul ponte qualche recipiente per raccogliere piu acqua piovana che puoi, e impara IMP a pescare da sopra bordo, sopportando il sole. E un giorno o 1'altro dovrai SF trovar modo di raggiungere 1'Isola, e viverci come unico abitante. A questo devi IMP pensare, e non a storie d'intrusi e di ferranti. Aveva raccolto PPF dei barili vuoti e li aveva disposti PPF sul cassero, sopportando la luce filtrata dalle nubi. Si accorse SP nel far questo lavoro che era ancora molto fiacco. Era ridisceso PPF, aveva colmato PPF di cibo gli animali (forse affinche qualcun altro non fosse tentato di farlo in vece sua), e aveva rinunciato PPF ancora una volta a scendere piu in basso. Era rientrato PPF, passando alcune ore sdraiato, mentre la pioggia non accennava a scemare. Ci fu SP qualche colpo di vento, e per la prima volta si rese SP conto di essere su di una casa natante, che si muoveva come una cuna, mentre uno sbattito di portelli rendeva viva 1'ampia mole di quel grembo boscoso. Apprezzo SP quest'ultima metafora e si chiese SP come padre Emanuele avrebbe letto la nave quale fonte di Divise Enigmatiche. Poi penso SP all'Isola e la definl SP come irraggiungibile prossimita. II bel concetto gli mostro, SP per la seconda volta nella giornata, la dissimile somiglianza tra 1'Isola e la Signora, e veglio SP sino a notte a scriverle quello che sono riuscito CP a trarne in questo capitolo. *
La Daphne aveva beccheggiato PPF per tutta la notte, e il suo moto, con quello ondoso della baia, si era quetato PPF di primissimo mattino. Roberto aveva scorto PPF dalla finestra i segni di un'alba fredda ma limpida. Ricordandosi di quella Iperbole degli Occhi rievocata il giorno precedente, si disse SP che avrebbe potuto CCD osservare la riva con il cannocchiale che aveva visto PPF nella camera accanto: il bordo stesso della lente e la scena limitata gli avrebbero attenuate CCD i riflessi solari. Eco, L'isola del giorno prima: 94-95 The basic structure of the passage may be described as follows. First, there is a part in "free direct speech", cast in the Present and the Imperative. The Simple Past si accorse then precedes a section in the Pluperfect (see the second paragraph, introduced by the "explicative" Pluperfects aveva raccolto and aveva disposti). This is followed by a section in the Simple Past, closed by the "metalectic"14 Compound Past sono riuscito. The passage concludes with a section narrated in the "aoristic" Pluperfect. As may be seen, most of the Pluperfects in this passage could easily be substituted by a Simple Past, for they do not refer to a preceding situation, but merely point to events situated on the main line of the plot. The "aoristic" Pluperfect represents indeed an alternative propulsive tense for many modern Italian writers.
14
By "metalexis", a term proposed by Gerard Genette, I mean the phenomenon by which the author (or, as here, the narrating self) refers to his existential situation, as distinct from the narrative plane.
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4 THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNITARY TEMPORAL-ASPECTUAL PERSPECTIVE The last phenomenon I would like to consider is the chaotic mixing of the tenses, rightly viewed as that which clashes most with traditional narrative conventions. It might be thought a natural development of the preceding phenomenon. However, the difference between the two is remarkable. The previous example featured the alternation of two perfective tenses (Simple Past and Pluperfect) in the "core" function. This is no doubt a violation of the received tradition, but seems nonetheless justified by a growing tendency towards a purely "aoristic" reading of the Pluperfect even in oral usage. In the texts reported below, we find a much more radical solution, where the very essence of the aspectual relationships between the events of the plot is affected. Yet before looking at the relevant examples, let me clarify what this phenomenon is not about, by presenting a few instances which superficially resemble, but should not be confused with it: (7) Quanto piu ci accostavamo IPF alle nostre parti tanto piu si mostrava IPF discrete: si era pero trovato PPF co' fratelli Bandiera, ma per amore di Dio non lo dicessero SJ-IPF; nelle cinque giornate di Milano egli fu SP la mano destra di Carlo Cattaneo; ma avendo preso CGR cura d'imbrattarsi il viso non era stato riconosciuto PPF da nessuno. Si afferma PR sviscerato di Kossuth; fratello di Mazzini; di quei di Francia non si discorre PR ne manco. Donde viene PR egli ? Secondo i paesi dove si trova PR muta PR polo. In Ispagna fu SP italiano, in Italia spagnuolo, ma a volta a volta ora esce PR di Sassonia, ora di Moldavia, ora di Vallachia; e non lo tradiscono PR i costumi, ne la favella, perche fantino fu SP tratto di casa, e i genitori lo lasciarono SP presto orfano, e poi la lingua francese e If per torre PR via ogni originalita, come il bianco di calce per imbiancare qualunque segno sopra la parete. Per quale diavoleria, con tutte queste cose, che io dico PR, e molto piu, con quelle che io taccio PR, egli sia stato SJ-CP, e si rimanga SJ-PR a Milano, pare proprio un miracolo, e miracolo maggiore, che la polizia non abbia preso SJ-CP [... ] Guerrazzi, // buco nel mum: 78 (8) II figlio, nel suo dolore, vide SP una sposa degli anni del Presidente Uguirre, quando c'era IPF ancora il tram a cavalli, e il marito, con il brillio de' presenti, indurla SIF ad arrossire SIF di gioia, a sorridere SIF. Viva delle sue speranze, ella si rivolgeva IPF agli anni della vita, interrogava IPF con il fiore tremante della persona il caldo alito del future. Ma le vecchie, nelle buie contrade dell'inverno, gli si strappano PR i brillanti dai lobi. (I morti figli non le difendono PR assorti, immemori, sotto alle croci della Cordillera). La povera persona loro, da cui lo strazio del parto s'e scancellato CP, e lo strazio della morte incurva PR, debilitata, non merita PR perle. Nel buio un letamaio si spalanca PR. Gadda, La cognizione del dolore: 103-104 (9) "Non ha voluto CP fermarsi," rispose SP all'uomo che gli si era seduto PPF accanto. "Gli ho detto CP che saresti venuto CCD." "Non importa," disse SP. "Con tutto il casino che si prepara PR verra SF certo al giornale." Giovanni teneva IPF le mani sul tavolo e le strisciava IPF sul piano, la testa era IPF china.
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Non si era mosso PPF, anche quando gli altri s'erano alzati PPF o quando il suo vicino si era seduto PPF accanto. "Credi lo sappia?" domando SP voltandosi. [...] "lo comunque 1'ho scritto CP al fratello in Italia," aggiunse SP. Sull'altro lato del viale un gruppo di agenti s'eraaddossato PPF contro la casa grigia. Lombardi, Barcelona: 34 Even a superficial glance reveals the presence of quite a number of different tenses within a very short textual space. Example (7) exhibits the following tenses: Present, Imperfect, Simple Past, Pluperfect, Subj-Present, Subj-Compound Past, Subj-Imperfect, Compound Gerundive. Example (8), on the other hand, contains instances of Present, Imperfect, Simple Past, Compound Past, Pluperfect, Simple Infinitive. Lastly, example (9) presents a succession of Present, Imperfect, Simple Past, Compound Past, Pluperfect, Simple Future, Compound Conditional. However, each tense is selected on precisely identifiable and fairly "logical" grounds. Each stands for what it really is, within its default semantics. This is therefore a fairly straightforward instance of the received narrative technique, designed for achieving the greatest possible subtlety in the temporal arrangement of the events. Consider now the following passage: (10) L'auto era IPF fredda e fu SP-1 necessario scaldarla, poi guido SP-2 veloce in una luminosita crescente che sbiadiva IPF via via il riverbero dei fari, in una nebbia prima avvolgente poi smagliata; dopo un paio di chilometri si e fermato CP-3 a Echenevex, a un caffe d'angolo. Scendendo SGR si accorse SP-4 di avere ancora al bavero della giacca la piastrina del film-badge per le radiazioni. Apri SP-5 la molletta, la tolse SP-6, la mise SP-7 in tasca. Mangiava IPF-8 un croissant, beveva IPF-9 caffe caldo, disse SP-10 qualcosa al gestore che conosceva, e 1'altro rispose SP-11: «Si, lei e io ci diamo PR il cambio sulla linea del sonno». Ogni tanto con la tazza e il croissant si affaccia PR-12 alia vetrina e guarda PR-13 sul marciapiede opposto poche persone in attesa del primo autobus, nella compostezza del risveglio. Ha attraversato CP-14 in poco tempo Chevry, Verax, Bretigny e Prevessin, dove le case sparse qua e la nella campagna francese si condensavano IPF in paesi filiformi ai bordi della strada; arrivo SP-15 a Ferney-Voltaire in quella falsa ora in cui la luce e gia compiuta CP ma non c'e ancora il sole. Anche il silenzio, in casa, e PR-16 il silenzio mobile e sottile degli altri che dormono PR. E salito CP-17 all'ultimo piano e sul tavolo del suo studio ha trovato CP-18 il biglietto di Eileen, diceva IPF: «Cesare e Palmiro in arrivo dall'Italia con la mozzarella. Vengono PR per un brunch. Vuoi PR essere svegliato?» Ha guardato CP-19 la calligrafia tutta in salita di Eileen; e sceso CP-20 giu in cucina al piano terra e sulla lavagnetta ha scritto CP-21 SVEGLIATEMI!!! Cerco SP-22 un desiderio, un qualunque desiderio per addormentarsi, o almeno un'immagine senza significato; si era steso PPF-23 sul divano togliendosi la giacca, ma come chiudeva IPF-24 gli occhi tornavano IPF-25 le visualizzazioni con le tracce, quasi dei fosfeni. Cerco SP-26 la solidita degli oggetti [... ] Del Giudice, Atlante occidentale: 22-23
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To clarify the point, I have numbered the tenses that constitute, or may constitute (see below), the propulsive thread of the narrative. I thus ignore the tenses which clearly fulfill a background function, such as the descriptive use of the Imperfect (si condensavano), or the omnitemporal uses of the Compound Past (e compiutd). Nor do I consider the tenses employed in direct speech, which are obviously on a different plane. The episode opens with the Simple Past (nos. 1-2), shifts to the Compound Past (no. 3) and returns to the Simple Past (nos. 4-7). Then we have a short sequence of Imperfects (nos. 8-9), which might perform a background role but may also — as is probably the case here — belong to the propulsive thread (indeed, they might not implausibly be replaced by a perfective past tense). After this, we have the following shifts in rapid succession: Simple Past (nos. 10-11), Present (nos. 12-13), Compound Past (no. 14), Simple Past (no. 15), Present (no. 16), Compound Past (nos. 17-18). Finally, we have the sequence Compound Past (nos. 19-21), Simple Past (no. 22), Pluperfect (no. 23), Imperfect (nos. 24-25; the remarks relative to nos. 8-9 apply here too) and Simple Past (no. 26). It is quite evident that the author consciously wishes to break the rules. Instead of entrusting the "core" function to the prototypical aoristic tense — the Simple Past — with the possible cooperation of another tense for the sake of variatio (typically the "historical" Present, but also the Pluperfect), he opts for a blend that defies our attempt to reconstruct a coherent temporalaspectual perspective. This statement needs qualification. I am not suggesting that the aspectual values conveyed by the tenses in this text are randomly assigned; on the contrary, each seems to possess its own default value. A moment's reflection suggests that this is quite natural. In order to produce an actual deviation from the norm, the author should provide a consistent overall structure; indeed, we need a firm ground to appreciate the unusual. However, this is not the case here: there is no consistent overall aspectual perspective. The result is that each tense has to be taken on its own prototypical meaning, without reference to a reassuring general frame. To say it differently, a deviation from the norm is necessarily a "local" phenomenon, to be perceived against a recognizable background. If the background is fuzzy, we have no other chance but to take each detail in its own terms. This is what features the strong sense of disruption in the aspectual organization of the passage; by putting together the continuously changing aspectual perspectives, we cannot reconstruct a consistent view. I shall return to this point. Let us first read another typical passage from the same novel. I leave to the reader the task of reconstructing the interplay of the various tenses performing the "core" narrative function, merely indicating them for convenience by means of double underlining: (11) Risali SP la pista verso 1'hangar, veloce; il sole basso del mattino, prima di spalle, orag PR di faccia, appena diaframmato e scurito dal passaggio dell'elica. Correva IPF abbastanza, ogni tanto sollevava IPF il ruotino di dietro e subito rallentava IPF per rimetterlo giu; cosf e PR come andare in macchina, ma non si puo PR accelerare, le ali sono PR di ingombro, la posizione scomoda. Gli sembrava IPF che il campo non finisse SJ-IPF mai. Sulla piazzola di cemento, quando ha chiuso CP tutto ed e saltato CP giu, il meccanico ha sollevato CP la testa dal motore che stava riparando Prog-IPF, ha detto CP: «Ha gia finito CP Monsieur Brahe?» Lo ha detto CP col francese duro di tutti gli svizzeri. «Non ho nemmeno cominciato CP», ha risposto CP il giovane.
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II meccanico e sceso CP dalla piccola scaletta pulendosi SGR le mani. Si e avvicinato CP a Brahe, chino accanto al carrello; il giovane passava IPF la mano sulla forcella come sui garretti di un animale, si spostava IPF traguardando SGR per vedere se era IPF in asse con quell'altra. «Problemi ?» ha detto CP il meccanico chinandosi SGR accanto a lui. «Ho preso CP un colpo.» Sfiorava IPF il metallo con le dita, cercava IPF un rilievo o una piegatura: «Chi e PR che esce con uno Zlin bianco ?» L'uomo in tuta si e girato CP verso 1'hangar, controllando SGR mentalmente gli aerei allineati nella semioscurita, individuando SGR il posto vuoto: «Non e PR da noleggio, e PR di proprieta. Dev' PR essere qualcuno che viene PR a volare molto presto al mattino.» «Piu presto di me?» «Eh, si,—sorrise SP il meccanico,—molto presto.» [...] Brahe si e rialzato CP in piedi, ascoltando SGR il meccanico con le mani in tasca, guardando SGR ancora il carrello. Ha detto CP: « Credo PR che non sia SJ-PR successo nulla, pero sarebbe CD-PR meglio controllare.» Era IPF troppo teso per spiegazioni o gentilezze, e poi avvertiva IPF un dolore sempre piu netto all'insellatura delle spalle, dove le cinghie 10 avevano trattenuto PPF. II meccanico ha appoggiato CP le mani sull'ala e ha spinto CP verso il basso, piegandosi SGR di lato per vedere come scorreva IPF il braccio telescopico. Ha detto CP che certamente era IPF suo compito controllare meglio il carrello e lo avrebbe controllato CCD subito, appena tomato da Ginevra dove stava andando Prog-IPF a prendere dei pezzi di ricambio; comincio SP a sbottonare la tuta che scivolo SP ai piedi, arricciandosi SGR attorno ai pantaloni di tela grigia che aveva IPF sotto. Ricordo SP a Brahe che dalla signorina del noleggio avrebbe potuto CCD farsi restituire non tutto il denaro, ma almeno i soldi del carburante non consumato. Poi sail SP su un furgone giallo con lo sportello scorrevole lasciato aperto; saluto SP e span SP verso 1'uscita. Soltanto allora lo Zlin riapparve SP sul campo, in cerchi ampi e lenti, con un rumore monotono; cosi lento da sembrare fermo, in attesa che la terra ruotando SGR salisse SJ-IPF fino a sfiorare il carrello, mettendolo SGR in moto, cosi alto che per Brahe era IPF difficile stabilire se il centro di quelle rotazioni fosse SJ-IPF genericamente il campo o in qualche modo lui stesso. Ando SP in mezzo alia pista e si fermo SP a braccia conserte tra 1'erba rasa, tra due file parallele di lucciole spente piantate a terra. Guardava IPF 1'aereo con la testa all'insu, lo guardava IPF con intenzione; era IPF impossibile che 1'altro non lo vedesse SJ-IPF, com'era IPF impossibile in fondo che non 1'avesse visto SJ-PPF prima. 11 futuro per Ira Epstein era stato PPF sempre cio che vedeva IPF dall'alto in quel momento: una proporzione diversa di toni verdi e toni grigi, piu campi e alberi e meno strutture a vista; un farsi piccolo e potente e indistinguibile di cio che era IPF artificiale, qua e la una sporgenza di alluminio o di cemento che spuntava IPF da terra, netta e pulita come un periscopio. II futuro era IPF minore ingombro, uno stacco placato, e una diversa consistenza. Girando SGR alto vedeva IPF il lago e la grande citta ordinata ai piedi del Giura, montagna che ad ogni giro arrivava IPF a sfiorare in cresta. Quand'era IPF nel lato opposto della circonferenza, la citta si addensava IPF al centro fino alia verticalita dei grattacieli, poi diradava IPF orizzontalmente in ville sparpagliate ai bordi. Pensava IPF alle citta in cui era vissuto PPF, alle citta che aveva immaginato PPF e raccontato PPF; a come quelle citta avessero avuto SJ-PPF ciascuna un proprio carattere che si era sforzato PPF di sentire, a come invece adesso fossero SJ-IPF piu o meno tutte uguali e solo il carattere delle persone gli sembrasse SJ-IPF mutevole, e importante. Teneva IPF 1'aereo piegato di appena
110 Pier Marco Bertinetto qualche grado, girava IFF al minimo del sostentamento, in una vibrazione leggera. Forse abitare in una citta cosi poco definita e neutra, e per questo internazionale, costringeva IFF anche le persone a essere piu in gioco. A un quarto del suo giro guardo SP il campo d'aviazione e 1'hangar; era IFF incredibile che tra poco potesse SJ-IPF rientrare con tutto 1'aereo in quel mezzo cilindro che dall'alto sembrava IFF cosi piccolo; guardo SP la pista, e la figura che si allontanava IFF dalla pista verso 1'edificio centrale, con la testa all'insu. Sul cruscotto 1'indice del carburante e appena a meta. Penso SP: «Perche non dovrei SCD farmi un altro giretto?» Del Giudice, Atlante occidentale: 4-6 In this passage, the plot is carried forward by means of the Simple and Compound Past, with marginal use of the Present. This requires some comment. This appears to repeat the solution found in examples (3)-(5), characterized by the alternation of Simple and Compound tenses. However, the difference is considerable. In the earlier examples, there is a sort of "local" competition between these two tenses, which may be unusual as compared with the grammatical norm, but by no means corresponds to a s ystematic blurring of the temporal-aspectual perspective. In the present example, on the other hand, the point of observation is radically relativized. The systematic shift from Simple to Compound Past, and vice versa, implies continuous reorientation of the observer, making the vantage point adopted by the writer constantly ambiguous. This may at any moment, and in the most capricious way, oscillate between the aoristic perspective implicit in the Simple Past and the perfectal perspective entailed in the canonical use of the Compound Past conceived as "Past-in-the-present". And since we know that this is a fictional text, this produces a striking contrast between the unmarked aspectual view conveyed by the Simple Past, whereby the thread of events is—so to say—seen from a distance, and the highly marked pespective created by the Compound Past, which suggests a sort of ficticious "current relevance" of the event, a situation we normally associate with diaries rather than with fictional narratives. This statement may be found surprising, given that a purely aoristic reading of the Compound Past is perfectly possible in modern literature (see section 2). Yet this is precisely the effect produced in the examples under analysis. I offer the following explanation. In most cases where we have an alternation between Simple and Compound Past, as in examples (3)-(5), the narrative is based on a clearly identifiable "core" tense, which (apart from the frequent introduction of the Present) may be either the Simple or (more rarely) the Compound Past, but which is nevertheless always easily discernible. The occasional shift to the competing Past tense is thus perceived as a stylistic effect, an instance of variatio, which does not affect the basic linguistic texture. In example (11), on the other hand, there is no "core" tense providing a stable, or at least dominant, vantage point. The reader is rather kept in a state of permanent uncertainty. In this situation, the Compound Past cannot be interpreted as a purely aoristic tense, for this would presuppose that it play either the "core" role, or a very marginal and subordinate one. As a consequence, this tense largely recovers its basic aspectual properties as perfect tense (still alive in Contemporary Italian, cf. Bertinetto & Squartini 1996), based on the notion of "current relevance" (in the broad sense of this term). The technique employed by Del Giudice represents an extreme, but by no means unique case. A text yielding similar examples is Busi's Vita standard ..., although this novel is less consistent in the use of this procedure, for it also contains sections of relatively ordinary temporal arrangement, where the "core" function is mostly performed by the Present (definitely not by the
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Simple Past). However, in the relevant passages, the oscillation between Simple and Compound Past produces essentially the same effect as that described above, for neither of these tenses plays the "core" role. Consider the following examples: (12) La camera e la piu grande delFappartamento e lui ci sta PR da solo; ci sono PR studenti ammassati in due camere piu piccole della sua. Angelo, di preferenza, non poteva IFF convivere. E cosi, visti i suoi ventinove anni, con la complicita della dolcissima Adele, la governante (alia quale lui tiene PR conferenze su come educare i figli in caso salti SJPR fuori che siano particolari - lei ascolta PR, porporina in viso, col manico della scopa conficcato in una guancia e deglutisce PR tutta quella sapienza), gli e stato riservato CP un trattamento di riguardo. Ha dichiarato CP la pensione accumulativa dei suoi genitori, lo stato di famiglia dice PR che loro tre sono assieme PR: mai stati, in verita, ma lui ha PR un posto letto da suo fratello, dove la vecchia coppia di cagna e gatto e andata CP a abitare (ma sembra che lei abbia SJ-PR dei risparmi da parte e stia cercando SJ-PR-Prog una cuccia per tutti e tre), e allora risulta che, non avendo mai fatto passaggio di residenza, non avendo occupazione fissa, lui ruba PR il pane di bocca a due pensioni minime. E andato CP gia tre volte a Parigi a fare il venditore di pret-a-porter, e per risparmiare sull'albergo s'e comprato CP un sacco a pelo e ogni volta. per la durata del «Salon», ha dormito CP nell'ascensore di servizio di cui aveva IPF la chiavetta. Un ascensore di servizio ha tutti i comfort inimmaginabili per la notte, cioe, l'illuminazione. Aveva messo PPF a punto sul piancito altri due esami minori. Al mattino sveglia automatica con prima chiamata del magazziniere. Poi, e andato CP qualche volta in Austria per una ditta di zoccoli di legno. Poi piu, era come andare a Samo coi vasi. L'anno prima e andato CP in Trentino con Abdul a raccogliere le mele, ma per poco. Siccome s'era messo PPF a cantare e insieme a lui tutti quelli del suo gruppo — distinti post-sessantottini, poiche gli ex si sono tutti sistemati negli uffici della Croce Rossa, nel Dipartimento Sviluppo Agricolo, etcetera—, e venuto CP il sorvegliante, uno fresco del '77, che a sentire canzoni tipo Vecchio scarpone, Ritorneranno i bei colon, etc., ha detto CP, «cos'e tutto questo baccano, non vi pagano mica per cantare.» E Angelo ha gridato CP perche tutti sentissero bene, «ma come, ma se ci hai detto che ci davano la paga sindacale, quattromila all'ora, ma informati bene, kapo, sono cinquemila e duecento, e non vuoi neanche lasciarci cantare? mica possiamo staccarle anche con la bocca!» «C'hai la lingua lunga, te» ha risposto CP quello «e a me kapo non lo dici, capito? andare andare staccare staccare!» E Angelo a squarciagola, «faremo un corso serale per focomelici. cosi impariamo a raccoglierle anche coi piedi, va bene?» E cantando sul camion Bel padru dele bele braghe blanche, diede SP addio a quei lavori concordati con la Regione a sostegno dell'occupazione giovanile. In quell'affare di mele e paradisi occupazionali e alberi della conoscenza, era sempre il serpente a avere la peggio. In Valsugana, tre mesi fa, ha resistito CP tre giorni alia raccolta delle ciliege. Le ciliege sono frutti dell'infanzia povera e avida e timida: non si puo raccoglierle e basta, era stato PPF piu forte di lui. Ha dovuto CP frenare la dissenteria con un pezzettino di oppio grezzo, proprio come gli e successo CP a New York due anni fa. Benedetti gli africani e i Testimoni di Geova, che non gli manca mai niente. Busi, Vita standard . . . : 38-39
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(13) Subito dopo Rosenheim, Lometto aveva fermato PPF la sua diesel transatlantica su un piazzale coperto di betulle e, aperto il cofano aveva estratto PPF uno sballottamento di uova sode in un sacchetto di plastica. Da un altro, da fornaio, un salame ben strigliato e un bottiglione di vino. Durante il viaggio, Lometto, per far assaporare la piacevolezza deH'impianto d'aria condizionata, ha fatto CP in modo di portarla a un grado tale da costringere Angelo a mettersi sopra le ginocchia un plaid che era 11 e che sa di stallino. La conversazione si e mantenuta CP sulle Generali: polizze, furti in macchina, antiincendio, etc. Lometto e Nicola, davanti, mollemente, hanno PR una resistenza invidiabile nel non scegliere nessun tema e girarci attorno per ore senza stancarsi. Angelo non ha PR piu voglia di stare gobboni in avanti a ascoltare ineffabilita da scemenza massonica. Fra i due soci c'e PR un'accidia sotterranea, un'allegria agra quando ridono PR su una certa serata in cui la sgraziata prestazione di una tailandese a Francoforte s'erisolta CP con un bruciore durato quindici giorni. Le scuse che dovette SP inventare con la fidanzata. Lometto che riporta PR appena puo il discorso sui collant, e se la percentuale di Nicola per presentargli due clienti non debba SJ-PR essere condizionata da/a patto che/nella misura in cui. Nicola ha sospirato CP il dovuto, ha concesso CP qualcosa, ha chiesto CP in cambio qualcos'altro, una garanzia per il future. Lometto vuole PR sapere da Angelo cosa significano le scritte sulla segnaletica, e loro due sono PR al punto di prima: Nicola che ripropone PR il tema del suo motoscafo scoperto. Busi, Vita standard . . . : 48-49 My condition of witness — rather than judge — prevents me from taking a stand on the question of the aesthetic results obtained by this unconventional orchestration of the tenses, a responsibility I am happy to renounce especially with regard to this last text. It should also be said, in this connection, that my corpus of examples was not collected with the intention of including the most conspicuous literary works, but simply of assembling a representative selection of fictional prose from the last two centuries. To come back to the main issue, let me say something obvious. It is no coincidence that the very peculiar stylistic procedure analysed in this section has been devised in the twentieth century. The dissolution of the temporal-aspectual perspective reflects the attempts of contemporary writers to convey the existential uneasiness of men and women in modern society. And it is no wonder, given the fundamental role of time in human experience, that this uneasiness, or alienation, embraces the very perception of our relation to the events that make up the flow of time.
5
CONCLUSIONS
The argument pursued in this paper may be summarized as follows. The grammatical conventions developed by Italian writers of fiction in the course of the past few centuries, consisting in a fairly "natural" or "logical" arrangement of the temporal relationships between events, have undergone thorough revision in the course of the twentieth century. First, we saw the not infrequent "local" shifts in "core" function from the Simple Past to other tenses, such as the "epic" Present, the Compound Past or even (although to a lesser extent) the Pluperfect. As far as the latter two tenses are concerned, this innovation obviously presupposes an advanced stage of aoristicization of these tenses in the spoken language (for the relevant varieties of Italian). Second, we noted
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the emergence of a "strategic" use of the tenses, consisting in the more or less systematic deployment of different tenses to obtain a given "colour" in specific sections of the narrative. Finally, we found examples betraying the attempt, on the part of certain authors, to render the sense of disorientation afflicting contemporary men and women, through the dissolution of the unitary temporal-aspectual perspective from which the events are observed. This looks like a sort of "crescendo". Needless to say, it is impossible to state how definitive the last solution will be, for the absence of a precisely identifiable perspective constitutes a hard challenge for the reader. Yet there is little doubt that the undisputed dominance of the Simple Past, as the unmarked narrative tense, has been called into question. The search for viable alternatives to the received convention has become an inescapable issue for modern writers. Viewed against the background of traditional narrative techniques, the various solutions analysed in this paper might appear different instances of "deviation from the norm". However, this poses serious problems of interpretation. The question that immediately arises is: what is the norm contemporary writers start from? To some extent, it must be the old one, still alive to a considerable degree, as witnessed by the far from negligible number of modern writers that adopt it (such as Vittorini, Pavese, Tomasi di Lampedusa, Moravia, Calvino, Cassola, D'Arzo, Sciascia, to name just a few). However, it is also possible that the example of various "deviant" twentieth century works may now offer a more stratified image of the norm. If Francis Bacon is right in saying that literature is "a kind of contract of error between the deliverer and the receiver,"15 there is little doubt that the definition of the literary norm is one of the essential aspects, probably the most complex, of this "contract". The calling into question of the undisputed dominance of a single unmarked narrative tense (the aoristic Past), the adoption of "strategic" procedures in the build-up of the narrative texture, and above all the abolition of the unique perspective point, all suggest an explicitly multi-level structuring of the narrative, which allows for permanent ambiguity in the perception of the narrative focus. As Fludernik (1996) notes, this is one of the most pervasive characteristics of modern fictional prose, as shown for instance by the frequent use — and multiple manifestations — of free indirect speech. No doubt, the following provocative remark by Roland Barthes retains all its value: "Interpreter un texte ce n'est pas lui donner un sens (plus ou moins fonde, plus ou moins libre), c'est au contraire apprecier de quel pluriel il est fait" (S/Z, p. 11).
LITERARY TEXTS QUOTED (the year of first publication appears in parenthesis when needed) Busi, Aldo, Vita standard di un venditore provvisorio di collant (1985), Milano, Mondadori, 1991. Del Giudice, Daniele, Atlante occidentale (1985), Torino, Einaudi, 1985. Gadda, Carlo Emilio, La cognizione del dolore (1963), Torino, Einaudi, 1970. Guerrazzi, Francesco, // buco nel muro (1862), Milano, Universale Economica, 1949. Eco, Umberto, L'isola del giorno prima, Milano, Bompiani, 1994. 15
Cf. On the Advancement of Learning.
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Pier Marco Bertinetto
Maraini, Dacia, La lunga vita di Marianna Ucria, Milano, Rizzoli, 1990. Panzini, Alfredo, II padrone sono me! (1922), Santarcangelo di Romagna, FARA, 1994. Lombardi, Germano, Barcelona (1963), Milano, Feltrinelli, 1963.
REFERENCES Ageno (Brambilla), Franca. (1964). // verbo nell'italiano antico. Milano and Napoli: Ricciardi. Ambrosini, Riccardo. (1960-61). L'uso dei tempi storici nell'antico italiano. L'ltalia dialettale, 24, 13-124. Antinucci, Francesco and Ruth Miller. (1986). How children talk about what happened. Journal of Child Languge, 3, 167-189. Bache, Carl. (1986). Tense and aspect in fiction. Journal of Literary Semantics, 15, 82-97. Bertinetto, Pier Marco. (1986). Tempo, Aspetto e Azione nel verbo italiano. II sistema dell'Indicativo. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca. Bertinetto, Pier Marco. (1993). Due tipi di Presente «Storico» nella prosa letteraria. In Erasmo Leso, Michele A. Cortelazzo, Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, Gianfelice Peron and Lorenzo Renzi (eds.) Omaggio a Gianfranco Folena. Padova: Studio Editoriale Programma. Vol. Ill, 23272344. Bertinetto, Pier Marco. (1997). // dominio tempo-aspettuale. Demarcazioni, intersezioni, contrasti. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. Bertinetto, Pier Marco. (1999). Sperimentazioni linguistiche nella narrativa del Novecento: variazioni sul Tempo Verbale 'propulsive'. Atti dell' Accademia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, seconda serie 28, 41-102. Bertinetto, Pier Marco and Mario Squartini. (1996). La distribuzione del Perfetto Semplice e Composto nelle diverse varieta di italiano. Romance Philology, 49, 383-419. Delfitto, Denis and Pier Marco Bertinetto. (2000). Word order and quantification over times. In Higginbotham et al. 2000: 207-243. Engel, Dulcie M. (1996). L'expression du temps et la variation linguistique. Revue Romane, 31, 215-233. Fludernik, Monika. (1991). The historical present tense yet again: Tense switching and narrative dynamics in oral and quasi-oral storytelling. Text, 11, 365-397. Fludernik, Monika. (1992). The Historical Present Tense in English literature: An oral pattern and its literary adaptation. Language and Literature, 1, 71-98. Fludernik, Monika. (1993). The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London: Routledge. Fludernik, Monika. (1996). Linguistics and literarure: Prospects and horizons in the study of prose. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 583-611. Herczeg, Gyula. (1972). Saggi linguistici e stilistici. Firenze: Olschki.
"Propulsive " tenses in modern Italian fictional prose
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Higginbotham, James, Fabio Pianesi, Achille Varzi (eds.) (2000). Speaking of Events. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lazzeroni, Romano. (1980). Fra glottogonia e storia: ipotesi sulla formazione del sistema verbale sanscrito. Studi e Saggi Linguistic!, 20, 23-54. Lazzeroni, Romano. (1997). Scritti scelti di Romano Lazzeroni. (A cura di Tristano Bolelli e Saverio Sani) Pisa: Pacini. Lenci, Alessandro and Pier Marco Bertinetto. (2000). Aspect, adverbs, and events: Habituality vs. perfectivity. In Higginbotham et al. 2000: 245-287. Miklic, Tjasa. (1991). Presenza e valori del passato remoto in riassunti di opere letterarie. Linguistica, 31, 249-258. Miklic, Tjasa. (1998a). La consecutio. temporum italiana nelle vignette: 1'uso delle forme verbali nei testi combinati figurative-verbali della rivista La settimana enigmistica. In Maria Teresa Navarro Salazar (ed.) Italica Matritensia. Atti del IV Convegno SILFI. Madrid and Firenze: Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia and Franco Cesati Editore. 371-383. Miklic, Tjasa. (1998b). La distribuzione dei paradigmi verbali nei compendi di opere letterarie (italiano e tedesco a confronto). In Patrizia Cordin, Maria Iliescu and Heidi Siller Runggaldier (eds.) Parallela 6: Italiano e tedesco in contatto e a confronto. Italienisch undDeutsch im Kontakt und im Vergleich. Trento: Universita degli Studi, Dipartimento di Scienze Filologiche e Storiche. 451-467. Squartini, Mario and Pier Marco Bertinetto. (2000). The Simple and Compound Past in Romance languages. In Osten Dahl (ed.) Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin and New York: Mouton-De Gruyter. 403^39. Stanzel, Franz Karl. (1981). Teller-Characters and Reflector-Characters in narrative theory. Poetics Today, 2, 5-15. Vendler, Zeno. (1967). Verbs and times. In id. (ed.) Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, N. Y: Cornell University Press. 97-121. Weinrich, Harald. (1964). Tempus. Besprochene und erzdhlte Welt. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
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6
A SECOND THOUGHT ON EMARGINAZIONE: DESTRESSINGVS. "RIGHT DISLOCATION"*
Anna Cardinaletti
Italian exhibits both VSO and VOS word orders, with different prosodic properties. When the sentence-final element is focused (here indicated by small capitals and bold), only VOS is possible, while VSO is impossible: (1) a. *Ha comprato Gianni IL GIORNALE has bought Gianni the newspaper b. 'Ha comprato il giornale GIANNI.'
*VSO VOS
VSO sequences may, however, arise in the format exemplified in (2a), whose VOS counterpart is (2b). What is now focused is the constituent closer to the verb, the subject and the object, respectively. The sentence-final argument, which is presupposed, has a low pitch intonation contour and can be separated from the clause by an intonational break (here indicated by the comma):1
* A previous version of the paper has been presented in classes at the University of Stuttgart in May 1996. Many thanks go to Adriana Belletti, Guglielmo Cinque, Maria Teresa Guasti, Riny Huijbregts, Richard Kayne, Francisco Ordonez, Giampaolo Salvi, Christina Tortora and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta for comments on an earlier written version. By presenting this paper to Cino Renzi, I would like to thank him for having involved me in the enterprise of the Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione (il Mulino, Bologna, 1988-1995), and for having encouraged me to think more and more about (my own language) Italian. 1
Yes/no questions display the same pattern as (1) and (2): (i) a. b. c. d.
*Ha Ha Ha Ha
comprato comprato comprato comprato
Gianni IL GIORNALE? il giornale GIANNI? GIANNI, il giornale? IL GIORNALE, Gianni?
*VSO VOS VSO VOS
118 Anna Cardinaletti (2) a. Ha comprato GIANNI, il giornale. b. Ha comprato IL GIORNALE, Gianni.
VSO VOS
Antinucci & Cinque (1977) call the process in (2) emarginazione. They suggest that the object in VSO and the subject in VOS is marginalized at the end of the clause, and that emarginazione differs from Right Dislocation. In the former construction, the constituent at the end of the clause is not anticipated by a pronominal copy. Compare (2) with (3).2 (3) a. Lo ha comprato GIANNI, il giornale. it has bought Gianni, the newspaper b. pro ha comprato IL GIORNALE, Gianni. [he] has bought the newspaper, Gianni
clVS,O proVO,S
In this paper, I concentrate on (2). In particular, I show that in spite of the apparently similar prosodic and pragmatic properties exhibited by these two sentences, there are many differences between VSO and VOS. This suggests that emarginazione does not correspond to a uniform syntactic process, and that the two sentences in (2) instantiate different constructions. In (2a), the object is destressed in situ; in (2b), the subject is right-dislocated, i.e., (2b) corresponds to (3b). (I keep the traditional term "Right Dislocation" without, however, implying rightward movement or base generation in a rightward position.) As will become clear below, the different analysis of VSO and VOS is exactly what is expected under the antisymmetric approach of Kayne (1994).3 The paper is organized as follows. In section 1, the analysis of VSO is undertaken. I first show that (2a) is not an instance of Right Dislocation of the object, as sometimes claimed. Secondly, it is proposed that both the subject and the object are in situ. Hence, focused constituents need not move to specFocusP before Spell-Out. An aside on the distribution of the weak negative quantifier niente 'nothing' ends this section. Section 2 is devoted to the discussion of VOS. Here too, the focused constituent, i.e., the object, is taken to occur in its base position inside VR In section 3, VOS is compared to VOS, i.e., (Ib), which is analysed in terms of leftward scrambling of the object, following work by Ordonez (1997, 1998) on Spanish. (In this paper, (la) is not analysed). In section 4, some data concerning verb-subject agreement in a Central Italian variety will be used to corroborate the analysis. Finally, section 5 discusses those constructions in which it is the subject that is destressed.
2
In (3b) the pronominal copy is the null category pro. Although it is not audible, its presence is assumed in analogy to (3a), where the copy is realized by the accusative clitic pronoun lo.
3
The differences between VSO and VOS also indicate that emarginazione is not a PF phenomenon, since it is sensitive to the syntactic function of the marginalized element. For the analysis of emarginazione as a PF-movement rule, see Calabrese 1982, 1992. According to this analysis, emarginazione applies in order to guarantee the required adjacency between the focused argument and the verb, which must form an intonational group. Notice that if (2b) is to be analysed as (3b), I should refer to VOS as proVO.S. For ease of exposition, in the rest of the paper I keep using VOS.
A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation" 1
119
THE ANALYSIS OF VSO
We start with the observation that in VSO, the object is not right-dislocated. I follow the original intuition by Antinucci & Cinque (1977), according to which (2a) is structurally different from (3a), and depart from the proposal, sometimes made, that (2a) is structurally identical to (3a), the only difference being that an anticipatory clitic pronoun is not present or not pronounced in the former. In other words, that proposal takes the pronominal copy to be optional in Right Dislocation (whereas it is obligatory in Left Dislocation, see Cinque 1990, §2.3.5). As far as I know, however, nothing seems to independently support this conclusion, and the data rather seem to speak to the contrary. Consider first the contrast between (4) and (5). Quantified objects cannot be right-dislocated,4 but they can follow a focused subject in VSO: (4) a.*Non 1'ha invitato GIANNI, nessuno. not him has invited Gianni, anybody b.*L'hanno incontrato I RAPPRESENTANTI, ogni studente. him have met the delegates, every student
*clVS,O *clVS,O
(5) a. A: Ho sentito che Maria non ha invitato nessuno. IJiave heard that Maria not has invited anybody B: No, non ha invitato GIANNI, nessuno. VSO no, not has invited Gianni, anybody b. A: II preside ha incontrato ogni studente. the dean has met every student B: No, hanno incontrato i RAPPRESENTANTI, ogni studente. VSO no, have met the delegates, every student VSO can be distinguished from Right Dislocation also on the basis of the following data: whereas in colloquial Italian a right-dislocated [+human] object (proper name or personal pronoun) can be preceded by the preposition a, the object in VSO cannot (see Cardinaletti 1988): (6) a. L'abbiamo invitato NOI, a Gianni. clVS, a O him have invited we, to Gianni b. Vi abbiamo promosso, a voi, anche se non lo meritavate. pro clV, a O you weJiave passed, to you, even if not it you.deserved (7) a. *Abbiamo invitato NOI, a Gianni. b.*Ho promosso IO, a voi, anche se non lo meritavate. have passed I, to you, even if not it you_deserved
4
See Calabrese 1992:93ff. Object quantifiers cannot be left-dislocated either: (i) *Nessuno, Gianni non 1'ha invitato. anybody, Gianni not him has invited
*VS a O *VS a O
120 Anna Cardinaletti Furthermore, whereas the order of right-dislocated arguments is free, (8), the order of the objects following the subject in VSO is the same as the unmarked order of arguments, (9) (see Zubizarreta 1998 : 156ff for the same contrasts in Spanish):5 (8) a. Ce 1'ha nascosto IL BAMBINO, il libro, sotto il letto. there it has hidden the child, the book, under the bed b. Ce 1'ha nascosto IL BAMBINO, sotto il letto, il libro. (9) a. b. c. d.
clVS,O clVS,O
Ha nascosto IL BAMBINO, il libro, sotto il letto. VSO *Ha nascosto IL BAMBINO, sotto il letto, il libro. *VSO II bambino ha nascosto il libro sotto il letto. *I1 bambino ha nascosto sotto il letto il libro. (with unmarked intonation)
As shown in (9d), a direct object cannot follow a PP in the unmarked order. This is also true in VSO, (9b). However, a direct object can appear after a PP if it is heavy, (lOb). Again, VSO behaves like subject-initial sentences, (lOa) (thanks to Francisco Ordonez for having drawn my attention to this case): (10) a. Ha nascosto IL BAMBINO, sotto il letto, [il libro che abbiamo comprato ieri]. VSO b. II bambino ha nascosto sotto il letto [il libro che abbiamo comprato ieri]. the child has hidden under the bed the book that weJiave bought yesterday These data not only show that in VSO the object is not right-dislocated, but they also suggest the analysis of VSO. The arguments are all inside VP. The subject is in specVP (and is stressed in situ); the object occupies the complement position of the verb (and is destressed in situ) (see section 1.1 below). The structural representation of (the relevant portion of) (2a) is as in (11) (for an analysis of past participle movement to an aspectual head, see Cinque 1999):
Interestingly, Calabrese (1992:97) only gives examples parallel to (9a): (i) a. Ha guardato PIERO, le montagne, con il binocolo. VSO has looked Piero, at the mountains, with the binoculars b. Ha messo SANDRO, il libro, nel cassette. VSO has put Sandro, the book, in the drawer
A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation"
121
That the subject is in VP is confirmed by the fact that it follows very low adverbs such as bene 'well': Ha risolto bene GIANNI, ilproblema 'has solved well Gianni, the problem'. Given that the object stays inside VP, it becomes possible to understand why the sentences in (5) are grammatical. Negative quantifiers are c-commanded by the negative marker non, as required; universally quantified constituents occur in a position from where they can raise to the relevant LF-position to get interpreted.6 As expected, if the marginalized object is in its base position, (7) patterns with simple sentences where the object is not preceded by a: Abbiamo invitato (*a) Gianni, Ho promosso (*a) voi. As for (9) and (10), the order of the destressed objects is the one provided by the syntax, as shown in (9c) and (lOb), whereas there is no such constraint on the order of right-dislocated arguments. Consider a similar contrast between Right Dislocation and emarginazione, discussed in Calabrese 1982. If the direct object Mario is right-dislocated, as in (12), it can be far away from the verb convinto by which it is selected and can follow the infinitival complement of convinto. If Mario is not anticipated by a clitic pronoun, as in (13a), the result is ungrammatical; in other words, Mario cannot be marginalized after the infinitival clause because this is not its base position. Its base position is immediately after the verb convinto, as in (13b). (12)
Checosal'hai convinto [a fare], Mario? what him youJiave convinced to do, Mario?
(13)
a.*Che cosa hai convinto [a fare], Mario? what youJiave convinced to do, Mario? b. Che cosa hai convinto Mario [a fare]?
The fact that in (2a) the subject is in specVP and the object is in complement position implies that the subject c-commands the object (see Kayne 1994: 150, fn. 15). This is confirmed by (14). In (14a), the quantifier ogni binds the pronoun contained in the destressed object, and the bound reading of the pronoun is obtained. In (14b), the subject Gianni binds the anaphor in the destressed object. In (14c), the subject pronoun lui c-commands the R-expression Gianni contained in the destressed object, and ungrammaticality is produced. In (14d), the anaphor propri is not bound by Gianni, which causes the ungrammaticality of the sentence. In (14e), in spite of the fact that the quantifier ogni does not c-command it, the pronoun sua can have a bound reading. The quantifier can always have scope over the subject if this is focused; consider
6
Antinucci & Cinque (1977 :145) claim that the following sentence is ungrammatical because the marginalized constituent ilformaggio is not in the scope of the negative marker non: (i) Non hanno mangiato I BAMBINI, il formaggio (*ma il dolce). not have eaten the children, the cheese (but the cake) If the negative marker c-commands the marginalized constituent, as is suggested here, the ungrammaticality of (i) should be due to a different reason. It is straightforward to assume that negation interacts with focus, and that only something which is focused can be contrasted. The grammatical counterpart, where the focused element is contrasted, is (ii): (ii) Non hanno mangiato I BAMBINI, il formaggio, ma i topi, not have eaten the children the cheese, but the mice
122 Anna Cardinaletti SUA\ MADRE ha visitato ogni\ ragazzo ('his mother has visited every boy') (see Zubizarreta 1998 : 11-15 for discussion). (14) a. Ha visitato OGNI; RAGAZZO, sua; madre. has visited every boy, his mother b. Ha visitato GIANNI;, i propri; genitori. has visited Gianni, the his parents c. *Ha visitato LUIj, la madre di Giannij. has visited he, the mother of Gianni d. *Hanno visitato I PROPRli GENITORI, Gianni;. have visited the his parents, Gianni e. Ha visitato SUAj MADRE, ognij ragazzo has visited his mother, every boy
VSO VSO *VSO *VSO VSO
Finally consider the following sentences, which, according to Calabrese (1992: 100; 102, fn. 14), show that the post-verbal main subject c-commands the subject of the embedded clause. This is coherent with the analysis proposed in (11): (15)
a. Ha detto MARIO;, di PRO; essere stato in America. has said Mario, to have been in America b. Ha detto MARIO;, che pro; avrebbe fatto queste cose. has said Mario, that [he] wouldJiave done these things
VSO VSO
1.1 On the focus properties of VSO I am assuming here that focused constituents can stay in their VP-internal position and need not move overtly to specFocusP (see Rizzi 1997). In the latter analysis, the derivation of e.g., (2a) should proceed as follows: the object (il giornale) is "scrambled" to some position to the left, the focused subject (Gianni) is moved overtly to specFocusP, and the rest of the sentence (ha comprato) is moved to a position preceding it, presumably specTopicP: [xopicP [ fj ha comprato ti\ [FOCUSP [Gianni]) [jp . . . [il giornale]^ [xp ?k ]]]]• In sentences such as (16), this analysis would produce a configuration in which the post-verbal subject is not c-commanded by the negative marker non, (16a), and by a clitic pronoun adjoined to 1°, (16b). Ungrammaticality and grammaticality, respectively, would be expected, contrary to fact: (16) a. Nonhaparlato NESSUNO, a Gianni. not has spoken anybody, to Gianni b. *Lo; presentera LA MADRE Di GIANNI;, a Maria. him will Jntroduce the mother of Gianni, to Maria
VSO *VSO
Another piece of evidence for VP-internal focus is the fact that multiple foci are possible in situ, (17a), while they are impossible in sentence-initial position, (17b).
A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation"
123
(17) a. (?)Ha letto GIANNI LE RIVISTE (e MARIO I LIBRI). has read Gianni the magazines (and Mario the books) b.
*GIANNI LE RIVISTE ha letto (e MARIO I LIBRI).
(17) can be accounted for if sentence-initial focus is movement to specFocusP, a unique position, while there is no such restriction on in situ focus. Notice that multiple foci make the order VSO possible in Italian (while it is ungrammatical with focus on only the object, i.e., *VSO, cf. (la)). 7 In VSO, the subject is necessarily an instance of contrastive focus, (18a), and is marginal as a noncontrastive focus, i.e., as an answer to a wh-question, (18b) (for the discussion of the two types of focus, see Zubizarreta 1998 : 1-7 and the references quoted there). (18) a. A: Posso guidare io durante il viaggio? (Frascarelli 1996: 80) can drive I during the trip? B: No, non mi piace come guidi: portera MARA, la macchina. VSO no, not Llike how you_drive: wilLdrive Mara, the car b. A: Chi portera la macchina? who wilLdrive the car? ??B: Portera MARA, la macchina. ??VSO Contrastive focus seems to be the most natural reading of the following sentence as well (taken from Frascarelli 1996: 275), although the context is not provided: (19) Dovrebbe avere LUI la distinta. should have he the slip
VSO
The fact that in VSO the subject is not the most embedded constituent in the clause prevents that it is assigned phrasal prominence by the Nuclear Stress Rule; the only way to stress the subject in VSO is via the Emphatic/Contrastive Stress Rule (see Zubizarreta 1998 :44-45 and the references quoted there). The presupposed object, which follows the stressed subject, is destressed, as usual. Interestingly, if the object is right-dislocated, the subject can be an instance of noncontrastive focus, i.e., it counts as the lowest constituent in the clause (which suggests that it must have a structure parallel to (29b) below): (20) A: Chi portera la macchina? B: La portera MARA, la macchina. it wilLdrive Mara, the car
clVS,O
The contrast between (18b) and (20) can be seen as a further argument against analysing the object in VSO as right-dislocated.
7
Multiple foci give rise to the typical linked or paired focus reading also found with multiple wh-. The sentence in (11 a) can be used as an answer to a question such as (i), in a context in which it is not clear who read what: (i) Insomma, chi ha letto cosa? well, who has read what?
124 Anna Cardinaletti 1.2 An aside on niente (5a) above contrasts with the following: (21) A: Maria non ha fatto niente. Maria not has done anything *B: No, non ha fatto GIANNI, niente. no, not has done Gianni, anything
*VSO
The ungrammaticality of the Spanish counterpart of (2IB) is attributed by Zubizarreta (1994: 44) to the fact that negative elements such as nada 'nothing' may not be destressed: (22) *No probo JUAN nada. not tried Juan anything
*VSO
Since nessuno in (5a) is possible, a difference should be assumed between nessuno and niente in this respect. There is, however, a more plausible analysis. The ungrammaticality of (2IB) is due to the fact that Italian unstressed niente (and presumably Spanish nada in (22)) is a weak element (in the sense of Cardinaletti & Starke 1999) which cannot remain in the base position, but must be moved outside VP before spell-out. The overt movement of weak niente necessarily puts it in a position which precedes a post-verbal subject, (23a) vs. (23a;), while other negative objects are free to follow or precede the subject, (23b, b')-8 Weak niente can also end up to the left of weak adverbs such as bene, (23c, c'), while other negative objects necessarily follow bene, (23d) vs. (23d')-9
8
(23b) is sensibly better than (la). The fact that the VSO order improves in the case of negative elements can be due to the fact that here negative elements behave like multiple foci (see (17'a) above). In this perspective, (23b) should be analysed as a VSO structure.
9
Modified niente, a strong element in Cardinaletti & Starke's (1999) typology, differs from weak niente (and behaves like the DP nessuna cosa in (23b, b', d, d')) in that it can either follow or precede the subject, (ia, a'), and can only appear after bene, (ib) vs. (ib') (for similar differences in the leftward movement of French weak and strong rien, see Obenauer 1998): (i) a. ?Non ha fatto nessuno [quasi niente]. a'. Non ha fatto [quasi nientejj nessunotj. not has done anybody almost anything not has done almost anything anybody b. Non ha fatto bene [quasi niente]. b'. *Non ha fatto [quasi niente]\ benetf. not he_has done well almost anything not he_has done almost anything well Notice that a sentence like (ii) can only have the interpretation in (iiia), parallel to (23c'), where niente is an object. Niente in (ii) cannot be a post-verbal subject, i.e., (ii) cannot mean (iiib): (ii) Non chiude niente bene. not closes anything well (iii) a. He does not close anything well, b. Nothing closes well.
A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation" (23) a. *Non ha fatto nessuno niente. not has done anybody anything b. ?Non ha fatto nessuno [nessunacosa]. not has done anybody any thing c. Non ha fatto bene niente; t^. not heJias done well anything d. Non ha fatto bene [nessuna cosa]. not heJias done well any thing
125
a' Non ha fatto nientej nessunotj. not has done anything anybody b( Non ha fatto [nessuna cosa]; nessuno tj. not has done any thing anybody c' Non ha fatto nientej benetitj. not he_has done anything well d' *Non ha fatto [nessuna cosa]j bene tj. not he_has done any thing well
Compare niente with the French counterpart rien, whose weak status is clearly manifested by the fact that it must precede the past participle, while objects follow it: (24) a. *Je n'ai fait rien. b. Je n'ai rien fait. I not have anything done c. Jen'ai fait aucune chose/J'ai fait beaucoup de choses. I not have done any thing /1 have done many things
2
THE ANALYSIS OF VOS
The analysis of (2b) is radically different from the analysis of (2a) proposed above. VOS does not show the basic word order. Whereas the object occurs in its base position inside VP, the subject does not. Since there is no post-object position for the subject (see Kayne 1994, who excludes the existence of a rightward specVP), the subject must be outside VP. The only possible analysis is that the subject is right-dislocated. This means that in (2b) the subject is anticipated by pro, as in (3b). In other words, (2b) is always to be analysed as (3b). That in VOS the subject is right-dislocated can be shown on the basis of the following observation. Take a VOS sentence such as (25) where the object is represented by a clause, and where an object of the embedded verb follows the matrix subject (adapted from Antinucci & Cinque 1977: 142). As the contrast between (25a) and (25b) shows, the object la macchina is necessarily anticipated by a clitic pronoun, which means that it is right-dislocated: (25) a. *Quando ha detto [che potro ritirare], Giorgio, la macchina? *VOS b. Quando ha detto [che la potro ritirare], Giorgio, la macchina? VOS when heJias said that (it) I_will_be_able to go.andJake, Giorgio, the car? Notice now that the clitic pronoun is not necessary in (26): (26) Quando potra ritirare, Giorgio, la macchina? when will_be_able to go_and_take, Giorgio, the car?
VSO
126 Anna Cardinaletti I take the contrast between (25a) and (26) to mean that in the former the subject is right-dislocated (which forces la macchina to be right-dislocated as well), whereas in the latter both the subject and the object are destressed in situ (see section 5). If the subject in VOS is right-dislocated, we expect that it cannot be a quantified constituent. The expectation is borne out. The sentences in (28) are parallel to (27), where the subject nessuno is clearly right-dislocated since it follows the right-dislocated object Maria:10 (27) *Non 1'ha invitata, Maria, nessuno. not her he_has invited, Maria, anybody
*pro clV,O,S
(28) a. A: Che cosa non ha fatto nessuno? what not has done anybody? *B: Non ha fatto QUESTO, nessuno. *VOS not has done this, anybody b. A: Chi ha incontrato, ogni studente? whom has met, every student? 'Who has every student met?' *B: Ha incontrato IL PRESIDE, ogni studente. *VOS has met the dean, every student For the structural representation of (2b), I adopt Kayne's (1994:78) analysis of English right-dislocated subjects. Given his antisymmetric approach, right-dislocated subjects must be structurally lower than what precedes them. This is obtained by generating the right-dislocated item as the complement of a functional projection whose specifier hosts the whole clause. (29a) is Kayne's example (42), (29b) is the parallel representation of (2b). (29) a. [ [ he's real smart ] X° [ John] ] b. [ [ pro ha comprato il giornale ] X° [ Gianni ] ] Given the structure (29b), the ungrammaticality of (27) and (28) reduces to the fact that the quantified constituents cannot be adequately interpreted: in (27) and (28a) the negative quantifier is not c-commanded by the negative marker non; in (28b) the quantified constituent cannot raise to the relevant specifier position to get its interpretation at LF. In both cases, a violation of Full Interpretation arises. (If, as suggested by (20), (29b) is also the representation of right-dislocated objects, (4) is excluded as a violation of Full Interpretation as well.) Given the structure (29b), the object does not c-command the subject. This explains why the judgements of the following sentences are the reverse of those in (14) above (notice that (30e, e') are ungrammatical not because of the lack of c-command, but, on a par with the VOS sentences in (28), because the subject is quantified; on (30e') also see fn. 10):
10
See Calabrese 1992:93ff. Subject quantifiers cannot be left-dislocated either: (i) *Nessuno, Maria, (non) Fha invitata. anybody, Maria, (not) her he_has invited Notice that (28b) is marginally possible if the quantified subject has partitive reading.
A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation" (30) a. *pro ha visitato OGNIj RAGAZZO, sua; madre. [she] has visited every boy, his mother b. *pro hanno visitato GIANNI;, i proprij genitori. [they] have visited Gianni, the his parents c. pro ha visitato LUlj, la madre diGiannij. [she] has visited him, the mother of Gianni d. pro ha visitato I PROPRlj GENITORI, Giannij. [he] has visited the his parents, Gianni e. *pro non ha visitato SUAj MADRE, nessunoj. [he] not has visited his mother, anybody e! *pro ha visitato SUAj MADRE, ognij ragazzo. [he] has visited his mother, every boy
127
*VOS *VOS VOS VOS *VOS *VOS
Sentence (30a) is ungrammatical because the quantifier does not c-command the pronoun inside the right-dislocated subject, and no bound reading of the pronoun can arise. Similarly, the rightdislocated subject in (30b) contains an anaphor not bound by its antecedent. Sentences (30c) and (30d) are grammatical because the object does not c-command the subject, and there is no violation of binding principles. In (30d), the anaphor propri is bound by the pre-verbal null subject. As is the case for he and John in English, (29a), a coreference relationship is established in (30c) and (30d) between pro and the right-dislocated subject. Finally, notice that the object in VOS differs from the subject in VSO in that it can be noncontrastive focus. Compare (31) with (18b) above. (31) A: Cosa ha portato, Gianni? what has brought, Gianni? B: Ha portato IL DOLCE, Gianni. has brought the dessert, Gianni
VOS
In VOS, stress on the object, which is the most embedded constituent in the clause, can be provided by the Nuclear Stress Rule (see Cinque 1993, Zubizarreta 1998 : 17-19 and the references quoted there), and the noncontrastive focus reading of the object can arise. (See the end of section 1.1 for the parallel clVS,O case in which the object is right-dislocated, and the post-verbal subject ends up being the lowest constituent in the clause, stressed via the Nuclear Stress Rule.) As for the right-dislocated subject, it gets destressed. Whether the prosodic properties of a rightdislocated constituent are the same as those of an in situ destressed constituent (as in VSO) or not remains an open question (see Zubizarreta 1998 : 151-158 for some observations on Spanish).
3
VOS IS DIFFERENT FROM VOS
Let's now compare VOS with VOS, where the subject is focused. Although the linear order is the same, the different semantic and phonological properties reflect a different syntactic structure. Whereas, as seen above, VOS is produced by the right-dislocation of the subject, VOS arises by moving ("scrambling") the presupposed object to the left past the subject, as in (32)
128 Anna Cardinaletti (see Ordonez 1997, 1998 for Spanish; for the movement of the verb to Asp0, see (11) above):11
As I did for VSO above, I assume that in VOS the subject is an in situ focus. As the following sentences show, the post-verbal subject is c-commanded by an I°-adjoined negative marker and clitic pronouns. If the focused subject were moved overtly to SpecFocusP and the rest of the clause were moved to specTopicP,12 the judgements of (33) should be the reverse (see section 1.1).
11
Since moved objects follow low adverbs such as bene, their landing site must be very low (see (23d, d') and fn. 9 for the same effect found with the movement of negative DPs and strong niente, respectively): (i) a. Ha risolto bene il problem^ GIANNI tj. VOS has solved well the problem Gianni b. *Ha risolto il problem^ bene GIANNI tj. *VOS Notice that object movement to the left is more natural with light objects. Compare (Ib) with (ii) (cf. Guasti & Nespor 1996 and Zubizarreta 1998 :22-23 for the discussion of heaviness effects): (ii) a. ?Ha comprato il giornale del mattino GIANNI. ?VOS has bought the newspaper oLthe morning Gianni b. ??Ha comprato un bel mazzo di fiori gialli GIANNI. ??VOS has bought a nice bunch of yellow flowers Gianni No such heaviness effects are found in VSO and VOS, which confirms that in these cases the subject and the object, respectively, are in situ (see sections 1 and 2): (iii) a. Ha comprato LA MADRE DI GIANNI, il giornale. VSO has bought the mother of Gianni, the newspaper b. Ha comprato IL RAGAZZO CHE HO VISTO IERI, il giornale. VSO has bought the boy that Lsaw yesterday, the newspaper (iv) a. Ha comprato IL LIBRO DI GIANNI, Maria. VOS sheJias bought the book by Gianni, Maria b. Ha comprato IL LIBRO CHE E USCITO IERI, Maria. VOS sheJias bought the book that has appeared yesterday, Maria
12
This analysis has been proposed by Ordonez (1997) and Zubizarreta (1998) for Italian VOS.
A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation" (33) a. Non stima Gianni NESSUNO. not esteems Gianni anybody b. *Lo; presentera a Maria LA MADRE DI GIANNI;. him will-introduce to Maria the mother of Gianni
129
VOS *VOS
If in VOS the subject occurs in specVP, we expect that there is no restriction on quantified subjects. The sentences in (34) contrast with (28) above: (34) a. Nonhafatto questo NESSUNO. not has done this anybody b. Ha incontrato il preside OGNI STUDENTE. has met the dean every student
VOS VOS
The analysis in (32) implies that in VOS the object c-commands the subject, and accounts for (35). In (35a) and (35b), the moved object c-commands and binds the pronoun contained in the subject. In (35c), the moved object pronoun c-commands the R-expression, and there is a violation of principle C.13 (35) a. Ha visitato ogni; ragazzo SUA; MADRE. VOS has visited every boy his mother b. Ha visitato Giannij UN COLLEGA DELLA PROPRIAj MOGLIE. VOS has visited Gianni a colleague oLthe his wife c. *Ha visitato anche lui; LA MADRE DI GIANNI;. *VOS has visited also him the mother of Gianni As (35) shows, object movement affects LF-related phenomena such as binding relations. I take this to mean that object movement takes place before spell-out. As in other instances of "scrambling", in VOS reconstruction effects are found:
13
In (35b) (adapted from Cecchetto 1997:6), the anaphoric possessive proprio has been embedded. The simple DP gives ungrammatical results: (i) *Hanno visitato Giannij I PROPRI; GENITORI. *VOS have visited Gianni the his parents Notice also that (35c) differs from (30c) in that the object pronoun is modified by anche. In a sentence such as (ii), the strong pronoun is necessarily focused. As shown in (iii), it is generally so: if the presence of a strong pronoun is not motivated by focalization, a clitic pronoun is used instead. (ii) *Ha visitato LUIj LA MADRE DI GIANNIj.
*VOS
has visited him the mother of Gianni (iii) a. La madre di Gianni; ha visitato LUIj. b. La madre di Gianni; lo; ha visitato. In order to avoid a sentence such as (ii), which is ungrammatical for independent reasons (because a focused DP is scrambled), in (35c) I have chosen another way of licensing a strong pronoun, namely modification by anche.
130 Anna Cardinaletti (36) a. Ha visitato iproprij genitoriGlANNlj. has visited the his parents Gianni b. Ha visitato sua, madre OGNI; RAGAZZO. has visited his mother every boy
VOS VOS
In both (36a) and (36b), the binder is the subject. The generalization seems to be that when the binder is the subject, reconstruction effects are obtained. They can be accounted for by assuming that the c-command relationship and the binding one are established in the base position and cannot be changed by movement operations (see Ordonez 1997:48-52, 1998 for discussion).14 In VOS, differently from VSO, the subject can be a noncontrastive focus (compare (37) with (18b)). Being the most embedded constituent in the clause, the Nuclear Stress Rule can apply to it: (37) A: Chi portera la macchina? who wilLdrive the car? B: Portera la macchina MARA. wilLdrive the car Mara
VOS
Notice finally that the analysis proposed for VOS cannot be extended to VOS, i.e., VOS cannot be analysed as containing a leftward moved object and an in situ destressed subject. In section 2, we have seen many reasons to argue against such an analysis: (i) the subject cannot be quantified, (ii) the object does not c-command the subject, (iii) the object can be a noncontrastive focus. As for the latter property, if the object and the subject were in one and the same clause, the object could not be stressed via the Nuclear Stress Rule because it would not be the most embedded constituent. A contrastive focus reading would necessarily arise, contrary to fact.
4 VERB-SUBJECT AGREEMENT The different derivation of VSO and VOS (and of VOS and VOS) is confirmed by the following data concerning verb—subject agreement. In the Central Italian variety spoken in the area of Ancona, the verb may fail to agree in number with a post-verbal subject, (38). Agreement is instead obligatory if the subject is rightdislocated, as in (39), where the subject follows a right-dislocated object.
14
(36) might also be derived by scrambling the verb and the object together: Ha [visitato i propri\ genitori\ Giannii t^, Ha [visitato sua\ madre\ ognii ragazzo ?k- We will not try to decide between the two analyses for Italian. We only notice that reconstruction is needed in the parallel cases of scrambling in German, for which an analysis in terms of [V O] scrambling is unavailable: (i) Ich glaube, da6 [seineirii Vater]k jederj tk die Bilder gezeigthat. (Ordonez 1997 :48) I think that to_his father everyone the pictures shown has
A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation " (38) a. Questodisegnol'hafatto QUEl BAMBINI Li. this drawing it has done those children there b. Ha fatto il disegno QUEl BAMBINI LI. has done the drawing those children there
131
VS VOS
(39) a. *L'ha fatto IERI, il disegno, quei bambini li. *pro clVadv,O,S [they] it has done yesterday, this drawing, those children there b. L'hanno fatto IERI, il disegno, quei bambini li. pro clVadv,O,S [they] it have done yesterday, this drawing, those children there Whatever the reason for the lack of verb agreement with post-verbal subjects, the necessary agreement in (39) depends on the presence of pre-verbal pro (40) and on the fact that agreement is obligatory with pre-verbal subjects, (41) (see Cardinaletti 1997, §2.3). (40) pro 1'hanno fatto IERI, il disegno, quei bambini li. (41) a. * Quei bambini ha fatto questo disegno. those children has done this drawing b. Quei bambini hanno fatto questo disegno. those children have done this drawing With this in mind, consider the subject in VSO and VOS. The former behaves like postverbal subjects in that agreement may fail, (42a). The latter instead patterns with right-dislocated subjects, in that it obligatorily agrees with the verb, (42b) vs. (42c). This supports our interpretation of VOS as a right-dislocated structure. (42) a. ?Ha fatto I BAMBINI, il disegno (non la maestra). has done the children, the drawing (not the teacher) b. *Ha fatto QUESTO DISEGNO, i bambini. [they] has done this drawing, the children c. Hanno fatto QUESTO DISEGNO, i bambini. [they] have done this drawing, the children
VSO *VOS VOS
The same paradigm is found in interrogative sentences: (43) a. Ha fatto I BAMBINI, il disegno? b. *Ha fatto QUESTO DISEGNO, i bambini? c. Hanno fatto QUESTO DISEGNO, i bambini?
VSO *VOS VOS
5 SUBJECT DESTRESSING We have seen so far that a destressed subject is necessarily right-dislocated when it follows an object. However, when it is the only post-verbal argument or when it is followed by a destressed
132 Anna Cardinaletti object, nothing excludes that the subject itself be destressed in situ. We exemplify here with declarative (44)-(45), interrogative (46)-(47) and exclamative (48) sentences with main stress on the verb.15 (44) a. Puo can b. Puo can
gia already gia already
ANDARE, Gianni. go, Gianni RITIRARE, Gianni, la macchina. go_and_take, Gianni, the car
VS VSO
(45) A: Non sento Chiara da molto tempo ormai... sono un po' preoccupato. not IJiear from Chiara for a while now Lam a bit worried B: Ma d a i . . . vedrai che stasera TELEFONERA, Chiara!16 VS no worry you_will_see that tonight wilLcall, Chiara (46) a. Quando e PARTITO, when has left, b. Quando e ANDATO, when has gone,
Gianni? Gianni? Gianni, in montagna? Gianni, to the mountains?
VS VSO
(47) a. E PARTITO, Gianni? has left, Gianni? b. Ha FINITO, Gianni, il lavoro? has finished, Gianni, the work?
VS
(48) a. Chebellacasa ha COMPRATO, Gianni! what a nice house has bought, Gianni! b. Che bella casa ha COMPRATO, Gianni, a Maria! what a nice house has bought, Gianni, to Maria!
VS
VSO
VSO
Since they are destressed in situ, quantified subjects are now possible, as expected:
15
For unknown reasons, the sentences are very marginal if the constituent following the destressed subject is a predicative AP or DP (thanks to Richie Kayne for asking about predicative elements): (i) a. ??Potrebbe DIVENTARE, Gianni, malato/mio consulente/il mio avvocato. VSPred could become, Gianni, sick/my adviser/the my lawyer b. ??Quando e STATA, Maria, malata/(la) tua segretaria? VSPred when has been, Maria, sick/(the) your secretary? This cannot be due to the impossibility of destressing a predicative AP or DP, since the following sentences are grammatical: (ii) a. Potrebbe diventare GIANNI, malato/mio consulente/il mio avvocato. b. E stata MARIA, malata/(la) tua segretaria? c. Sembra GIANNI, intelligence. seems Gianni, intelligent d. Si sono sentiti ISOLDATI, scoperti. themselves have felt the soldiers, discovered
16
Example from Frascarelli 1996:115.
VSPred VSPred VSPred VSPred
A second thought on emarginazione: Destressing vs. "Right Dislocation" (49) a. Puo gia can already b. Puo gia can already
AND ARE, ogni ragazzo. go, every boy RITIRARE, ogni ragazzo, la (sua) macchina. go_and_take, every boy, the (his) car
(50) a. Quando e PARTITO, when has left, b. Quando e ANDATO, when has gone,
ogni ragazzo? every boy? ogni ragazzo, in montagna? every boy, to the mountains
(51) a. E PARTITO, ogni ragazzo? has left, every boy? b. Ha FINITO, ogni ragazzo, il lavoro? has finished, every boy, the work? (52) a. Che bella casa ha COMPRATO, what a nice house has bought, b. Che bella casa ha COMPRATO, what a nice house has bought,
133
VS VSO
VS VSO
VS VSO
ogni tuo parente! VS every your relative! ogni tuo parente, ai propri genitori! VSO every your relative, to_the his parents!
Binding facts corroborate the above hypothesis. The data in (53) are parallel to (14) above (notice that (53e) differs from (14e) because the subject is not focused in the former; compare (53e) with *Sua\ madre ha gia visitato ogni\ ragazzo 'his mother has already visited every boy'). (53) a. b. c. d. e.
Ha gia Ha gia *Ha gia *Hanno *Ha gia
VISITATO, ogni; ragazzo, sua; madre. VISITATO, Gianni;, i proprij genitori. VISITATO, luij, la madre di Gianni;. gia VISITATO, i proprij genitori, Gianni;. VISITATO, sua; madre, ogni, ragazzo.
VSO VSO *VSO *VSO *VSO
Finally in Anconetano, VS(O) subjects pattern with post-verbal subjects in optionally triggering agreement, as expected (see Cardinaletti 1997, §2.3): (54) a. Ha gia MANGIATO, i bambini? has already eaten, the children? b. Ha gia FINITO, i bambini, i compiti? has already finished, the children, the homework_pl.?
VS
(55) a. Cosa ha FATTO, what has done, b. Cosa ha FATTO, what has done,
VS
i bambini? the children? i bambini, a scuola? the children, at school?
VSO
VSO
134 Anna Cardinaletti
6 CONCLUSION On the basis of the distribution of quantified constituents, of binding phenomena, and of agreement patterns, I have shown that the so-called emarginazione construction corresponds to two different structures depending on the syntactic function of the marginalized constituent. In VSO the object is destressed in its base position; in VOS the subject is "right-dislocated" (i.e., basegenerated in a position structurally lower than the clause, see (29b)). This is exactly what is expected under the antisymmetric approach of Kayne (1994), where there is no post-object position for the subject (i.e., no rightward specVP). The analysis is confirmed by the semantic and prosodic properties of the two constructions: in VSO the subject is contrastively focused, and is assigned stress by the Emphatic/Contrastive Stress Rule; in VOS the object can be noncontrastively focused, and is assigned stress by the Nuclear Stress Rule. Nothing, of course, prevents the subject from being destressed. Section 5 has shown that this is the case in sentences where the verb is focused. The distinction between destressing and Right Dislocation has an important implication. It supports the proposal that post-verbal focused constituents occur in their base-position inside VP. An alternative proposal, which involves a rightward focus position above VP to which focused elements are moved (see Samek-Lodovici 1994, Belletti & Shlonsky 1995), would be forced to analyse all material following the focused constituent as right-dislocated, thus failing to capture the asymmetries pointed out above.
REFERENCES Antinucci, Francesco and Guglielmo Cinque. (1977). Sull'ordine delle parole in italiano: Vemarginazione. Studi di grammatica italiana, 6, 121-146. Belletti, Adriana and Ur Shlonsky. (1995). The order of verbal complements: a comparative study. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 13.3, 489-526. Calabrese, Andrea. (1982). Alcune ipotesi sulla struttura informazionale della frase in italiano e sul suo rapporto con la struttura fonologica. Rivista di grammatica generativa, 7, 3-78. Calabrese, Andrea. (1992). Some remarks on focus and logical structure in Italian. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics, 1, 91-127. Cardinaletti, Anna. (1988). Sul riordinamento postverbale dei costituenti in italiano. ATI Journal, 53, 12-30. Cardinaletti, Anna. (1997). Subjects and clause structure. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.) The New Comparative Syntax. London: Longman. 33-63. Cardinaletti, Anna and Michal Starke. (1999). The typology of structural deficiency. A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.) Clitics in the Languages of Europe. EALT/EUROTYP 20-5. Berlin & New York: Mouton. 145-233. Cecchetto, Carlo. (1997). Doubling structures and reconstruction. Ms., DIPSCO, Milan. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1990). Types of A'-Dependencies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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Cinque, Guglielmo. (1993). A null theory of phrase and compound stress. Linguistic Inquiry, 24, 239-298. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frascarelli, Mara. (1996). L'interfaccia sintassi-fonologia nelle costruzioni di focalizzazione e topicalizzazione dell'italiano. PhD dissertation, Universita di Roma Tre. Guasti, Maria Teresa and Marina Nespor. (1996). Is syntax phonology free? Ms., Istituto Scientifico S. Raffaele, Milan and HIL/University of Amsterdam. Kayne, Richard S. (1994). The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Obenauer, Hans. (1998). On negative movement in French. Talk given at the Tavola rotonda, Padua, June 1998. Ordonez, Francisco. (1997). Word order and clause structure in Spanish and other Romance languages. PhD dissertation, City University of New York. Ordonez, Francisco. (1998). Postverbal asymmetries in Spanish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 16, 313-346. Rizzi, Luigi. (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.) Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 281-337. Samek-Lodovici, Vieri. (1994). Italian's focus position. Talk given at the XXIV0 Symposium on Romance Languages, Los Angeles, March 1994. Zubizarreta, Maria-Luisa. (1994). Word order, prosody, and focus. Ms., University of Southern California. Zubizarreta, Maria-Luisa. (1998). Prosody, Focus, and Word Order. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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7
"RESTRUCTURING" AND THE ORDER OF ASPECTUAL AND ROOT MODAL HEADS*
Guglielmo Cinque
0 INTRODUCTION If functional affixes and particles are interpreted as the overt realization of distinct functional heads (Baker 1985, Pollock 1989, Ouhalla 1988,1991, Chomsky 1995, chapter 2, among others), there is reason to posit the existence of a substantial number of distinct aspectual heads (ordered among each other): Cf. the habitual aspect suffixes of Mongolian (Svantesson 1991:197) and of Central Alaskan Yup'ik (Mithun & Ali 1996:112f); the predispositional aspect morpheme of American Sign Language (Klima & Bellugi 1979), rendered with 'tends to'; the delayed aspect particle of Ulithian, glossed by Sohn & Bender (1973:116) as 'finally', and the suffix between the frequentative and the past tense suffixes of Macushi, also rendered as 'finally' by Abbott (1991: 113ff); the frequentative aspect suffix of Yareba (Weimer 1972:61) and that of Macushi, just mentioned; the repetitive aspect particle ('again') of Hidatsa (Hengeveld to appear, ex. (42)), called by him 'iterative'; the celerative aspect suffix of Fulfulde (Fagerli 1994:36ff) and the suffixes of Dyirbal and Evenki, glossed as 'quickly' by Dixon (1972: 248) and Nedjalkov (1997 : 252); the terminative aspect suffix of Kiribatese (Groves et al. 1985 :58); the confirmative aspect suffix of Lezgian, rendered as 'still' by Haspelmath (1993 :140ff) and that of Walmadjari, rendered as 'keep on' by Hudson (1976:656); the perfect aspect suffixes of Ponapean (Rehg 1 9 8 1 : 2 6 9 f f ) and Chinese (Smith 1991:344ff); the retrospective particles of the French Creoles reported in Cinque 1999, chapter 3, which are rendered in the literature with 'venirde', 'to have just'); the proximative prefix of Big Nambas (Fox 1979 : 64) and the proximative particle of Kwaio (Keesing 1985 :118ff), rendered by both authors as 'soon'); the durative aspect suffixes of Hua (Hairnan 1980: 149) and Tauya (MacDonald 1990, §3.3.2.1), meaning 'for a while'); the progressive aspect suffix of Zuni (Nichols 1993: 104) and Menya (Whitehead 1991:266); the prospective aspect particle of Gungbe (Aboh 1996) and the prospective aspect suffixes of Comanche (Robinson & Armagost 1990: 318), meaning 'to be about to'; the inceptive aspect suffixes of Ika (Frank 1990:57) and Waorani (Peeke 1994 :276); the conative aspect suffix of Hua (Haiman 1980:147) and Tauya (MacDonald 1990, §3.3.2.1); the frustrative aspect suffixes of Wayampf, rendered as 'without success' by Jensen (1994: 3590, and the 'success' aspectual morpheme of Spokane, which Carlson (1996:59) renders with 'manage'; the completive aspect suffixes of Fulfulde (Fagerli 1994: 19) and Chinese (Smith 1991: 382).
* For their comments and judgements, I wish to thank Paola Beninca and Anna Cardinaletti.
138
Guglielmo Cinque
Discussing a number of such heads, Cinque (1999) arrives (for a subset of them) at a specific order based on the evidence available from their relative order:' (1) Asphabitual > Asprepetitive (I) > Aspfrequentative (I) > Aspceierative (I) > Aspterrnjnatjve > Aspcontinuative -* Aspperfect( ?) > ASpretrOspective -•* ASpproxjmative > Aspdurative -•* Aspprogressjve > AspproSpectjve > AspCOmpletive (I) (> Voice) > AspceieratiVe (II) > Aspconlpietive (II) > Asprepetitive (II) > Aspfrequentatjve (jj) • • •
Having no cross-linguistic evidence at my disposal concerning the relative orders of the corresponding affixes or particles, I made no systematic attempt there to integrate in this order such aspectual heads as AsppredisPositionai, Aspdeiayed (or 'finally'), Aspinceptive, Aspfrustrative/success, and Aspconative- The positions occupied by root modals with respect to the other heads of (1) were also left partly open. In what follows, I would like to present some facts, internal to just one language, Italian, which appear to offer some evidence for ordering these heads among each other, and within the larger hierarchy in (1) (at least under the analysis of "restructuring" proposed in Cinque (in preparation), the main features of which will be sketched directly).2 No existing analysis of "restructuring" offers, it seems, a natural account of why the transparency effects characteristic of this phenomenon occur across languages with just the classes of modal, aspectual and movement verbs (all analyses assume some form of arbitrary lexical specification, or arbitrary semantic condition). The analysis developed by Cinque (in preparation) centers instead on the fact that these verbs are the only verbs whose meaning happens to correspond to a particular functional head of the universal hierarchy proposed in Cinque 1999 independently of the "restructuring" phenomenon. If we assume that a verb may either be generated (and licensed) as the head of VP, or, when it "lexicalizes" a particular functional head, directly in that head position, both the monoclausal nature of the phenomenon and the membership of the verb in the "restructuring" class can be naturally derived (I refer to Cinque (in preparation) for a detailed discussion). Moreover, if the various functional heads of the clause are rigidly ordered (Cinque 1999), it follows that "restructuring" verbs should display a rigid relative order among each other when transparency effects obtain (i.e., when they are licensed not as lexical verbs, but as "functional" verbs generated in specific functional heads). This expectation is generally fulfilled. But, as with the order of adverbs, care should be taken to single out those cases where the same verb can be generated in more than one functional head (often with a concomitant change in meaning), for that possibility can give rise to apparent multiple orders with another functional verb. Some cases of this sort will in fact be discussed below. 1
Some of these orders were corroborated by the relative order of the adverbs corresponding to these aspects, taken there to be generated in the specifier position of the relevant functional projections. In a few cases the only evidence available to determine the order between two aspectual heads came in fact from the relative order among the corresponding adverbs. Note the repetition, in (1), of repetitive, frequentative and celerative aspect in two distinct "zones"; one quantifying over the event expressed by the sentence, the other over the process, or state, expressed by the V(P).
• The analyses of "Restructuring" are too numerous to list here. Cf. Rizzi 1982 (chapter 1), Kayne 1989, Roberts 1997 and references cited there.
"Restructuring " and the order of aspectual and root modal heads
139
1 ASPECTUAL VERBS AND THE ORDER OF ASPECTUAL HEADS I will start with the relative order between the habitual and predispositional aspects, by considering the relative order between the "restructuring" verbs solere (usare) 'use' and tendere (a) 'tend' (cf. (2)-(3), which, I take, lexicalize these aspects in Italian).3 (2) Gianni lo soleva/usava dire spesso G. it used to say often (3) Gianni ne tendeva a far pochi (di errori) G. of-them tended to do few (of errors) When Clitic Climbing or other transparency effects obtain (forcing a monoclausal structure), the order appears to be rigid, with solere (or usare) preceding tendere (a), thus suggesting the order Asphabitual > AspprediSpoSitionai (cf- (4) and (5)):4 (4) a. ?Certe cose le Certain things them b. *Certe cose le Certain things them (5) a. (?)Certe cose Certain things b. *Certe cose Certain things
si suole tendere a fare subito si (one) use to tend to do immediately si tende a soler fare subito si (one) tend to use to do immediately
si sogliono tendere a fare in vecchiaia si (one) use to tend to do when old si tendono a soler fare in vecchiaia si (one) tend to use to do when old
3
Note that in principle nothing forces a particular lexical verb to be used as a functional ("restructuring") verb. A necessary (but, perhaps, not sufficient) condition appears to be the (close to) perfect match between the verb's semantics and the semantic features of a functional head. While solere and usare (whether used in "restructuring" contexts or not) belong to a rather formal register of Italian (cf. Renzi & Salvi 1991:521), the "restructuring" use of tendere (a) is felt by some as colloquial.
4
All of the examples discussed below display transparency effects (so as to force the presence of a monoclausal structure). In many cases, though, the same rigid order is found even in the absence of transparency effects. While for me, and other speakers, the order solere > tendere (a) is the only one available, for Paola Beninca (and possibly other speakers) the other order (tendere (a) > solere) is also admitted. I take this to mean that solere, for the second group of speakers, not only corresponds to the higher, event-related, habitual aspect projection (the one hosting in its specifier such adverbs as di solito/solitamente and abitualmente), but also to the lower, process- or state-related, habitual aspect projection (which can host abitualmente, but not di solito/ solitamente), cf. (i): (i) a. Gianni di solito frequentava le stesse persone abitualmente G. generally frequented the same persons habitually b. *Gianni abitualmente frequentava le stesse persone di solito G. habitually frequented the same persons generally c. ?Gianni abitualmente frequentava le stesse persone abitualmente G. habitually frequented the same persons habitually
140 Guglielmo Cinque In turn, when transparency effects obtain, tenders (a) appears to obligatorily precede tornare (a) 'do again', which expresses repetitive aspect. Cf. (6):5 (6) a. Certe cose si tendono a tornare a fare da vecchi Certain things si (one) tend to do again when old b. *Certe cose si tornano a tendere a fare da vecchi Certain things si (one) again tend to do when old These contrasts, then, suggest the partial order of functional heads in (7): tual
>
•"•sPpredispositional > AsPrepetitive • • •
Consider now the relative order between predispositional aspect and terminative aspect, which in Italian is expressed by the "restructuring" verb smettere (di) 'stop' (as well as by the AdvP piu. 'no longer'):6 (8) a. Certe cose si tendono a smettere di fare dopo una certa eta Certain things si (one) tend to stop doing after a certain age b. *Certe cose si smettono di tendere a fare dopo una certa eta Certain things si (one) stop to tend to do after a certain age This gives the order: . . . Asppredispositionai • • • > • • Aspterminative • • •7 Where does AspterminatiVe locate itself with respect to Asp repe tjtjve> which also follows AsppreCijSpOSjtjonai? The fact that both orders in (9) appear possible suggests that terminative aspect follows the higher repetitive aspect head, and precedes the lower one (cf. (1)):
5
As noted in Cinque 1999, repetitive aspect can occupy a higher position, quantifying over the event (between the habitual and frequentative aspects) and a lower one, lower than Voice, quantifying over the process or state expressed by the predicate. Both positions, apparently, follow the predispositional aspect head, given that the order tornare (a) > tendere (a) is not possible (cf. (6b)). The existence of two distinct repetitive aspects (located in two distinct quantificational "zones") is corroborated by the possibility of having a higher, and a lower, repetitive adverb (e.g., di nuovo/ancora/... 'again') in one and the same sentence: (i) a. Gianni ha di nuovo alzato il braccio di nuovo (ancora una volta) G. has again lifted his arm again (once more)
6
The paraphrase relation between smettere (di) and piu is. nonetheless, complex, involving different values of other functional heads. Cf.. Aveva smesso di farlo 'he had stopped doing it', with anterior of the past (and imperfect aspect), and Non lo faceva piu 'he didn't do it any longer', with past tense and imperfect aspect. Terminative aspect (as opposed to completive aspect) expresses the termination of a certain process (or state) at an arbitrary point, rather than at the natural end point of the process (when there is one).
7
By transitivity, given that predispositional aspect follows habitual aspect, we expect that terminative aspect also follows habitual aspect; which is what we find: (i) a. Certe cose si sogliono smettere di fare dopo una certa eta Certain things si (one) use to stop doing after a certain age b. *Certe cose si smettono di soler fare dopo una certa eta Certain things si (one) stop to use doing after a certain age
"Restructuring " and the order of aspectual and root modal heads (9) a. Certe persone Certain people b. Certe persone Certain people
141
si tornano a smettere di frequentare in certe circostanze si (one) again stop frequenting under certain circumstances si smettono di tornare a frequentare in certe circostanze si (one) stop frequenting again under certain circumstances
Altogether, we have thus evidence for the partial order of heads in (10): (10) . . . Asphabitual > Aspprecjispositional > Asprepetjtjve (i) > Asptermjnatjve . . . (> AsprepetjtjVe (II))
(9) is, thus, the first case of an apparent free ordering of two aspectual verbs. As noted, however, it is only an illusion given by the possibility of licensing tornare (a) in two different aspectual heads separated by terminative aspect (as well as other aspects). Terminative aspect appears to be ordered before continuative aspect, expressed in Italian by the "restructuring" verb continuare (a) (as well as by the adverb ancora 'still').8 See (1 1), with clitic climbing, and (12) with "long object preposing": (11) a. ?Vi smise di continuare ad andare There (he) stopped continuing to go b. *Vi continue a smettere di andare There (he) continued to stop going (12) a. Certi errori Certain errors b.*?Certi errori Certain errors
non si smettono mai di continuare a fare si (one) never stop continuing to do si continuano sempre a smettere di fare si (one) continue always to stop doing
This gives the partial order in (13):9 (13) . . . Asphabjtual > Asppredispositional -•" ASPrepetitive (i) > Asptermjnatjve > Aspconjjnuatjve • • • (> Asprepetitive (II))
8
As noted by Cinque (1999, §4.17), if they can cooccur at all, the terminative aspect adverb piu 'no longer' also has to precede the continuative aspect adverb ancora 'still': (i) a. ?Spero che tu non sia piu ancora arrabbiato con me (I) hope that you are no longer still angry with me b. *Spero che tu non sia ancora piu arrabbiato con me (I) hope that you are still no longer angry with me
9
Continuative aspect is apparently to be distinguished from an aspect meaning 'continuously, constantly' (cf. the aspectual suffix -ruku- of Tuyuca—Barnes 1994: 331). The latter appears to correspond to English keep, Italian seguitare (a), which, as noted by Freed (1979:90f differs from continue/continuare (a) in presuppositional content. While John continued slamming the door all night/John continuo a sbattere la porta tutta la none presupposes that someone had been slamming the door earlier, John kept slamming the door all night/ John seguito a sbattere la porta tutta la notte does not (though Italian continuare (a) can marginally also be used non presuppositionally). I leave the location of this 'continuously' aspect undetermined here.
142
Guglielmo Cinque
By transitivity, we expect continuare (a) to also follow tenders (a) and solere. This is indeed what we find. See (14) and (15): (14) a. Certe cose si sogliono continuare a fare tutta la vita Certain things si (one) use to continue doing for the all life b. *Certe cose si continuano a soler fare tutta la vita Certain things si (one) continue to use doing for the all life (15)
a. Certe cose si tendono a continuare a fare sempre Certain things si (one) tend to continue doing always b. * Certe cose si continuano a tendere a fare sempre Certain things si (one) continue to tend to do always
Given that tornare (a) can be licensed both in Asprepetjtive ^, higher than Aspcontjnuative, and in Asprepetitive (ii)5 lower than Aspcontinuative, we expect both orders of tornare (a) and continuare (a) to be possible. This is again what we find: (16)
a. Certe cose si tornano a continuare a fare Certain things si (one) again continue to do b. Certe cose si continuano a tornare a fare Certain things si (one) continue to again do
appena e possibile as soon as is possible appena e possibile as soon as is possible
Consider next the relative order of the conative and frustrative/success aspects, and their order relative to the aspects so far examined. The "restructuring" verbs which express these two aspects in Italian are provare (a) (tentare (di)lcercare (dij) 'try',10 and (non) riuscire (a) '(n°t) manage', respectively. The data in (17)-(18) appear to indicate that frustrative/success aspect precedes conative aspect: (17) a. Certe cose non si riescono nemmeno a provare a fare Certain things not si (one) manage to try to do b.*?Certe cose non si provano nemmeno a riuscire a fare Certain things not si (one) try to manage to do (18) a. Le riuscirai almeno a provare a telefonare? 'Will you manage at least to try to call her?' b. *Le proverai almeno a riuscire a telefonare? 'Will you try at least to manage to call her?' What about the order of these two aspectual heads with respect to the aspectual heads in (13)? The following contrasts suggest that Aspf-m^tive/succe.^ and Aspconative are ordered after
10
While all (or the great majority of) speakers have a "restructuring" use of provare (a), not all accept tentare (di)/cercare (di) as "restructuring" verbs.
"Restructuring " and the order of aspectual and root modal heads
143
Aspcontinuative (and, a fortiori, after Aspterminative, Asppredispositional, and Asphabitual, which precede •^•SPcontinuative/-
(19) a.
Gianni le continuo a provare a telefonare G. her continued to try to call b. ??Gianni le provo a continuare a telefonare G. her tried to continue to call
(20) a.
Gianni li continuo a riuscire a vedere G. them continued to manage to see b. ??Gianni li riusci a continuare a vedere G. them managed to continue to see
(21) a. ?Gianni la smise di provare a riparare G. it stopped trying to repair b. *Gianni la provo a smettere di riparare G. it tried to stop repairing (22) a. Gianni non vi G. not you b. *Gianni non vi G. not you
smettera mai di riuscire a convincere... will ever stop managing to convince... riuscira mai a smettere di convincere... will ever manage to stop convincing...
(23) a. ?Gianni li tende a riuscire a fare G. them tends to manage to do b. *Gianni li riesce a tendere a fare G. them manages to tend to do (24) a. Gianni gli tende a provare a parlare ogni volta che puo G. to-him tends to try to speak every time he can b. * Gianni gli prova a tendere a parlare ogni volta che puo G. to-him tries to tend to speak every time he can (25) a. Gianni li soleva riuscire a convincere G. them used to manage to convince b. *Gianni li riusciva a soler convincere G. them managed to use to convince (26) a. Gianni li suole provare a chiamare G. them uses to try to call b. *Gianni li prova a soler chiamare G. them tries to use to call
11
The non-total ungrammatically of (19b) and (20b) may be related to the (quite marginal) possibility for continuative aspect to be found below Voice (hence below Aspfrusmmve/success and Aspconative)- Cf. fn. 14 below for independent evidence concerning this (marginal) possibility.
144 Guglielmo Cinque But where exactly after Aspcontinuative are Aspfrustrative/success and Aspconative located in the hierarchy in (1)? There is some evidence that they are located between Aspprospectjve and the As Pcompietive above Voice. As (27)-(28) show Aspfrustrative/success must follow, rather than precede, ASPprogressive and AspproSpectiVe •
(27) a. Gianni gli stava riuscendo a parlare, finalmente G. to-him was managing to speak, finally b. *Gianni gli riusciva a star(e) parlando, finalmente G. to-him managed to be speaking, finally (28) a. Gianni lo stava per riuscire a convincere G. him was about to manage to convince b. *Gianni lo riusciva a star(e) per convincere G. him managed to be about to convince This is also true (a fortiori, in the present analysis) for Aspconative. See (29)-(30):12 (29) a. Gianni la stava provando a riparare G. it was trying to repair b. *Gianni la provava a star(e) riparando G. it tried to be repairing (30) a. Gianni lo stava per provare a riparare G. it was about to try to repair b. *Gianni lo provava a star(e) per riparare G. it tried to be about to repair Finally, the fact that riuscire (a) and provare (a) always precede finire (di) (cf. (31)-(32)) suggests that AspfrustratiVe/success and Aspconative precede the Aspcompletive above Voice (as well as the one below Voice):13 12
Converging evidence for the location of conative aspect below progressive aspect comes from the relative order of the corresponding suffixes in the Papuan language Hua, under the Mirror Principle. Cf. (i), from Haiman 1980:147: (i) hu-kobau- mana do-CONAT-PROG-INCONSEQUENTIAL
'I was trying to do (but it didn't work out in some way)' 13
The evidence for a completive aspect head above Voice, and one below Voice, is given by the possibility of embedding a passive under finire, (ia), and by the possibility of "long passivization" of finire, (ib). (For discussion, cf. Cinque 1997): (i) a. Le case gli finirono di esser consegnate a marzo The houses to-him finished to be handed in March b. Ne furono finite di costruire solo due Of-them were finished to build only two (31b) and (32b) are partially rescued if finire is assigned a terminative interpretation (similar to 'stop'), rather than its completive one ('finish'/'end'), a possibility open lo finire in Italian, though not to finish in English. Cf. Cinque 1997.
"Restructuring " and the order of aspectual and root modal heads
145
(31) a. Gianni non la riusci a finire di imparare a memoria G. it did not manage to finish to learn by heart b. *Gianni non la fini di riuscire a imparare a memoria G. it did not finish to manage to learn by heart (32)
a. Gianni ne provo a finire di tradurre solo due G. of-them tried to finish to translate only two b. * Gianni ne fini di provare a tradurre solo due G. of-them finished to try to translate only two
The evidence that Aspfmstratjve/success and Aspconative are above Voice comes from the observation that, like all other "restructuring" verbs which are higher than Voice, they resist "long passivization" (cf. (33) and Cinque 1997 for relevant discussion). In essence, their incompatibility with passivization follows from the fact that no lowering is admitted, and that a passive form must raise to Voice to check its marked Voice feature. This implies that only a lexical verb, generated in VP, or a functional verb generated in a head lower than Voice, will be able to passivize. As is well-known only few "restructuring" verbs allow "long passivization" (typically finire (di) 'finish' and cominciare (a) 'begin' — cf. (34) and Cinque 1997 for discusssion).14 The conclusion that only the functional heads corresponding to these "restructuring" verbs are lower than Voice (whence their passivizability) is supported by the independent evidence given in Cinque 1999 for an Aspcompietive head lower than Voice (see also Cinque 1997). (33)
a. *Quelle case furono riuscite a costruire negli anni cinquanta Those houses were managed to build in the '50's b. *Quelle case furono provate a costruire negli anni cinquanta Those houses were tried to build in the '50's
(34) a. Quelle case Those houses b. ?Quelle case Those houses
furono finite di costruire negli anni cinquanta were finished building in the '50's furono cominciate a costruire negli anni cinquanta were begun to build in the '50's
To summarize, the order suggested by the evidence considered so far is the one in (35): (35)
. . . Asph a bjtual > Asppre(jjSpOSjtJonal > Asprepetjtjve (j) > Aspterminative > Aspcontinuative • • • AspprOgressjve > AspproSpeC[jve > Aspfj-ustrative/success ^ AspconatjVe > Aspcomp]etive (I) > Voice > . . . Aspcomp]etive (H) > Asprepetitive (II)
Consider now inceptive aspect, expressed in Italian by such verbs as cominciare (a)/iniziare (a). In Cinque 1 997 some evidence is discussed for positing two distinct inceptive aspect heads, one 14
Burzio (1981 :591; 1986:376) takes continuare (a) to marginally allow "long passivization", cf. (i). This would seem to imply the (marginal) presence of an instance of continuative aspect below Voice. But the status of (i) is far from clear. (i) ?(?)L'affitto fu continuato a pagare fino alia fine dell'anno the rent was continued to pay till the end of the year
146 Guglielmo Cinque lower than Voice, marking inception at the natural starting point of a process, just as completive aspect marks cessation at the natural end point of the process (whence the well-formedness of the "long passivization" of (34b)), and one higher than Voice, marking inception at an arbitrary point, just as terminative aspect marks cessation at an arbitrary point (whence the possibility for cominciare to embed a passive: I'opera comincio ad esser rappresentata nel 1950 'the opera began to be performed in 1950'). Starting with the inceptive aspect above Voice, we may note that, when transparency effects obtain, cominciare cannot precede solere and tendere (cf. (36)-(37)):15 (36) a. Gianni gli soleva cominciare a scrivere dopo mesi G. to-him used to begin to write many months later b. *Gianni gli cominciava a soler scrivere dopo mesi G. to-him began to use to write many months later (37) a. Gianni ne tendeva a cominciare ad affrontare G. of-them tended to begin to confront b. *Gianni ne cominciava a tendere ad affrontare G. of-them began to tend to confront
troppi too many troppi too many
Consider now the relative location of the higher inceptive aspect head with respect to the terminative and continuative aspect heads. Although the judgments are perhaps not very sharp, it seems that the higher inceptive head has to follow the terminative and continuative aspect heads, cf. (38H39): (38) a. ?Ne Of-them b. *Ne Of-them
smisero di cominciare ad esser riparate molte stopped beginning to be repaired many cominciarono a smettere di esser riparate molte began to stop being repaired many
(39) a. ?Ne Of-them b. *Ne Of-them
continuarono a cominciare ad esser riparate molte continued to begin to be repaired many cominciarono a continuare ad esser riparate molte began to continue to be repaired many
To judge from (40), inceptive aspect appears to also follow the progressive and prospective aspects:
15
It seems that it also has to follow the higher frequentative aspect head. This can be seen if, by embedding a passive, we exclude the lower frequentative and inceptive aspect heads. If so, the contrast in (i) suggests the order Aspfrequentative (I) ( > . . - ) > Asp inceptlve (i):
(i) a. Ne torno a cominciare ad esser riparata una parte Of-it again began to be repaired one part b. *Ne comincio a tornare ad esser riparata una parte Of-it began to be again repaired one part
"Restructuring" and the order of aspectual and root modal heads
147
(40) a. Ne stavano cominciando/?per cominciare ad esser riparate alcune Of-them were beginning/about to begin to be repaired some b. *Gianni ne cominciava a star perdendo/per perdere molti (di capelli) G. of-them was beginning to be losing/to be about to lose many (of hair) By transitivity, inceptive aspect should follow retrospective aspect, which precedes progressive aspect (cf. Cinque 1999, chapters 3 and 4). The Iberian Romance languages allow us to check this prediction, as they lexicalize this aspect with (one use of) the verb acabar 'finish'. Cf. the case of Catalan, (41), Portuguese, (42), and Spanish, (43):16 (41) a. En Joan les acaba de comen?ar a construir 'J. has just begun to build them' ('*J. finishes to begin to build them') b. ?En Joan les comenca a acabar de construir 'J. begins to finish building them' ('*J. begins to have just built them') (42) a. Acabam-as de comecar a construir They have just begun to build them' ('*They finish to begin to build them') b. Come9am-as a acabar de construir 'They begin to finish to build them' ('*They begin to have just built them') (43) a. Juan lo acaba de empezar a leer J. it has just begun reading b. Juan lo empieza a acabar de leer J. it begins to finish reading In the (a) cases, acabar, preceding comencar/comecar/empezar 'begin', must indeed express retrospective aspect ('to have just V-ed'), which it no longer can when following comencar/ comecar/empezar 'begin'. See the (b) cases, where the only meaning available is that of 'finish' (expressing completive aspect). Inceptive aspect apparently precedes frustrative/success aspect and conative aspect, see (44a) and (45a) (the fact that cominciare can also be found following riuscire and provare — (44b) and (45b)—can be attributed to the fact that it can also lexicalize the lower inceptive aspect head below Voice).17
16
I thank Carme Picallo, Pilar Barbosa and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta, respectively, for providing the relevant sentences and judgments.
17
The conclusion that the iniziare/cominciare following riuscire and provare is the inceptive aspect head below Voice seems supported by the contrasts in (i) and (ii), which show that iniziare can be passivized but cannot embed a passive (the judgments, however, are quite subtle): (i) a. ?Ne riuscirono ad esser iniziate a costruire solo due Of-them managed to be begun to build only two b. *?Ne riuscirono ad iniziare ad esser costruite solo due Of-them managed to begin to be built only two (ii) a. ?Vi provarono ad esser iniziati a curare They in-it tried to be begun to cure b. *?Vi provarono ad iniziare ad esser curati They in-it tried to begin to be cured
148 Guglielmo Cinque (44) a. Gianni ne cominciava a riuscire a tradurre mold G. of-them began to manage to translate many b. Gianni ne riusciva a cominciare a tradurre molti G. of-them managed to begin to translate many (45) a. Gianni ne comincio a provare a tradurre G. of-them began to try to translate b. Gianni ne provo a cominciare a tradurre G. of-them tried to begin to translate
uno one uno one
This allows us to integrate the order in (35) as in (46): (46)
. . . Asphabitual •> AspprecjjSpOSitj0nal
>
Asprepetjtjve (I) > Aspterminative > Aspcontinuative > . . .
Aspfetrospective • • • > AsPprogressive -> ^spprospggfjve > Asp;nceptive > "-Spfrustcative/success > Aspconative > Aspcompietive (I) > Voice > . . . Aspcompietjve (H) > Asprepetjtive (U)
2 MODAL VERBS AND THE POSITION OF ROOT MODAL HEADS In Cinque 1999 it was noted that, while the modal heads of alethic necessity and possibility seem to occur higher than the various aspectual heads, the heads corresponding to the so-called root modalities (volition, obligation, ability and permission) seem to be interspersed among the aspectual heads, even though no definite proposal was put forth there. If we consider the relative orders of "restructuring" aspectual and modal verbs when transparency effects obtain, a fixed order emerges, which suggests a particular rigid order of the corresponding functional heads. Starting with the modal verb potere 'can', the facts seem to suggest that Modpermjssion occupies a position distinct from, and lower than, Modality. Both Modpermission and Modality precede Aspconatjve (expressed by provare), cf. (47), where the interrogative context in the first person of the present tense forces a (request of) permission reading of potere, and (48), where potere expresses ability: (47) a. Gliene To-him-of-it b. *Gliene To-him-of-it
posso provare a parlare io? can I try to speak myself? provo a poter parlare io? do I try to be allowed to speak myself?
(48) a. Gliene To-him-of-it b. *Gliene To-him-of-it
posso provare a parlare io I can try to speak myself provo a poter parlare io I try to be able to speak myself
Consider next (49), where again a permission reading of potere is involved. The contrast between the well-formedness of (49a) and the ill-formedness of (49b), suggests that potere of permission follows AspfrustratiVe/SUCcess-
"Restructuring " and the order of aspectual and root modal heads (49) a.
Vi There b.(*)Vi There
1 49
riuscira a poter entrare dopo la mezzanotte? will he manage to be allowed to enter after midnight? potra riuscire ad entrare dopo la mezzanotte?18 will he be allowed to manage to enter after midnight?
The potere of ability, instead, appears to precede Asp^^t^e/success, and follow Asppr0spective> see (50) and (51): (50) a. Li puoi riuscire a convincere solo tu 'Only you are able to manage to convince them' b. *Li riesci a poter convincere solo tu 'Only you manage to be able to convince them Here, the context favours an ability reading of potere, and the relevant judgments point to the order: Modabiiity > Aspfmstrative/success • The contrast in (5 1 ), finally, argues for the order of Modality after Aspprospective (and all higher heads):19 (51) a. Adesso, vi sto per poter sentire 'Now, I am about to be able to hear you b. *Adesso, vi posso stare per sentire 'Now, I am able to be about to hear you The above facts, thus, seem to substantiate the order in (52): 18
While (49b) is unacceptable under a 'permission' reading of potere, it is acceptable (though awkward) with either an 'ability' or a 'possibility' reading (both of which correspond to higher heads).
19
The order Aspprospectjve > Modat,iiity is also attested in (East Lothian) Scottish English. Miller (1980) cites (his example (9b)) a sentence such as: He's gonna can pass his driving test next week. The head immediately above Aspprospective is Asppr0gressive (cf. Cinque 1999, chapters 3 and 4). Interestingly, both Turkish and Ladakhi (Sino-Tibetan) have their modal ability suffix closer to the verb stem than the progressive aspect suffix (cf. (i) and (iia)). Ladakhi, in fact, provides evidence that Mod0biigation and Modpermission too are lower than Aspprosressive (cf. (iib-c)), and that Modabiiity is higher than Aspcompietive (cf. (iid)), in accord with (64) (all the Ladakhi examples are from Koshal 1979:229ff): (i) inan- ami- yor- um Yavas. 1980:66 believe-ABlL-NEG-PROG-lpers.sg. 'I can't believe it' (ii)a. sta-e chu birj- thub-bin- yot-kak horse water cross-ABlL-PROG-narrative PAST The horse had been able to cross the water' b. rppod-ne lok- ste yorjnflrj-choggin- yotpin- tshuk I Tibet return-having come- PERMlSS-PROG-reportive-PAST-EVALUAT 'I was allowed to come back from Tibet' c. thug-gua-£a p-t9-9ch9-a-phog- gin- yotpin- tshuk child school goOBLIG-PROG-reportive-PAST-EVALUAT 'Children had to be going to school' d.kho-ebs co-tsharthub-dukpin he workdo-COMPLET-ABlL-observed PAST 'He could complete the work (speaker saw it)'
150 Guglielmo Cinque (52)
. . . Aspprospectjve > Modality > Aspfmstrative/success > Modpermissjon > AspconatjVe • • •
Consider next the root modal of obligation dovere.21 This verb, when transparency effects obtain, apparently follows the prospective aspect head (and all heads higher than that), and precedes the root modal head of ability, cf. (53)-(54): (53) a. Gli stava per dover ridare tutti i soldi che le aveva prestato To-him he was about to have to give back all the money he lent to her b. *Gli doveva star per ridare tutti i soldi che le aveva prestato22 To-him he had to be about to give back the money he lent to her (54) a. Per quel posto Gianni si dovra poter dedicare al lavoro 16 ore al giorno 'For that job G. will have to be able to devote 16 hours to work' b. *Gianni si potra dover dedicare di piu al suo lavoro23 'G. will be able to have to devote himself more to work' Consider, now, the position of the root modal of volition (volere). This appears to be located somewhat higher, possibly after Aspfrequentative (i) (as conjectured in Cinque 1999),24 and before Aspterminative, cf. (55)-(58):
(55) a. Non Not b. *Non Not
gli soleva voler dare i suoi appunti to-him he used to want to give his notes gli voleva soler dare i suoi appunti to-him he wanted to use to give his notes
20
In this connection, it is interesting to note that certain usages of English ability can (e.g., Can you hear me?, where the speaker asks whether there are any external factors hindering his communication with the addressee) cannot be rendered in Italian with ability potere (*Puoi sentirmi?). They can only be rendered with riuscire 'manage' (Riesci a sentirmi?) (or with the simple Mi senti? 'Do you hear me'). I interpret this as suggesting that ability potere is more restricted than ability can (essentially to abilities which depend on the active participation of the subject), with riuscire taking over the missing reading (abilities depending on external factors), presumably after raising to the (contiguous) ability modal head.
21
The same verb can also express the higher functional heads of alethic modal necessity ('it is necessary t h a t . . . ' ) , and epistemic modality ('it is probable that...').
22
The sentence is possible if dovere is interpreted epistemically.
-1 The sentence becomes grammatical if potere is interpreted alethically ('it is possible that he will have to...'). 24
Frequentative adverbs (often, twice etc.) appear to precede volitional adverbs (intentionally, willingly etc.) (cf. Cinque 1999, chapter 1). The non existence of ("restructuring") aspectual verbs corresponding to Aspf re quentative(i)> do not allow us to confirm this ordering. If affrettarsi (a) 'hasten', which marginally allows "restructuring", lexicalizes (the higher) celerative aspect head, the contrast in (i) would seem to suggest that Modvoiition precedes Aspcelerative:
(i) a. ?Gianni gli si e voluto affrettare a telefonare G. to-him wanted to hasten to telephone b. *Gianni gli si e affrettato a voler telefonare G. to-him hastened to want to telephone Notice that the well-formedness of (56b), in the text, is expected if tornare there is in the lower repetitive aspect head.
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151
(56) a. ?Gli torno a voler dare il suo appoggio To-him he again wanted to give his support b. Gli voile tornare a dare il suo appoggio To-him he wanted to again give his support (57)
a. Gli vorrebbe smettere di parlare To-him he would want to stop talking b. *Gli smetterebbe di voler parlare To-him he would stop wanting to talk
(58)
a. Gliene To-him-of-it b. *Gliene To-him-of-it
voglio continuare a parlare I want to continue to speak continuo a voler parlare I continue to want to speak
Adding the Modvo[jtjon and Modobiigation functional heads, we obtain the partial order in (59): (59)
. . . Modvolition - • • Aspprogressive > Aspprospective > Modobiigation > Modability > ASpfnjstratjve/success -*1 MOdperrnissjon -> Aspconatjve . . .
Having added ModoWigation and Modability between Aspprospective and Aspfrustrative/success we must assess their order relative to Aspjnceptjve, which was also argued to be between Aspprospective and AspfrustratjVe/success (cf- (46) above). The sentences in (60) suggest that AspjnceptiVe precedes both Modobligation and Modabiiity: (60) a. Ci comincia a dover andare anche di notte There he begins to have to go even at night b. Lo comincio a poter suonare solo adesso It I begin to be able to play only now The well-formedness of (61) is compatible with this conclusion as dovere and potere there appear to have only an epistemic or alethic interpretation ('it is probable' or 'it is necessary', and 'it is possible'): (61) a. Gli deve cominciare ad essere garantito il loro appoggio To-him must begin to be secured their support b. Questa responsabilita non gli puo cominciare ad essere attribuita di nuovo This responsability not to-him can begin to be attributed again Finally, consider the position of so-called 'delayed' (or 'finally') aspect, mentioned by Cinque (1999: 105). If the Italian "restructuring" verb finire (per) 'end up doing' indeed lexicalizes this aspect, we may draw some indication about its position (beyond that deriving from
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Guglielmo Cinque
the position of finally in the hierarchy of adverbs). The following contrasts would seem to indicate that it is located between Asphabitual and Asppredispositionai.25 (62) a. *Gianni ne finisce per soler accettare molte G. of-them ends up using to accept many b. Gianni ne suole finire per accettare molte G. of-them uses to end up accepting many (63) a. ?Gianni le finira per tendere a fare da solo G. them will end up tending to do alone b. *Gianni le tendera a finire per fare da solo G. them will tend to end up doing alone
3 CONCLUSIONS By exploiting the rigidity in relative order of the "restructuring" verbs (when transparency effects obtain), we found some evidence to determine the relative position of a number of aspectual and root modal heads which had remained undetermined in Cinque 1999. In particular, this allowed us to integrate into the partial order proposed there the functional heads corresponding to Aspconatjve, Aspfrustrative/success* AspjnceptiVe> AspprecjiSpOsitional> Asp^elayed (or 'finally')' an" to refine
the positions of the root modal heads within the overall hierarchy in (1). The revised (portion of the) hierarchy thus obtained is given in (64):
25
Recall from the introduction above that the 'finally' suffix of Macushi is ordered between the frequentative aspect suffix and the past tense suffix, a fact compatible with the orders in (62) and (63).
26
This analysis also predicts the existence of ordering restrictions among the rigid sequence of "restructuring" verbs and different classes of adverbs. If the latter are generated in the Spec position of distinct functional heads (Cinque 1999), it is to be expected that an adverb corresponding to a functional projection higher than the one filled by a certain "restructuring" verb which remains put will not be able to follow the verb. As the examples in (i)-(ii) show, this prediction appears to be confirmed. But the whole question deserves a separate treatment. (i) a. Non gli riesco piu a continuare a parlare 'I don't manage any longer to continue to speak to him' b. *Non gli riesco a continuare piu a parlare (ii) a. Lo sta ancora finendo di scrivere 'He is still finishing to write it' b. *Lo sta finendo ancora di scrivere In the (a) examples, the "restructuring" verb generated lower than the adverb ('frustrative' aspect is lower than 'terminative' aspect) can come to precede the adverb due to its raising across the adverb in its movement to Tense and Agr. This is not possible in the (b) examples where the "restructuring" verb in question cannot cross the trace of the other "restructuring" verb moved to Tense and Agr.
"Restructuring " and the order of aspectual and root modal heads (64)
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s
. . . Asphabitual > Aspddayed (or 'finally') > ^ Ppredispositional > Asprepetjtive (i) > Aspfrequentatjve (j) > Modvolition > Aspcelerative(I) > Aspterminative > Asp continuative > Aspperfect > Aspretrospective > ASp p r o x i m a t i v e 5 1 Aspdurative > Aspprogressive > Asp p r o s p e c t i v e > Aspincetive > Modobligation> Modality > Aspfrustrative/success > Modpermission > Aspconative > Aspcompietive (j) > Voice > Aspcelerative(II) > Aspinceptive(II) > Aspcompletive(III) > Asprepetitive(II) > Aspfrequentative(II) . . .
REFERENCES Abbott, Miriam. (1991). Macushi. In Desmond C. Derbyshire and Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.) Handbook of Amazonian Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Vol. 3, 23-160. Aboh, Enoch. (1996). A propos de la syntaxe du Gungbe. Rivista di grammatica generativa, 21, 3-56. Baker, Mark C. (1985). The Mirror Principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry, 16, 373-415. Barnes, Janet. (1994). Tuyuca. In Kahrel & van den Berg bridge, Mass. Burzio, Luigi. (1986). Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: Reidel. Carlson, Barry. (1996). Situation aspect and a Spokane control morpheme. International Journal of American Linguistics, 62, 59-69. Chomsky, Noam. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1997). The interaction of passive, causative, and "restructuring" in Romance. Ms., University of Venice. (To appear in Christina M. Tortora (ed.) The Syntax of Italian Dialects. New York: Oxford University Press.) Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (in preparation). Restructuring and functional structure. Dixon, R. M. W. (1972). The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fagerli, Ole Torfinn. (1994). Verbal derivations in Fulfulde. Cand. Philol. dissertation, University of Trondheim (Issue 21 of University of Trondheim Working Papers in Linguistics). Fox, Greg J. (1979). Big Nambas grammar. Pacific Linguistics, Series B, no. 60. Canberra: The Australian National University. Frank, Paul. (1990). Ika Syntax. Arlington: University of Texas Press. Freed, Alice F. (1979). The Semantics of English Aspectual Complementation. Dordrecht: Reidel. Groves, Terab'ata R., Gordon W. Groves and Roderick Jacobs. (1985). Kiribatese: An outline description. Pacific Linguistics, Series D, no. 64. Canberra: The Australian National University. Haiman, John. (1980). Hua: A Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
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Haspelmath, Martin. (1993). A Grammar of Lezgian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hengeveld, Kees. (to appear). Mood and Modality. In Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann and Joachim Mugdan (eds.) Morphology: A Handbook on Inflection and Word Formation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hudson, Joyce. (1976). Walmadjari. In R. M. W. Dixon (ed.) Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Jensen, Allen. (1994). Wayampi. In Kahrel & van den Berg 343-364. Kahrel, Peter and Rene van den Berg (eds.). (1994). Typological Studies in Negation. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kayne, Richard S. (1989). Null subjects and clitic climbing. In Osvaldo Jaeggli and Ken Safir (eds.) The Null Subject Parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 239-261. Keesing, Roger M. (1985). Kwaio Grammar. Pacific Linguistics, Series B, no. 88. Canberra: The Australian National University. Klima, Edward and Ursula Bellugi. (1979). The Signs of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Koshal, Sanyukta. (1979). Ladakhi Grammar. Delhi: Motilal Baarsidass. MacDonald, Lorna. (1990). A Grammar ofTauya. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Miller, Jim. (1980). The expression of possibility and permission in Scottish English. Ms., University of Edinburgh. Mithun, Marianne and Elisabeth Ali. (1996). The elaboration of aspectual categories: Central Alaskan Yup'ik. Folia Linguistica, XXX, 111-127. Nedjalkov, Igor. (1997). Evenki. London: Routledge. Nichols, Lynn. (1993). Recovering Zuni auxiliaries and their role in event classification. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics, 2, 92-108. Ouhalla, Jamal. (1988). The syntax of head movement: A study of Berber. PhD dissertation, University College London. Ouhalla, Jamal. (1991). Functional Categories and Parametric Variation. London: Routledge. Peeke, Catherine. (1994). Waorani. In Kahrel & van den Berg 267-290. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1989). Verb movement, Universal Grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 365-^1-24. Rehg, Kenneth L. (1981). Ponapean Reference Grammar. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. Renzi, Lorenzo and Giampaolo Salvi (eds.). (1991). Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione. Vol. II. Bologna: il Mulino. Rizzi, Luigi. (1982). Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Roberts, Ian G. (1997). Restructuring, head movement, and locality. Linguistic Inquiry, 28,423460. Robinson, Lila W. and James Armagost. (1990). Comanche Dictionary and Grammar. Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. Smith, Carlota. (1991). The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
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Sohn, Ho-Min and B. W. Bender. (1973). A Ulithian grammar. Pacific Linguistics, Series C, no. 27. Canberra: The Australian National University. Svantesson, Jan-Olof. (1991). Tense, mood and aspect in Mongolian. Working Papers (Department of Linguistics, Lund University), 38, 189-204. Weimer, Harry. (1972). Yareba verb morphology. Te Reo (Journal of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand), 15, 58-73. Whitehead, Carl R. (1991). Tense, aspect, mood and modality in Menya. Papers in Papuan Linguistics, 1,245-311. (Pacific Linguistics, Series A, no. 73. Canberra, The Australian National University.) Yava§, Feryal. (1980). The meaning of the tense and aspect markers in Turkish. PhD Dissertation, University of Kansas.
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8
THE BIRTH OF A FUNCTIONAL CATEGORY: FROM LATIN ILLE TO THE ROMANCE ARTICLE AND PERSONAL PRONOUN*
Giuliana Giusti
The goal of this paper is to provide a formal account of the development of the Latin demonstrative ILLE into two different categories, namely the definite article and the personal pronoun's third person singular form. With respect to the corpus of data and their interpretation, I will follow recent work by Renzi (1997) and previous work quoted there. I will show how Renzi's proposal, which captures the correlation among many observable facts found across Romance languages, can be straightforwardly represented in the recent minimalist framework developed by Chomsky (1992, 1995). Section § 1 reviews and slightly revises Renzi's (1997 : 1-11) proposal of analysing the three categories of DEMONSTRATIVE, PERSONAL PRONOUN and ARTICLE as a bundle of semantic and syntactic features. The partial diffence in features to be found among the three categories is the reason for the different structural positions occupied by the three elements. Section §2 follows Renzi (1997 : 12-15) in taking the developement of ILLE as an example of a more general process of "grammaticalization" (in the sense of Meillet (1912) and recently Lehman (1982) and following work). This process is supposed to turn a lexical element into a functional one. It will be shown that "grammaticalization" in generative terms reduces to the reanalysis of a constituent in a functional Specifier as being the filler of the adjacent functional head.
* Although I could not discuss this paper with Cino Renzi, due to the secrecy of the project, I am greatly indebted to him for having introduced me into the study of Romance syntax and for much discussion on previous work of mine on the syntax of the article. This paper is the direct result of all that. Of course, the errors contained here can only be attributed to me.
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1 THREE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES Renzi (1997 :7-8) analyses the demonstrative into the features given in (la) below, (i-iv) are semantic, (v-vi) are syntactic features. Some of them are in an inclusion relation and this is represented by ">". In particular: (i) DEICTIC is included in (ii) DEFINITE, which is included in (iii) ANAPHORIC. Some of them are in complementary distribution. This is represented by "/". In particular: (iii) ANAPHORIC is in complementary distribution with OSTENSIVE which is placed under the same heading; while (v) the adjectival status is in complementary distribution with (vi) the pronominal status. The pronoun, (Ib), and the article, (Ic), are analysed in terms of the same features. (1) a. DEMONSTRATIVE
i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi.
deictic > definite > anaphoric / ostensive Ill person adjective / pronoun
b. PRONOUN
ii. iii. iv. vi.
definite > anaphoric / ostensive Ill person pronoun
C. DEFINITE ARTICLE ii. definite > iii. anaphoric / ostensive v. adjective According to Renzi, the different syntactic behaviour of the three categories can be derived by the different features present in the three elements. I will follow this line of reasoning and suggest minor improvements. First of all, I propose to consider DEICTIC as an independent feature. The feature DEICTIC is found associated with non-nominal categories such as adverbs (cf. here/there} and verbs (cornelgo, take/bring) and in this latter case it cannot be implied in definiteness. The presence vs. absence of the feature DEICTIC differentiates the demonstrative on the one hand from the pronoun and the definite article on the other. It is the presence of the feature DEFINITE in all the three elements what unites them synchronically and what has allowed the development of one into either of the other two. Second, I suggest dropping the features PRONOUN and ADJECTIVE since they refer to the categorial status of the element, which can be derived from independent properties of these elements. Consider that the property of being a pronoun cannot be a primitive in the grammar. In fact, any element that can appear in place of and/or in absence of a noun can be considered a pronoun. As a matter of fact an adjective may do so too. Notice furthermore that an article
From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun
159
cannot be considered an adjective from other points of view. For eample, it cannot cooccur with other articles, while it does cooccur with adjectives. The demonstrative and the pronoun project a full structure (DemP and DPpron, respectively), while the article is a functional head (D) in the nominal extended projection, which I call DP here, following the seminal work by Abney (1987):
(2) merely shows the final position in which we usually find DemP and DPpron. There are strong reasons to believe that at least demonstratives originate in a lower position (cf. Giusti 1993 ch. 2 and Bruge 1996). Template (2) predicts that demonstratives and pronouns cannot cooccur, as is the case in (3). (3) a. It *noi questi ragazzi b. Fr *nous ces garcon-ci c. Rum *noi acesti baieji/*noi baiejii ace§tia 'we these boys' (2) also predicts that demonstratives and pronouns can coocur with articles. This is not often the case in Romance languages. However, some sporadic cases are found. These will be the topic of discussion in the rest of this section.
1.1
Pronouns
Although pronouns rarely appear with nouns due to both their anaphoric feature and their overt person features, their cooccurrence with nouns is not excluded: (4) a. [noi [(*le)] [ragazze]] siamo state preminate we the girls have been praized b. volevo dire questo a [voi [(*i)] [bambini]] I wanted to tell that to you the children (4) shows that in Italian, the article cannot appear when a pronoun introduces a noun phrase. However, if we look at a different Romance language such as Rumanian, we can observe that pronouns may cooccur with articles:1 1
The examples in (5) are taken from Lombard (1974:96).
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(5) a. Dumneavoastra profesorii credeji ca e u§or, dar dupa noi elevii este greu. you professors-the believe that [it] is easy, but for us students-the [it] is difficult b. Noua barbajilor ne place sa fumam. we.dat men-the.dat CL pleases to smoke The contrast between Italian and Rumanian can be explained in a minimal framework by assuming that in Italian the pronoun in SpecDP realizes all the features present in that projection and makes the insertion of the article in D unnecessary and therefore impossible. In Rumanian, on the contrary, the article is part of the nominal inflection and it is inserted as a morpheme of N. As a consequence, the N must move to D to check the features of the article. The D position is perfectly available since the pronoun is in SpecDP. The presence of the pronoun is presumably the overt representation of person features in the noun phrase. If no feature is specified, the understood feature is 3rd person. Given that noun phrases are underspecified for 3rd person, it is unnecessary and, on minimalist assumptions, impossible to realize it overtly. This is why the presence of a 3rd person pronoun is ungrammatical, as noticed by Cardinaletti (1994):2 (6) a. *Ho parlato a loro studenti I spoke to them students b. *Lei insegnante non e contenta. She teacher is unhappy From a synchronic point of view, the underspecification of person unifies demonstratives and definite articles and differentiates them from personal pronouns. From a diachronic point of view, it is quite straightforward that the only pronoun a demonstrative could develop into is the 3rd person pronouns because a demonstrative is straightforwardly compatible with these person features for which it is underspecified.
1.2 Demonstratives Demonstratives too can cooccur with articles in Rumanian, but only when they are in postnominal position, cf. (7a) and (7b).
2
Cardinaletti argues that the data in (3)-(5) are predication structures rather than simple DPs. There is very little evidence that supports one approach over the other and this is not the place to set the matter in depth. However, the Rumanian data appear to support the present approach, given the obligatory presence of the definite article in cooccurrence of a pronoun and the absence of the article when the noun phrase is used predicatevely, e.g., e inginer ('[he] is [an] engineer'). Another piece of data which favours my approach over Cardinaletti's is the cooccurrence of pronouns with noun phrases that are specified by adjectives or adjectival quantifiers but not with quantifiers proper: cf. noi poveri/molti studenti ('we poor/many students') with *noi alcuni studenti ('we some students'). Cf. Giusti 1991 for the different behaviour of adjectival quantifiers which include many and quantifiers proper such as alcuni. Notice that the string alcuni studenti ('some students') can appear as a predicate in: siamo alcuni studenti ('[we] are some students'). I will not pursue the issue any further here.
From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun
161
(7) a. baiatul acesta frumos boy _the this -A nice b. acest baiat frumos this boy nice In Giusti 1997 and previous work quoted there, I have extensively argued that (7a) is derived from (7b), which is parallel to the Italian word order. In (7a) the noun goes one step further whereby acquiring the definite article. I have also argued there that the data in (7) strongly supports the XP status of the demonstrative. The demonstrative can be crossed by the head noun, while is cannot be crossed by an adjective which should be considered as a maximal projection, since it pied pipes a modifier: (8) a. baiatul acesta [foarte frumos] boy-the this-A very nice b. foarte frumosul (*acesta) baiat very nice-the (this) boy Spanish shows a different position for the postnominal demonstrative. Bruge (1996) shows that the basic position is the lowest functional specifier, only preceding the possessive: (9) a. el libro (*este) viejo (este) suio (*este) de sintaxis the book (this) old (this) his (this) of syntax b. este libro viejo suio de sintaxis 'this old book of his about syntax' In Bruge & Giusti 1996, we proposed a parametric theory of demonstratives in a cross linguistic perspective which takes the position of the demonstrative in (9b) as basic, the position of the demonstrative in Rumanian (7/8a) as a derived position due to an intermediate movement, and the final position found in (7b) in Rumanian and (9a) in Spanish as SpecDP. This is the position in which the demonstrative is found in other languages such as Italian and French. When the demonstrative is in SpecDP the presence of the article is unnecessary to check any features of the DP. However, when the demonstrative procrastinates its movement to SpecDP, the article is necessary to make the DP visible before spell-out. I refer to that work for a detailed analysis.
1.3
The definite article
The definite article is certainly a functional head. From the phonological point of view it is a proclitic in Italian and other Romance languages, except in Rumanian, where it is enclitic. The presence of the definite article in Italian is required by the principles that apply to the licencing of the extended projection of the noun. An article is required when the noun is present (lOa) and cannot appear when the noun is missing, as in (lOb), instead a pronominal demonstrative must be used (lOc).
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(10) a. II ragazzo biondo e gia arrivato, The blond boy has already come b. *il castano non si e ancora fatto vivo. the brown-haired hasn't shown up yet. c. quello castano non si e ancora fatto vivo, the brown-haired one hasn't shown up yet. The contrasts in (10) show that the article is a functional head in the nominal projection and that it cannot appear in the adjectival projection in Italian. This is not the case in Rumanian. The Rumanian article is a morpheme and as such it represents a further step towards "grammaticalization", as Renzi (1997) observes. This morpheme can appear either on the noun or on the adjective: (11) a. baiatul boy-the b. frumosul baiat nice-the boy Given the data in (11), it must be established whether the article on the adjective is a word that encliticizes onto the first word of the noun phrase, or a real morpheme that is part of the inflectional pattern of the root it appears on. I will argue for the latter hypothesis. We have already noticed above that the enclitic article appears on the first noun/adjective and not on any element which can be an adverbial, as in (8b) above or a quantifier as in (12): (12) a. b. c. d.
am vazut pe *to£ii baiefi am vazut pe toji(*i) baiejii am vazut pe baiejii toji(*i) am vazut pe tofi(*i) 'I saw all (the boys)'
The article never appears on the quantifier to// either in prenominal position, (12a, b), or in postnominal position, (12c), or with a pronominal function, (12d). I propose this has a lexical explanation: simply, the quantifier tofi does not have that kind of inflection in its paradigm. The form of the masculine singular article depends on the form of the root it attaches on. If it is a noun/adjective in -u the form is -ul, if the noun/adjective is in -e, the form is -le: (13) a. b. c. d.
fratele bun bunul frate poetul mare marele poet
Following Chitoran (1997) I assume that the basic form of the article is -IV where V is the slot for an underspecified vowel that is spread from the preceding syllable. A further assumption needed
From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun
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3
is that word final -u but not -e delete. In this way we obtain the underlying forms frate+l+V > fratele, mare+l+V > marele, bunu+l+V > bunulu > bunul, poetu+l+V > poetulu > poetul. The presence of the underspecified vowel differentiates the clitic pronoun (i)l from the enclitic article /+V. Both derive from the same element ILLE. I take the morphologically different form to be evidence for the analysis of the enclitic article in terms of inflectional morphology while encliticization of pronouns is a morphosyntactic phenomenon. In other words the enclitic article in Rumanian has reached the apex of grammaticalization and is now part of the word internal morphology of adjectives and nouns. I have already argued elsewhere (cf. Giusti 1993) that the article in general, and in particular in Rumanian, has lost most (possibly all) its semantic features and that its presence is ruled by syntactic principles rather than by lexical semantic concerns. Rumanian offers a striking case of this phenomenon, when a noun phrase is embedded in a PP. If the noun phrase contains a bare noun, it cannot display the definite article even if its interpretation is definite, as in (14a). But it must contain the indefinite article when it is interpreted as indefinite, as in (14b). As soon as a modifier is present, the definite article must reappear, as in (14c): (14) a. pentru vecin(*ul) for neighbour(*-the) 'for the neighbour' b. pentru un vecin for a neighbour c. pentru vecin*(ul) meu/acesta/insu§i/simpatic for neighbour*(-the) my/this/himself/nice 'for my n./this n./the n. himself/the nice n.' I propose that in (15a) no Specifier is present by minimal structure, since no modifier is projected. Case on the noun is made visible at the spell-out level by the presence of the preposition. On the contrary, in (15b), an AgrP is projected with its Spec in order to project the modifier in SpecAgrP. This modifier must be in Spec-Head Agreement with a visible head. Agr is not lexical and can be visible at the spell-out level only if it is in chain with a lexical item. N-to-D movement is required before spell-out in order to build this chain:4
1
This rule does no apply when -M is preceded by C+l or C+r. This sequence of consonants does not form a proper rhyme in Rumanian. This is a good reason for the non-applicability of -M-deletion, e.g., in socru ('father-in-law'), cioclu ('grave-digger').
4
I do not take position whether N moves to D at LF in (15a). This matter is irrelevant to this fragment of analysis and would require a more in depth argument.
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Finally, to support the proposal that the article and only the article among the three elements considered here is a functional head, let me remind the reader of the well known observation, also reported by Renzi (1997 : 10), that only the article among the three elements is missing in a considerable number of languages and notably in the "mother" language Latin. Given the general assumption that morphological differences are ultimately the only reasons of crosslinguistic variation, the proposal that the presence vs. absence of the article in a language is to be reduced to the functional/morphological nature of this element is welcome in a minimalist framework.
1.4
Summary
I have proposed that the demonstrative and the pronoun are maximal projections which originate in some Spec position inside the extended noun phrase structure and end up in SpecDP. This is the highest functional projection in the noun phrase, and the locus where the interpretation of the noun phrase is done at LF.5 In (16) I give the revised inventory of the lexical semantic features relevant for the elements under investigation:
3
For a much detailed question on where the demonstrative originates and where it is further displaced cf. Bruge 1994 and Bruge & Giusti 1996.
From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun (16)
165
a. DEMONSTRATIVE i. definite
ii. deictic / anaphoric / ostensive iii. Ill / VI person [iv. It projects an extended projection] b. PRONOUN i. definite ii. anaphoric / ostensive iii. I / II / III / IV / V / VI person [iv. It projects an extended projection] C. ARTICLE
i. ii. iii. [iv.
0definite 0anaphoric 0person It is inserted in a functional head]
In (16c) the article is unspecified for all the relevant features. I propose that "Elsewhere" conditions assign the proper values to the Specifier of a head D filled by a definite article. Demonstratives and pronouns are intrinsically marked for the feature (i) DEFINITE. The article is underspecified for this feature and it is compatible with any choice for it. An Elsewhere condition inserts an empty operator in SpecDP when the definite article is present. This derives the definite interpretation which is generally obtained when a definite article is present. The features DEICTIC/ANAPHORIC/OSTENSIVE in (ii) are in complementary distribution. They express the possibility for the given element to refer to an object in the world (deixis and ostension) or of the discourse (anaphoric reference). The three elements are included one into the other with respect to this feature: the definite article can be anaphoric, namely it can only refer to a noun phrase in the discourse. The pronoun can either be ostensive to an object in the world or anaphoric to a noun phrase in the discourse. Finally, the demonstrative can do either or it can also refer in a deixis. The features in (ii) relate the richness in morphological features to the richness in semantic features: the demonstrative being richer than the pronoun which is richer than the article. We will see in next section that change of the richest element into either of the other two is related to morphological impoverishment. In (iii) person features are expressed. The article is unmarked for person features. This is why it is compatible with any person. The unmarked case is when no person is specified and an Elsewhere condition inserts 3rd person specification in singular noun phrases and 6th person specification in plural noun phrases. The demonstrative is the most marked since it is overtly specified for III and VI. The pronoun be marked for any person. Person features are present both in demonstratives and in pronouns. This accounts for the fact that demonstratives and pronouns never cooccur (cf. *noi questi ragazzi 'we these children'). (iv) is not a feature but a state of affairs derived by from the other properties. An underspecified element such as the article is semantically void and can only be a functional head. The demonstrative and the pronoun project a full extended projection due to their semantic content.
166 Giuliana Giusti According to this framework, the structural position for the three elements is given in (17), in which the demonstrative and the pronoun start in a low position and end up in SpecDP. The article, on the contrary, is directly generated in D.
2
A DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS
Renzi analyses the development of the demonstrative into the pronoun and the definite article as a loss of semantic features.
2.1
The development of the definite article
I would like to complement Renzi's arguments with the structural analysis for the development of the demonstrative into the definite article. The Latin element ILLE generally found in SpecDP loses its first syllable (cf. Vanelli 1998 and other work quoted there) and is reinterpred as an element in D.
From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun
167
Given the absence of lexical material in D in (18a), and in SpecDP in (18b) the two structures may have coexisted in the language for several generations. By the time the first syllable had completely disappeared, (18a) had also disappeared in favour of (18b). It is reasonable to suppose that the trigger for the "new" analysis was the phonological weakening of (IL)LE. On the other hand, the existence of the "new" analysis may have quickened the loss of the first syllable. It is reasonable to assume that functional heads are generally (possibly unexceptionally) monosyllabic and also devoid of lexical semantic features. In (16c) I proposed that the article is underspecified for the features DEFINITE, and ANAPHORIC. These features are covertly present in SpecDP when D is filled by the definite article. The head of DP is not filled in order to realize any semantic feature but for syntactic reasons, namely in order to make DP visible at the relevant interface levels (PF and LF). In Latin, in which no article was present, this function was fulfilled by case features on the head N. Following Renzi's (1987) suggestion, in Giusti 1995,1 propose to unify Case and article in one and the same category, namely D, renamed F, to include Case and possibly other functional features which mark the noun phrase as an argument. The noun phrase structure proposed is (19), in which FP is the same node as DP in the examples above.
In (19), N is a lexical head that projects its functional structure with a recursive Agr and a topping F. Only FPs can be arguments, because FP checks argument features, including case. The Spec-Head agreement configuration for modifiers is necessary given that modifiers are unmarked for a series of nominal features which must be fixed, namely gender, number, case, etc. depending
168 Giuliana Giusti on the language under consideration. For this reason, AgrPs are projected recursively, one for each modifier of the noun which is inserted in SpecAgrP, in order to be in Spec-Head agreement with an Agr which shares the features of the N-to-F chain. Let us make the case of a language with morphological case and no article, such as Latin. The head noun carries case features, which are checked by N-to-D movement at LF. Movement can be procrastinated until LF, case features being independently visible at previous levels by virtue of their being phonologically visible. The same holds for the modifiers which carry overt morphological affixes. This makes the Spec-Head agreement visible prior spell-out and allows for the noun to procrastinate its movement. In (20) we see some examples of noun phrases, all taken from the first sections of Seneca's Ad Marciam de consolatione: (20) a. vir ille fortissimus (1.7) man.MAS.S.NOM that.MAS.S.NOM very-strong.MAS.S.NOM b. ultimam illam faciem rerum (5.4) last.FEM.S.ACC that.FEM.S.ACC aspect.FEM.S.ACC thing.FEM.PL.GEN
c. ultima filii oscula (3.2) last.NEUT.PL.ACC SOn.MAS.S.GEN kiss.NEUT.PL.ACC
(20a) shows the noun in initial position, (20b) shows a noun following its modifiers but preceding a genitive complement, while (20c) shows the noun in final position following the genitive. From a brief review of (20), we observe that the noun starts very low and can remain in that position (20c), can raise in intermediate position (20b), or can raise very high (20c) for stylistic reasons. Raising, therefore, is possible but not obligatory. I propose that the optionality only regards the level of the representation in which N-to-D movement applies: either before spell-out or in its way to LF. The rich morphology on the noun makes the N-chain visible prior spell-out even if N has not moved at that level. The loss of such morphology is coexistent with the reanalysis of the demonstrative in (18) above. In such a situation, the new element in D allows for the chain to be visible without changes in the word order. In other words, although case morphology is not rich enough to make the N-chain visible prior to N-movement, the presence of the newly formed article complies with the same function. This has the result of keeping the relatively free word order noticed above, which is typical of Romance languages.
2.2
The development of the pronoun
In template (2) above, I assumed that demonstratives and pronouns both check their features in the same position, namely SpecDP. The reanalysis of demonstrative ILLE into a strong pronoun does not imply any syntactic process but just a morphological reanalysis of an element with features (16a) into an element with features (16b). A reanalysis of a pronoun in SpecDP into a head in D, similar to (18), proposed for the development of the article, is responsible for the further development of the strong pronoun into the clitic pronoun. From the structural point of view, the article and the clitic pronoun are in the same position.
From Latin ILLE to the Romance article and personal pronoun
169
The crucial difference between these two elements relies on the presence in the former and absence in the latter of a lexical head in the noun phrase. In the case of the article the head noun is necessary to licence the functional element in D. The pronoun, by definition, excludes the presence of the lexical noun. Being in need of a lexical head to check its features, the functional head must move out of the noun phrase and be licenced by verbal features.
2.3
A "new" demonstrative
In the processes of reanalysis dealt with above, the element ILLE loses some of the semantic properties, namely DEICTIC/ANAPHORIC. At this reconstructed stage, the category represented in (16a) is no more realized by ILLE. A new lexical item was formed with a "reinforcer", the ostensive ECCUM. I propose a parallelism with another "reinforcer" of the demonstrative present in several Romance languages until today: the deictic adverbial 'here/there' extensively studied by Bruge (1994): (21)
a. b. c. d.
ECCUM ISTE/ECCUM ILLE ce-ci/ce-la questo qui/quello la este de aquf/ese de alii
reconstructed form French Italian Spanish
Bruge (1994) argues that the demonstrative and the reinforcer build a constituent in (21b-d).6 I propose that this is the case for the reconstructed form in (2la). The reverse word order which we find in the reconstructed form with respect to modern Romance languages could either be reduced to another general difference between Latin and Romance languages, Latin being predominantly OV, Romance being predominantly VO; or to the different nature of ECCUM which is ostensive and contrasts with the deictic nature of quilli and their counterparts. I propose to analyse the reconstructed forms in (2la) as costituents. The reconstruction must have taken place in at least two stages: at first, ECCUM was inserted in the SpecDemP, as in (22a). A phonological cliticization of the head in Dem which had lost its stress further led to a second stage of reanalysis of the resulting phonological word into a syntactic word in the position of Dem, as in (22b):
6
Notice that in French the prensence of the adverb is obligatory when the demonstrative is used as a pronoun. Notice also that in Italian and Spanish the adverb and the demonstrative must agree for a feature that we may call PROXIMITY, so that the combination of a [+proximate] demonstrative and a [-proximate] adverb is not allowed and vice versa: cf. It. *questo li 'this there', *quello qui 'that here'. This observation is brought about by Bruge (1994) to reinforce her proposal that the two elements form a constituent.
170 Giuliana Giusti
The possibility which arouse in later stages of adding a deictic adverbial in modern times, suggests on the one hand that in modern times the loss in semantic features by the head is going further in the same direction. On the other hand, the features grouped under each heading of (16) are attributable to the whole projection and not to a single head. The linguistic changes dealt with up to now all have a common feature: they do not involve a change in the word order but consist in a reanalysis of the string.7 In all cases the change regards a lexical category in a Spec which is reanalysed as being in the adjacent head. If this happens to be a functional head, the reanalysed element loses its lexical status and becomes a functional element, as is the case of the Italian, French etc. article, studied in §2.1 and of the clitic pronoun studied in §2.2. If the adjacent head is lexical and the reanalysed element precedes it, it is reanalysed as a prefix and then as part of the word. This is the case of the reinforcer ECCU, studied in (22). If the adjacent head is preceding it, it is analysed as a suffix, and then checked in a (higher) functional head. This is the case of the Rumanian article, which is enclitic. Renzi (1997 : 16) notices that the new demonstrative formed from ECCUM-ILLE is currently undergoing a further reanalysis as a personal pronoun in some Italian dialects such as Piedmontese chiel/chila (Turin, cf. Rohlfs 1969, §437) the new demonstrative is formed with the locative reinforcer which is optional in Italian: cul la (Turin, cf. Lombardi Vallauri 1995). We are in the middle of a never ending process of language change.
REFERENCES Abney, Steven P. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Bruge, Laura. (1994). Aspetti della struttura dei nominali nelle lingue romanze. PhD dissertation, Universita di Padova. Bruge, Laura and Giuliana Giusti. (1996). On demonstratives. GLOW talk, Athens. 7
The only exception to this observation is apparently the case of the clitic pronoun which is in a different position with respect to the verb than its strong counterpart. A hypothesis yet to be verified is that at the stage in which the proposed reanalysis has taken place both the OV and the VO orders were possible and that the former allowed for the reanalysis while the latter did not. At a later stage in which VO was already established in Italian, the OV order was only analysed as head movement of the clitic to V (or to a functional verbal projection).
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Cardinaletti, Anna. (1994). On the internal structure of pronominal DPs. The Linguistic Review, 11, 195-219. Chitoran, Ileana. (1997). The phonology of Romanian glides and diphthongs: A constraint based approach. PhD dissertation, Cornell University. Chomsky, Noam. (1992). A minimalist program for linguistic theory. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 1. (Published (1993) in Kenneth L. Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.) The View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor ofSylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, Mass.) Chomsky, Noam. (1995). Bare Phrase Structure. In Gert Webelhut (ed.) Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program. Oxford & Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. Giusti, Giuliana. (1995). A unified structural representation of (abstract) Case and article, evidence from Germanic. In: Hubert Haider, Susan Olsen and Sten Vikner (eds.) Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 77-93. Giusti, Giuliana. (1997). The categorial status of determiners. In Liliane Haegeman The New Comparative Syntax. Oxford & Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. Lehmann, Christian. (1982). Thoughts on Grammaticalization. A Programmatic Sketch. University of Cologne. Lombard, Alf. (1974). La langue roumaine. Une presentation. Paris: Klincksieck. Meillet, Antoine. (1912). Linguistique historique and linguistique generate. Paris: Champion. (New edition: 1948.) Renzi, Lorenzo. (1997). Fissione di lat. ILLE nelle lingue romanze. In: Gu'nter Holtus, Johannes Kramer and Wolfgang Sweckhard (eds.). Italica et Romanica. Festschrift fur Max Pfister zum 65. Geburtstag. Tubingen: Niemeyer. Rohlfs, Gerhard. (1969). Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti, vol. 3: Sintassi e formazione delle parole. Torino: Einaudi. Vanelli, Laura. (1998). Da "lo" a "il": storia dell'articolo definite maschile singolare in italiano e nei dialetti settentrionali. In id. (ed.) / dialetti italiani settentrionali nel panorama romanzo. Studi di sintassi e morfologia. Roma: Bulzoni.
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9
ROMANCE CAUSATIVES AND DYNAMIC ANTISYMMETRY
Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Moro
INTRODUCTION 1
1
This article deals with Romance causatives within the framework of dynamic antisymmetry. Elaborating on previous accounts, we propose that causative verbs take a small clause as complement in analogy with copular constructions (see Kayne 1975; Burzio 1986; den Dikken 1992; Guasti 1993 for a discussion of Romance causatives). As proposed for copular constructions (Moro 1997b), we suggest that the surface order of causatives is determined by the search of an antisymmetric geometry. In causatives based on unergative verbs, the verbal head moves out of the small clause to break the symmetric configuration. In causatives based on transitive verbs, the whole VP must move and a prepositional complementizer must be present to ensure the realization of an antisymmetric configuration. Finally, no movement has to take place in causatives based on unaccusative verbs, because the configuration is not symmetric to begin with. In the first section, we will discuss the main facts concerning Romance causatives that we will deal here. Next, we will present the dynamic antisymmetry framework and in the third we will exemplify it through a discussion of copular constructions. Finally, we will apply the dynamic antisymmetry framework to Romance causatives and will motivate our approach.
2
THE PROBLEM
Romance causative constructions display a peculiar behaviour that has long been the object of extensive investigation. Although in this article, we will concentrate on Italian causatives, our approach will arguably extend to other Romance languages. We will start by discussing some properties that make Romance causatives peculiar and that we aim at explaining. Consider (1). 1
Although the article has been jointly written, Guasti takes responsibility for sections 2 and 3, Moro for sections 4 and 5. Both authors take responsibility for sections 1, 6, 7.
174 Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Mow This is a causative based on an intransitive unergative verb (lavorare 'to work'). As apparent, the thematic subject of the infinitive verb, Gianni, surfaces as an object: it can be expressed by an accusative clitic, as seen in (2), may become a subject of the matrix clause when the causative verb is in the passive, as shown in (3) and allows ne-extraction, as shown by the pair of sentences in (4). (1) Maria ha fatto lavorare Gianni. Maria has made work Gianni 'Maria made Gianni work.' (2) Maria 1'ha fatto lavorare. Maria him has made work 'Maria made him work.' (3) Gianni e stato fatto lavorare a lungo. Gianni has been made work for a while 'Gianni has been made to work for a while.' (4) a. Maria ha fatto lavorare molti studenti. Maria has made work many students 'Maria made many students work.' b. Maria ne ha fatti lavorare molti. Maria of_them has made work many 'Maria made many of them work.' Causatives based on unaccusative verbs display the same properties of causatives based on unergative verbs. The relevant facts are reported below. (5) II treno ha fatto arrivare Gianni in ritardo. The train has made arrive Gianni late 'The train made Gianni arrive late.' (6) II treno 1'ha fatto arrivare in ritardo. The train him has made arrive late 'The train made him arrive late.' (7) Gianni e stato fatto arrivare in ritardo. Gianni has been made arrive late 'Gianni was made to arrive late.' (8) II treno ne ha fatti arrivare molti in ritardo. The train oLthem has made arrive many late 'The train made many of them arrive late.' By contrast, in causatives based on transitive verbs the subject is introduced by the preposition a 'to', as seen in (10) and behaves like an indirect object. Accordingly, it can be expressed by a dative clitic on the matrix verb, as seen in (lOa). Unlike the case of causatives based on
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175
intransitive or unaccusative verbs, the subjet of the infinitive cannot surface as a direct object, as is apparent from the fact that it cannot be expressed by an accusative clitic, as seen in (lOb) and from the impossibility of rce-extraction, in (lOc). (9) Maria ha fatto riparare la macchina a Gianni. Maria has made repair the car to Gianni 'Maria had Gianni repair the car.' (10) a. Maria gli ha fatto riparare la macchina. Maria to Jiim has made repair the car 'Maria had him repair the car.' b. *Maria lo ha fatto riparare la macchina. Maria him has made repair the car 'Maria had him repair the car. c. *Mariane ha fatto riparare la macchina a molti. Maria of.them has made repair the car to many 'Maria had many of them repair the car.' Moreover, in causatives of transitive verbs, the base object continues to behave like a direct object. It can appear as an accusative clitic on the main verb, as illustrated in (11) and becomes the subject when the causative is passivized as in (12). (11) Maria 1'ha fatta riparare a Gianni. Maria it has made repair to Gianni 'Maria had Gianni repair it.' (12) La macchina e stata fatta riparare a Gianni. The car has been made repair to Gianni 'The car has been made to be repaired by Gianni.' A final remark concerns word order. The subject of the infinitive under a causative must appear at the end of the sentence, regardless of whether the infinitive is transitive or intransitive. Thus, the sentences in (13) are ungrammatical. (13) a. *Maria ha fatto Gianni lavorare. 'Maria made Gianni work' b. *Maria ha fatto Gianni riparare la macchina. 'Maria made Gianni repair the car' Notice that the order in (13) is perfectly acceptable if the causative verb is replaced by a perception verb, as displayed in (14) (see Guasti 1993, for an account of complements after perception verbs see Moro 1997a, among others).
176 Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Mom (14)
a. Maria ha visto Gianni lavorare. 'Maria saw Gianni work' b. Maria ha visto Gianni riparare la macchina. 'Maria saw Gianni repair the car'
The range of properties listed above indicates that the object and the subject of the infinitive verb behave as if they were arguments of the matrix verb as well. Causative constructions are clearly biclausal structures: each verb, the causative and the infinitive have their own arguments. However, the arguments are expressed in a way that make a causative construction look like a monoclausal structure. Baker (1988) has formalized this intuition by saying that the arguments of the infinitive verb have undergone a Grammatical Function (GF) changing process. The underlying structure of a causative construction is biclausal. But because of the incorporation of the infinitive with the causative verb a complex predicate is formed (cf. Rouveret & Vergnaud 1980, Manzini 1983, among others). The arguments of each single verb became arguments of the complex verb and undergo a process of GF changing: the object of the infinitive becomes an object of the complex verb formed by the causative and the infinitive verb and the subject becomes either a direct object, as in (1), or an indirect object, as in (9) of the complex verb. Our main concern is why the subject of transitive verbs is expressed in the way it is, i.e., why a preposition (a) is introduced to mark the subject of a transitive infinitive verb, while such a preposition cannot be used for the subject of intransitive unergative and unaccusative infinitive verbs. Second, we will investigate the factor that determines the word order in causatives.
3 THE STATUS OF THE PREPOSITON A Many accounts of Romance causatives share the intuition that the preposition a is introduced to case mark the subject of the infinitive verb or the causee (see Burzio 1986, Baker 1988, among others). This observation rests on a cross-linguistic observation. Across languages there is a parallel between causative constructions and triadic verb clauses in that the goal of the last class of clauses is case marked in the same way the causee is case marked. For example, in Italian the goal of a triadic verb is introduced by the preposition a, as seen in (15). The same prepositon is used for introducing the subject of a transitive infinitive after a causative verb, as seen in (12). (15) Ho dato un libro a Maria. 'I gave a book to Mary' In a framework a la Baker, this parallel is captured by saying that as a result of incorporation, the complex verb formed by the causative and the infinitive verb governs all the arguments present in the construction and becomes the new Case assigner by inheriting the Case assignment features of the elements out of which it is formed. A complex verb will have the same case assigning capacities as a simple verb. In Italian, a simple verb is able to assign a structural Case to the direct object and case marks the indirect object through the insertion of the preposition a 'to', as seen in (15). The complex verb will have the same abilities and assign Case in the same manner. In Baker's (1988) and Burzio's (1986) approaches the preposition is seen as a dummy
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case marker. This view presents some problems, however. The parallel between causative and triadic verb constructions extends to interpretative properties. The causee and the goal entertain a similar semantic relation with the theme of the infinitive and the triadic verb, respectively. This relation can be characterized in terms of possession or benefit. In (15), because of my giving action, Maria enters in possession or benefit from having a book. In (16), as a result of my action, Gianni benefits from doing the project or possess the authorization of doing the project. (16) Ho fatto fare il progetto a Gianni Lhave made do the project to Gianni To capture this relation, Pijnenburg (1991) and den Dikken (1992) have proposed that the causative verb takes a small clause including the causee and the theme (see also Guasti 1993 and 1996, for a different view). Similarly, ditransitive verbs take a small clause complement including the theme and the direct object. Thus, the structure of causative can be accounted for by assuming that the causative complement is a based generated small clause, as seen in (17).
(17)
V [sc DP VP]
In causatives based on transitive verbs, the subject is introduced by the preposition a and its based generated structure can be approximately represented as in (18).
(18) V [sc [PP a DP] VP] Both in (17) and (18), the two poles of the small clause reverse at spell out, giving rise to the order VP DP and VP PP, respectively. Clearly, the structure in (18) appears to be an anomalous construction since the subject of the predication is a PP, which is usually impossible (*To John is strange}. In this work, we will elaborate on insights of previous accounts by considering causative complements small clauses and by assuming a particular theory of movement, Dynamic Antisymmetry (DA, henceforth). As a first step we will present this theory of movement.
4 DYNAMIC ANTISYMMETRY: MOVEMENT AS A SYMMETRY-BREAKING PHENOMENON Let us sketch the main lines of DA. Elaborating on Kayne's theory of antisymmetry, Moro (1997b) has tried to link the geometry of phrase structure to movement so that movement will be considered as a "symmetry-breaking phenomenon". In other words, movement is driven by the search for antisymmetry. Let us now introduce the theory in a formal way. Kayne's (1994) theory of antisymmetry is a theory of phrase structure that aims at deriving the major property of X-bar theory from a single axiom, the Linear Corresponding Axiom (LCA). The idea can be summarized as follows. Grammar contains at least two relations, Rl and R2 that are defined with respect to different domains. Rl is the relation of precedence and is defined on the linear sequence of terminal nodes, i.e., words (and parts of words); R2 is, instead, the relation of asymmetric c-command and is defined with respect to the hierarchy of phrasal non-terminal
178 Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Mom nodes. Both relations are transitive, (locally) total and antisymmetric, i.e., for all x and y, xRy implies that — yRx. The LCA is an empirical hypothesis on Universal Grammar proposing that Rl and R2, namely hierarchy and precedence, are not independent: each can be mapped onto the other by assuming that, if the terminal node x is dominated by the non-terminal node M that asymmetrically c-commands the non-terminal node P, then x precedes all the terminal nodes that are dominated by P; equivalently, if a terminal node x precedes the terminal node y, then there is (at least) a pair of non-terminal nodes M and P such that M asymmetrically c-commands P, M dominates x and P dominates y. From this axiom, the fundamental theorem follows that in a well-formed tree there cannot be two non-terminal nodes symmetrically c-commanding each other unless at most one of the two non-terminal nodes contains (at least) another non-terminal node. If these weren't so, then the (sets of) terminal nodes dominated by the two symmetrical nodes would not be linearly ordered. Let us call this offending configuration a "point of symmetry" (POS). A prototypical POS that concerns us here is small clauses:2
(19)
[sc XP YP]
Moro proposes a weaker version of antisymmetry according to which Universal Grammar allows the generation of points of symmetry, provided that the set of terminal nodes dominated by either non-terminal node constituting this point of symmetry be moved. Before looking at the technical implementation of this proposal let us ask why in principle movement can solve the potential problem. The idea is the following: the LCA cannot tolerate a point of symmetry because this would end up with the impossibility of fixing the linear order of terminal nodes included in it. By definition, traces are not visible in the linear sequence, thus if one of the elements constituting the point of symmetry is a trace, then no problem is expected to arise (for the non-visibility of traces see Kayne 1994: 133, fn. 3 and Chomsky 1995 : 337). DA has been shown to account for the properties of a type of small clauses, i.e., copular sentences. By way of illustration, in the next section, we will discuss how DA allows one to derive the properties of copular constructions.
5 RAISING FROM SMALL CLAUSES Consider the following pair of copular sentences (for the theory and the terminology see Moro 1988, 1997a and references cited there): (20) a. these pictures are [ t the cause of the riot ] b. the cause of the riot is [these pictures t ]
(canonical) (inverse)
In both cases, the underlying structure is the same: there is a small clause that contains both noun phrases either of which may, and one of which must be raised to the precopular position. 2
Beyond small clauses, there are two other POS: multiple spec constructions, as in (i), and clitics, as in (ii). (i) [xpYP[ X P XPZP]]
(ii) [XP X° Y0].
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In the canonical case the raised noun phrase is the subject, whereas in the inverse case it is the predicate. Let us now focus on the small clause constituent. The structure of small clauses is an intensely debated issue (see for example Cardinaletti & Guasti 1995 and references cited there). Originally, the small clause constituent was represented just as an autonomous label, i.e., SC, immediately connecting two maximal projections (see the seminal work of Williams 1975):
(21) [sc NP XP] There have been several attempts to refine this first representation. One can recognize at least two distinct lines of research: one that aims at regularizing the structure of small clauses with respect to X-bar theory by identifying a functional head which projects it (see Kayne 1985 and Bowers 1993, among others); another that aims at reducing small clauses to cases of adjunction to the predicate (see for example Stowell 1981, Manzini 1983 and Longobardi 1988). One of the best established analyses regards small clauses as projections of agreement heads (Agr): (22) SC = [AgrP DP Agr XP] Recently, this complex structure has turned out not to be empirically justified. In particular, Chomsky (1995) proposes to avoid recourse to Agr both in small clauses and in inflected clausal structures, going back to the theory that preceded the so-called split-Infl hypothesis.3 In fact, the analysis of small clauses goes back to "something like the original assumption of Stowell (1978)" (Chomsky 1995:354). The move from the Agr-based analyses for small clauses to the bare adjunct structure appears to be empirically adequate for our purposes, on independent grounds. Consider again the small clause resulting from the combination of the two noun phrases these pictures and the cause of the riot. Crucially, the two phrases can enter into a small clause without agreement being established between them: witness, the number mismatch. Thus, we can adopt the minimal structure a la Stowell involving adjunction of the subject (these pictures) to the predicate (the cause of the riot) as follows: (23) [DP*the [DPthese DPthe]] As indicated in the tree, however, the simple idea of considering small clauses as the result of adjunction of the subject to the predicate has not been considered completely satisfactory. The asterisk put after the larger constituent aims at signaling that the result is not just a "larger" predicate, for well-known reasons related to subcategorization. In other words, the result of adjunction is a rather new constituent. Can this apparent ambiguity between pure adjunction and small clauses be captured? The answer seems to be affirmative if we adopt the framework developed within the minimalist program concerning Merge. Merge is an operation that takes two distinct constituents A and B as input and gives a larger constituent K as output. What is the label for Kl Order being irrelevant, there are only two options that can be represented as follows (see Chomsky 1995:243-248): 3
This hypothesis is related to the seminal work of Pollock (1989). Independently, Moro (1988) proposes to split the INFL node. As for the inadequacy of Agr-based analyses of small clauses see also Moro 1997a.
180 Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Mow (24) for every A, 5, Merge yields K: (i) K = {A, {A, B}} (ii) K={(A,A), {A,B}} The elements contained in the embedded parentheses are the constituents of the phrase, while the residue is the label of the phrase itself. The essential property of Merge is that the label of the resulting constituent is formed without adding extra information with respect to A and B themselves: it can either be a simple label (just either A or B, i.e., substitution) or a complex label (made by the ordered pair of the projecting element, here (A, A), i.e., adjunction). Again, what is crucial is that Merge does not add extra information. The question now is: how do small clauses a la Stowell enter into this framework? The two possibilities given in (24) do not seem to be satisfactory. Take A and B to be the subject and the predicative noun phrase of the small clause we are considering here: respectively, these pictures of the wall and the cause of the riot. The first option (24i) is to be excluded because we do want the resulting constituent to be neither A nor B: the small clause must not have the same distribution of either subpart. The second option (24ii) is also problematic. In fact, it reproduces the same problems that have been "naively" solved by adding an asterisk to the final segment of the larger category in (23): we want to distinguish between adjunction and a small clause. Of course, there is no asterisk here to be put. We can nevertheless now take advantage of the formal solution given to represent adjunction within the definition of Merge. As indicated in (24ii), the label of a constituent K can be complex, provided, again, that no extra information is added; specifically, the label of adjunct structure is the ordered pair of the projecting element, i.e., (A, B). This is enough for us. It seems reasonable to assume that a further combination is available under Merge where the resulting label is made by (A, B}: (25) K={(A,B}, {A,B}} This is a formally available option. In particular, it does not run against the essential property of Merge that consists in not introducing additional information, specifically, extra features of a constituent different from A and B. But how can we interpret it? One possibility is that the newly formed constituent is underspecified with respect to (the features of) its subparts. The small clause would then be just this: the result of Merge of A and B when neither A nor B project. It is not substitution, as in Stowell's original proposal, but it is also different from "pure" adjunction, where the resulting label is made by the ordered pair of features of the projecting element. This view seems to capture an intuitive property of predication: neither the subject nor the predicate prevail. All in all, we can go back to our small clause formed by merging these pictures of the wall and the cause of the riot and assigning the following structure to it, where SC is to be intended in the sense of (25). (26) [sc [these picture of the wall] [the cause of the riot]] This structure now is a patent violation of the LCA. Consider the following abstract tree:
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In this tree, M c-commands P and P c-commands M and crucially M c-commands also Q and P c-commands also N. This configuration is a patent violation of the LCA and is sufficient to reject it: n and q would not be linearly ordered.4 With respect to c-command relations (26) and (27) are essentially the same: the two noun phrases c-command each other. Notice that if we assume Kayne's original proposal this structure could not even be generated. On the other hand, if we now adopt DA this point of symmetry can indeed be generated, provided that movement intervenes to correct it by introducing an empty category in the potentially offending configuration. This is exactly what we need to explain why either noun phrase must be raised to the precopular position: (28) a. [these pictures] are [sc t [the cause of the riot] ] b. [the cause of the riot] is [sc [these pictures] t ] DA can, thus, immediately explain raising out of the small clause.5 Nevertheless, if we adopt a DA explanation, a new problem arises. Consider the following sentence in Italian: (29) Gianni ritiene [queste foto la causa della rivolta] 'Gianni considers these pictures the cause of the riot The complement of ritiene, a prototypical believe-type verb, has been generally considered as a small clause constituent on a par with the complement of the copula. If the two complements were identical, we face a counterexample to DA since at first sight neither noun phrase has moved to nullify the point of symmetry, in (29), while movement of one constituent of the small clause has occurred in (28). There are reasons to believe that the small clause after the copular verb and after ritiene do not have the same structure. We know that elements like in alcun modo 'in any way' are adverbial elements, in fact polarity items that can stay in the spec-position of a functional head, say F:
4
More explicitly, we have two pairs of nodes such that the first c-commands the second: (M, Q} and (P, N). Now, M contains (N which contains) n and P contains (Q which contains) q. Since hierarchy is mapped into linear precedence by definition, from (M, Q) we have that n precedes q and from (P, N) we have that q precedes n. Clearly, this is an inconsistency.
5
It is standardly assumed that raising is due either to the Extended Projection Principle or to Case reasons (in fact, feature checking); see Moro 1997a and references cited there for reasons against the EPP account, and Moro 1997b for arguments against feature checking account.
182 Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Mom (30) . . . [pp [in alcun modo] F° in any way 'by no means' These elements appear to be able to occur between the subject and the predicate of a small clause like the one we are considering here: (31) Gianni non ritiene [queste foto [in alcun modo] la causa della rivolta] Gianni not considers these pictures in any way the cause of the riot This suggests that the structure that is the complement of the believe-type, verb is not just a "bare" small clause as in copular sentences, but a richer construction involving at least one functional projection. Let us now present the same test with copular constructions: if the adverbial element could also appear in the small clause complement of the copula, then we could not distinguish the two cases and (29) would really be a counterexample to DA. Consider a canonical structure first: (32) Gianni non e in alcun modo la causa della rivolta Gianni not is in any way the cause of the riot The adverbial phrase in alcun modo can appear in the copular sentence but this tells us very little. In particular, since the subject has been raised from within the small clause, we cannot decide between (3 3 a) and (33b). (33) a. Gianni non e in alcun modo [sc t la causa della rivolta] b. Gianni non e [sc t in alcun modo la causa della rivolta] However, inverse copular sentences can be much more perspicuous. In this type of structure we know that the subject cannot be displaced. Thus, it marks the upper frontier of the small clause. If the adverbial element could appear after it, this would mean that the small clause complement of the copula is also as rich as the small clause complement of the believe-type verb. The results are welcome in our present theoretical framework: (34) a. La causa The cause b. *La causa The cause
della rivolta non e in alcun modo [sc Gianni t ] of the riot not is in any way Gianni della rivolta non e [sc Gianni in alcun modo t] of the riot not is Gianni in any way
Clearly, the adverbial phrase must precede the subject of the small clause, unlike the case of the believe-type verb. We can then conclude that the small clause complement of the copula does not contain functional projections, as opposed to the complement of a believe-type verb that would receive the following representation (see Moro 1988, 1997a for additional evidence in favour of this structure):
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(35) Gianni non ritiene [pp queste foto F° . . . [pp in alcun modo F° . . . [sc t la causa . . . ]]] Gianni not considers these pictures in any way the cause Eventually, the apparent counterexample to DA turns out to be eliminated: there is no need for either noun phrase in the small clause complement of a believe-type verb to be moved because they do not constitute a point of symmetry. The small clause complement of this type of verbs is richer than the "bare" small clause complement of the copula. Crucially, it involves a head that prevents the creation of a point of symmetry. With this background we can go back to the main issue of this paper and reconsider it in the light of DA.
6 6.1
ROMANCE CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS AND DA The general approach
For the sake of clarity, let us now rephrase the problem: first, there are empirical reasons to assume that the material following the main causative verb is a small clause; second, if the infinitive after the causative verb is transitive, a preposition precedes the subject; third, the order of the elements constituting the small clause is inverted. These three points are schematically represented in (36).
(36)
a. V [sc DP VP] b. V [sc [P DP] VP] c. V [sc VP . . . PP]
If we take it for granted that the base form of the elements following the main verb is in fact a small clause as in (36a), there can be a new possibility to analyse the role of the preposition and the phenomenon of inversion that characterize Romance causatives. Crucially, the small clause after a causative is a POS, paralleling the case of copular constructions illustrated in the previous section. Indeed, Guasti (1993) has shown that there is no functional structure in it, exactly as in the case of copular and contrary to the case of believe-type verbs. For the sake of the argument, we can reproduce the same type of test used previously (cf. (30)-(35)) by observing the distribution of adverbial and negative elements: (37) a. Maria ha fatto correre probabilmente Gianni Maria has made run likely Gianni b. *Maria ha fatto correre Gianni probabilmente (38) a. Maria non ha fatto correre piu Gianni Maria NOT has made run anymore Gianni b. *Maria non ha fatto correre Gianni piu Since the small clause after causatives contains a point of symmetry, as for the small clause after the copular verb, we can assume that to destroy this POS, it is necessary and sufficient
184 Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Mow to move the VP out, leaving an empty category in place. In (39) we illustrate this process for causatives based on transitive verbs. (39) V [VP P [§c DP t ]]
causatives based on transitive verbs
The VP raises to the spec position made available by the insertion of P. Notice that the preposition a in (39) does not take the DP as a complement. Rather, it plays the role of a complementizer that has the whole small clause as a complement. In such a case, there is no problem with respect to the relation of predication that will be established in the canonical way between a DP and a VP. Moreover, this also explains why there cannot be extraction from the subject position of the small clause. This would be an extraction from a constituent in a left branch position governed by a functional head, a fact that has been proven to be impossible in all standard frameworks. (40) a. Maria ha fatto riparare la macchina a molti ragazzi Maria has made repair the car to many boys b. *Maria ne ha fatto [yp riparare la macchina] a [sc mold t ] Maria oLthem has made repair the car to many The present account explains immediately the structure of causatives based on transitive verbs. The preposition a is inserted to break of point of symmetry.6 In the next section, we consider causatives of intransitive verbs.
6.2 Further extensions Let us now consider the case of unaccusative verbs after causatives. In this case, no preposition is required and ne-extraction is all allowed. (41) II treno ha fatto arrivare Gianni (in ritardo) The train has made arrive Gianni late (42) a. II treno ha fatto arrivare molti ragazzi (in ritardo) The train has made arrive many boys late b. II treno ne ha fatti arrivare molti (in ritardo) The train of_them has made arrive many late
6
Romance has another causative construction, the so-called faire-par, illustrated in (i), which exists in two version one with the "by-phrase" and one without (see Burzio 1986, Guasti 1993). (i) Ho fatto riparare la macchina (da Gianni) I_have made repair the car by Gianni 'I had the car repaired by Gianni' We do not think that the approach to the causatives presented in the text extends to this construction as well, in particular we do not think that the da 'by' here has the same function as a 'to' in the examples cited in the text. First, the "by-phrase" is optional, second it has been widely shown by the authors cited that the faire-par construction is structurally different from the causative construction discussed in the text.
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In the case of unaccusatives, there is no reason to assume that we face a POS. In fact, it may well be that the small clause involved includes an empty category from the start, as shown in (43) and that the DP is in its base position. (43) fare [sc pro [V DP]] The pro here is an instance of expletive pro licensed by the causative verb. The fact that expletive pro can be the subject of small clauses has been independently proved by Rizzi (1986). This author claimed that in (44) the expletive pro is licensed and assigned case by the matrix verb (see Cardinaletti & Guasti 1992 and Moro 1997afor a discussion of pro in small clauses; Guasti 1993 for a discussion of pro in causatives). (44) Gianni ritiene [pro probabile che Maria partira]. Gianni considers likely that Maria willJeave So, causatives based on unaccusative verbs do not involve any movement, no insertion of the preposition a simply because there is no POS, hence no necessity for movement. Let us move on to consider causatives based on intransitive verbs. First, we note that the order of the two components of the small clause is inverted, (45), as in the case of causative based on transitive verbs. Second, there can be extraction from the embedded subject, (46).
(45) a. V [VP . . . DP] b. Maria ha fatto lavorare Gianni Maria has made work Gianni (46) a. Maria ha fatto lavorare molti ragazzi Maria has made work many boys b. Maria ne ha fatti lavorare molti Maria of.them has made work many This shows that the embedded DP is an object of the matrix verb. As objects, the embedded DP allows ne-extraction. Thus, we must explain the different order and the fact that there can be extraction from the subject. Notice that within DA it is sufficient that the POS is broken by creating an empty category, whichever is the element moved. Thus, a reasonable possibility to solve the POS in causative based on intransitive verbs is that the verbal head alone moves and incorporates onto the matrix verbal head (V+V) as illustrated by the following structures:
(47) a. V [DP VP] b. V+V [DP t] From this position the verb is capable to govern the DP subject and thus to allow we-extraction. This is analogous to ne-extraction in c/-sentences (Moro 1997a). From (48a), it is possible to obtain (48b). The subject of the small clause (molte ragazze) allows subextraction since it is governed by a lexical head formed by the predicative ci and the copula. In other words, in (48a)
186 Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Moro ci, a predicate, has the same function as the infinitive verb in (47b), which moves out of the small clause and allow subextraction from its subject position, as seen in (46b). (48) a. pro [ci sono] [[molte ragazze] t] b. pro [ce ne sono] [[molte t] t] There are two residual questions in our analysis that must be addressed: first, why can't the DP subject be moved to solve POS and why can't movement of the verbal head solve the POS in causatives based on transitive verbs. The second question can be answered by considering that movement of the sole head in the case of transitive verbs will leave the object in situ:
(49) V+V [sc DP [VP t DP]] We could rule out this possibility by saying that since the infinitive verb is incorporated into the causative verb, the lower DP object fails to be assigned Case. Notice that there is only one case available here, i.e., the one assigned by the matrix verbal head. The other question now is why can't movement of the DP solve the POS with transitives and unergatives (remember, there is no POS with unaccusatives). In other words, why can't we have:
(50) a. *V [DP P [sc t VP]] b. *V [DP [sc t VP]] The impossibility of the structure with the preposition, in (50a), can be regarded as a lexical idiosyncrasy: in other words, we might expect languages to vary with respect to this possibility to solve the POS. The reason why in Italian (50a) is ruled out could be that the prepositon is unable to properly govern the trace of a nominal element (DP), paralleling the well-known phenomenon of the that-trace effect in English as opposed to other languages. On the other hand, the impossibility of solving the POS via movement of the DP without involving a preposition, as in (50b) could be traced back to a general restriction prohibiting adjunction to the complement of lexical heads (see Chomsky 1986 and Moro 1997b for extended discussion).
7 CONCLUSION In this article we have proposed a new analysis of Romance causatives by assuming that the material following the causative verb is a small clause and that DA holds. We have derived the distribution of the preposition a in Italian causatives from the necessity of breaking a POS and have shown that there is no exception to the fact that the predicative relation is established uniformly between a DP and a VP in causatives.
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REFERENCES Baker, Mark C. (1988). Incorporation. A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bowers, John. (1993). The Syntax of Predication. Linguistic Inquiry, 24, 591-656. Burzio, Luigi. (1986). Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: Reidel. Cardinaletti, Anna and Maria Teresa Guasti. (1992). Epistemic small clauses and null subjects. In German F. Westphal, Benjamin Ao and Hoe-Rahk Chae (eds.) Proceedings of the VII Eastern States Conference of Linguistics, 230-233. (Ohio State University Press). Cardinaletti, Anna and Maria Teresa Guasti (eds). (1995). Small Clauses, Syntax and semantics 28. New York: Academic Press. Chomsky, Noam. (1986). Barriers. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Dikken, Marcel den. (1992). Particles. PhD dissertation, HIL. Guasti, Maria Teresa. (1993). Causative and Perception Verbs: A Comparative Study. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. Guasti, Maria Teresa. (1996). Semantic restrictions in Romance causatives and the Incorporation approach. Linguistic Inquiry, 27, 294-313. Kayne, Richard S. (1975). French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Kayne, Richard S. (1985). L'accord du participe passe en francais et en italien. Modeles linguistiques, 7, 73-89. Kayne, Richard S. (1994). The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Longobardi, Giuseppe. (1988). Symmetry Principles in Syntax. Padova: Clesp. Manzini, M. Rita. (1983). Restructuring and reanalysis. PhD dissertation. MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Moro, Andrea. (1988). Per una teoria unificata delle frasi copulari. Rivista di grammatica generativa, 13, 81-110. Moro, Andrea. (1997a). The Raising of Predicates: Predicative Noun Phrases and the Theory of Clause Structures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moro, Andrea. (1997b). Dynamic Antisymmetry: movement as a symmetry-breaking phenomenon. Studia Linguistica, 51, 50-76. Pijnenburg, Hans. (1991). Dative in French. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1989). Verb movement, universal grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 365-424. Rizzi, Luigi. (1986). Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry, 17,501-557. Rouveret, Alain and Jean-Roger Vergnaud. (1980). Specifying reference to the subject: French causatives and conditions on representations. Linguistic Inquiry, 11, 97-202. Stowell, Tim. (1978). What was there before there was there. Chicago Linguistic Society, 14, 458-471.
188 Maria Teresa Guasti and Andrea Mow Stowell, Tim. (1981). Origins of phrase structure. PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Williams, Edwin. (1975). Small Clauses in English. In Jim Kimball (ed.) Syntax and Semantics 4. New York: Academic Press.
10
A NOTE ON CLITIC DOUBLING IN FRENCH
Richard S. Kayne
1 INTRODUCTION French normally has verb-object order: (1) Jean connait Marie. 'J knows M' (2) Jean parle de Marie. 'J speaks of M' In the prepositional example, the object can be replaced by a personal pronoun: (3) Jean parle de moi. 'J speaks of me' In the direct object example, the corresponding sentence is deviant: (4) *Jean connait moi. 'J knows me' A clitic counterpart is well-formed: (5) Jean me connait. 'J me knows' In earlier work (Kayne 1975, §§2.16, 2.17), I took the deviance of (4) to directly reflect the obligatory character of the movement operation involved in the derivation of (5). That approach did not attach syntactic importance to the difference in form between the moi of (3)/(4) and the me of (5). In more recent work (Kayne 2000), on the other hand, I have argued that moi and me differ in that moi is bimorphemic and me not. (The presence of this second
190 Richard S. Kayne morpheme in moi (- m- + -oi) has syntactic effects, if French, Italian and dialects of France and Italy are taken into simultaneous account.) If moi is bimorphemic and me monomorphemic (m- with a phonologically epenthetic -e), then it becomes difficult to think of (5) as simply corresponding to (4) plus movement, which might have been expected to yield, rather than (5), the sentence shown in (6): (6) *Jean moi connait. In this paper, I will not be concerned with the (important) question raised by (6) (why exactly is -oi incompatible with this movement?),1 nor with the question of (7) (why can the clitic form not appear in canonical object position?).2 (7) *Jean connait me. I will focus rather on the question of how to exclude (4) if (4) is not the exact non-movement counterpart of (5). If (4) does not "underlie" (5), then it is no longer possible to interpret the deviance of (4) as simply reflecting the failure to apply the movement operation needed to derive (5).
2 CARDINALETTI & STARKE 1994 In the spirit of Chomsky's (1981) "avoid pronoun" proposal (and subsequent "economy" proposals (cf. Chomsky 1995), Cardinaletti & Starke (1994) develop the following approach to (4). First, moi is taken to have more structure associated with it than me. (I agree with this.) Second, the exclusion of (4) is attributed to the very availability of (5), through a principle that favours structure minimization. In general, only when the clitic (here, me) is independently excluded will the (less minimal) non-clitic (here, moi) be legitimate. Since the clitic sentence (5) is in this case possible, the corresponding non-clitic sentence (4) is not legitimate.3 As Cardinaletti and Starke point out (in their note 70), structure minimization of this sort has a transderivational character. 1
Some French clitics are bimorphemic, e.g., the la of (i) = l-+-a. (i) Jean la connait. 'J her knows' The les of (ii) is probably trimorphemic (l-+-e-+-s). (ii) Jean les connait. 'J them knows' An initial conclusion is that -oi has neither the number status of plural -s nor the word marker status of -a (and probably -e) in the sense of Harris (1991). The challenge posed by moi (and similarly toi 'youf amsg ') does not arise for nous 'we/us' or vous 'youp]/poiite'> which occur both in non-clitic and in clitic position.
2
Chomsky (1995 :337) makes an interesting proposal that may or may not be compatible with the syntax of clitic doubling.
1
Cardinaletti and Starke use the term "strong pronoun" rather than non-clitic. This is related to their argument that pronouns come in three varieties, "strong", "weak" and "clitic". Since their "strong'V'weak" distinction is not essential to what follows, I will continue to use the term "non-clitic".
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Cardinaletti and Starke's proposal concerning (4) and (5) is superior to my earlier one in that it is compatible with the idea that moi is bimorphemic. On the other hand, it leads to the expectation that from a given comparison set there should always emerge one fully acceptable sentence.4 (As we will see below, this expectation, in the case of clitics vs. non-clitics, is not always met.) In the present paper, I will be exploring another approach to (4) that differs both from theirs and from my own earlier one.
3 CLITIC DOUBLING IN FRENCH The account that I will suggest will attempt to integrate into the analysis of (4) what I take to be a French counterpart of the more familiar Spanish clitic doubling. In addition to (4) and (5), let us consider (8). (8) Jean me connait moi. 'J me knows me' This sentence has stress on moi and no "break" of the sort found with right dislocation.5 (8) is an example of clitic doubling in that it contains a clitic cooccurring with a corresponding non-clitic (non-dislocated) post-verbal object. French clitic doubling in this sense is much more limited than its Spanish counterpart, in that even with dative clitics French allows this non-dislocated doubling only with pronouns: (9) Jean me parle a moi. 'J me speaks to me' (10) Jean lui parle a elle. 'J her speaks to her' (11) *Jean lui parle a Marie. With direct objects, clitic doubling in French generalizes from (8) to other pronouns, but again not to lexical DPs: (12) Jean la connait elle. 'J her knows her' (13)*Jean la connait Marie. (Possible as right dislocation is: Jean la connait, Marie and Jean lui parle, a Marie.)
4
In a way partially similar to work in OT—cf. various articles in Barbosa et al. 1998.
3
Following usual practice, right-dislocation is represented with a comma: (i) Jean me connait, moi. For relevant discussion, cf. Kayne 1994, §7.3, Villalba 1999 and Cecchetto 1999, to appear.
192 Richard S. Kayne
4 PROPOSAL The problem with (4) is, from the perspective I would now like to pursue, not that moi has failed to move, nor that there is a similar well-formed sentence with a clitic instead of moi, but rather that moi has not been doubled.6 The proposal is: (14) Pronominal arguments that are structurally Case-marked7 in French must be doubled by a clitic. Let me consider that clitic doubling involves introducing clitic and corresponding non-clitic as a single complex constituent in argument position. Thus a sentence like (12) will have a phrase '[elle la]' merged as the object argument of the verb.8 Subsequent movement(s) will yield the word order seen in (12).9 Returning to (4), repeated here, what now makes (4) deviant is that it is missing the clitic imposed by (14):10 6
Cf. in part Postal 1990. Note that (14) applies also to covert pronouns (that are structurally Case-marked) — cf. the discussion of (65), (iii) of note 34, and (75) below.
7
I am taking dative here to be an instance of structural Case (and the Case of objects of prepositions other than (certain) a 'to' not to be). Possible with postverbal moi is, (i). The clitic is excluded, (ii). (i) C'est moi.'It's me'
(ii) *Ce/Ca m'est (moi).
Given (14), the post-copula pronoun in (i) may have no structural Case — cf.the discussion of (41) below. Similarly, perhaps, for clefted direct object pronouns: (iii) C'est moi qu'ils ont vu. 'It is me that they have seen' To take (iii) to be parallel to (i) here is straightforward if (iii) involves empty operator movement (cf. Chomsky 1977) or movement of a (third person) pro, rather than movement of moi itself. If it is moi that is moved (as suggested for the general case by reconstruction effects — cf. Chomsky 1995, ch. 3), then things are more complex. Of note is the fact that both (i) and (ii) are possible in Walloon, at least in the third person — cf. Remade 1952:220. 8
Cf. Kayne 1972, §3 on French subject clitics and Belletti 1999, Bianchini et al. 1982 and Uriagereka 1995 : 81 on object clitics. An alternative that I will set aside without discussion (although it is surprisingly (and interestingly) difficult to find evidence distinguishing it from the text approach to clitic doubling) is proposed by Sportiche (1995), who takes clitics to correspond to AGR-like heads interspersed in the main sentential projection line. For Sportiche, the non-clitic moves into the Spec of the corresponding clitic, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly. Covert movement is incompatible with Kayne 1998. It might be possible, however, to take elle in (12) to move overtly to Spec, la, if that movement were followed by further movement of la connait to the left of elle, in the spirit of (the references given in) note 10 of Kayne 1998. For further very interesting discussion of clitic doubling, cf. Aoun 1996 and Schmitt 1998.
9 10
In a way somewhat similar to the quantifier stranding of Sportiche (1988) and Shlonsky (1991). In Italian (unlike French, or Paduan or Venetian—cf. Kayne 2000, also Shlonsky 1997, §9.4.3 on similarities to Semitic) the counterpart of (15) is acceptable if the pronoun is stressed: (i) Gianni conosce me. It might be that Italian is different from these other languages with respect to (14) itself. On the other hand, Belletti (1993 :108) suggests a correlation with focalization differences—cf. perhaps the discussion of (19) below. Another possibility is that Italian might be able to take non-clitic me in (i) to be a phrase [me X] headed by X such that me is oblique and not subject to (14), where X is a phonetically unrealized intensifier—cf. latridou 1988 on clitic doubling with Greek reflexives.
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(15) *Jean connait moi. 'J knows me' Put another way, French cannot have a direct object argument moi, but only one of the form moi m(e), which would yield (16):11 (16) Jean me connait moi. 'J me knows me' Similarly, the following contrasts with (9): (17) *Jean parle a moi. 'J speaks to me' (18) Jean me parle a moi. (= (9)) The deviance of (17) relative to (18) is interpretable in terms of (14)—dative (non-oblique) moi must be doubled. The deviance of (17) can be alleviated by contrastive stress: (19) Jean parle volontiers a MOI (mais pas a mon frere). 'J speaks gladly to ME (but not to my brother)' This is less true in the direct object case:12 (20) *Jean connait MOI (mais pas mon frere). 'J knows ME (but not my brother)' The contrast between (19) and (20) recalls the fact that French topicalization applies more readily to datives (and other PPs) than to direct objects:13 (21) A Marie, Jean ne parle jamais. to M J neg speaks never (22) *Marie, Jean ne critique jamais. M J neg criticizes never This suggests, in the spirit of Kayne (1998), that (19) might actually be an instance of topicalization, in which the usually visible effect of topicalization is masked by subsequent leftward 1
' It may be that the right-dislocated example (i) derives from essentially the same structure: (i) Jean me connait, moi. If moi is stressed, we have (16). If moi is destressed, we may have (i), probably involving leftward movement of moi — cf. the references of note 5. It is possible that (16) also involves leftward movement of moi, to a different position, perhaps SpecFocusP—cf. Rigau 1988, Belletti 1999 and Aoun 1996.
12
Cf. Kayne 1975, ch. 2, (319)-(322). For some speakers (20) is relatively acceptable.
13
It may be that French topicalization in the sense of Kayne (1975, ch. 2, (174), (205)) is equivalent to Cinque's (1990) CLLD.
194 Richard S. Kayne movement of IP past the topicalized PP. If so, then the unavailability of (20) would follow from that of (22), on the assumption that (at least with non-oblique pronouns) contrastive stress is available in French only in conjunction with overt movement such as topicalization.14 From this perspective, the absence of a clitic in (19) would reduce to the absence of a clitic in: (23) A moi, Jean ne parle jamais. to me J neg speaks never The question arises as to how (23) and (19) are compatible with (14). Thinking of Couquaux (1976, 1978) and Postal (1990), it may be that French topicalization (sometimes) licenses reinterpreting dative a as non-dative a.15
5 GAPPING The dative vs. accusative difference seen in (19) vs. (20) has a counterpart in the realm of gapping (cf. Kayne 1975, ch. 2, note 41): (24) Jean lui a parle a elle, et Jacques a sa soeur. J her has spoken to her and J to her sister (25) ?Jean 1'a invitee elle, et Jacques sa soeur. J her has invited her and J her sister Pronoun clitic doubling in the first conjunct of a gapping sentence is fine if the clitic is dative, less so if it is accusative. This recalls the often discussed fact that clitic doubling with quantified or focussed lexical objects in Spanish is good with datives, but not with accusatives. Since the first conjunct by itself would be well-formed in both (24) and (25), the distinction between them must rest on the second conjunct. I shall follow Johnson (1994) in taking the object in the second conjunct to have moved leftward. In which case, (24) can be thought of as involving a second conjunct with the (simplified) structure:16 (26) . . . a sa soeur lui a parle.
14
On clefts, cf. note 7.
15
Spanish is different here.
16
The fact that gapping can "eliminate" clitic, auxiliary and participle in (26) is not novel—cf. Johnson 1994 and (i): (i) Jean lui a offert un livre et Jacques un stylo. J her has given a book and J a pen Note in addition that (26) resembles (in part) Cinque's (1990) CLLD.
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If the object (in the second conjunct) of a gapping sentence is necessarily focussed, then (26) is arguably akin to Spanish clitic doubling of a focussed (or quantified) dative. Correspondingly, (25) is akin to one with clitic doubling of a focussed (or quantified) lexical accusative, which is deviant (for reasons that need further elucidation).17
6 SUBJECTS The deviance of (20) is diminished if one switches from a first (or second) person direct object pronoun to a third person pronoun:18 (27) ?Je connais LUI (mais pas son frere). 'I know HIM (but not his brother)' This presumably reflects the fact that there is a closer link between third person pronouns and lexical DPs than between first/second person pronouns and lexical DPs.19 Of specific interest here is the fact that a similar contrast exists with subject pronouns, as follows. French lexical subjects do not need to appear with a subject clitic:20 (28) Jean voit Marie. 'J sees M' With this in mind, note the parallelism between (15)/(16) and the following pair: (29) *Moi vois Marie, 'me sees M' (30) Moi, je vois Marie, 'me, I see M' Non-clitic moi (whose form is not sensitive to Case distinctions) is not by itself a possible subject with a tensed verb. If it is doubled by the subject clitic je, the resulting sentence is fine. (Although it is written with a comma, (30) is plausibly ambiguous between left-dislocation (CLLD, in Cinque's (1990) sense) and non-dislocation doubling of the sort seen in (16).) The ungrammaticality of (29) can be seen to follow from (14) (nominatives are instances of structural Case). Now (29) remains impossible even with contrastive stress on the pronoun: (31)*MOI vois Marie. 17
For recent discussion, cf. Torrego 1998:58.
18
Cf. Kayne 1975, ch. 2, note 125 and Cardinaletti & Starke 1994. In certain North Italian dialects, this contrast is particularly striking — cf. Kayne 2000.
19
For relevant discussion, cf. Ritter 1995, cf. also Koopman 1993.
20
In standard French, the presence of a cooccurring subject clitic implies dislocation of the lexical subject: (i) Jean, il voit Marie. 'J, he sees M'
196 Richard S. Kayne However the third person counterpart of (31) is possible (cf. Kayne 1972, note 22): (32) LUI voit Marie. 'HE sees M' (Without contrastive stress on lui, (32) would be deviant). Although the contrast between (31) and (32) is stronger than that between (20) and (27), I take the partial similarity to support treating (29)/(30) as akin to (15)/(16). From the standpoint of Cardinaletti & Starke (1994), the impossibility of (29) could be thought of as deriving from the availability of (33) — although this would still leave open the impossibility of (31). (33) Je vois Marie. 'I see M' Their proposal characterizes the deviance of (29) and (15) as resulting from the very availability of an alternative pronoun with a more minimal structure. While agreeing that (monomorphemic) je has less to it than (bimorphemic) moi, I do not think that the deviance of (29) can be derived directly from the availability of (33) via an economy principle favouring pronouns with less structure. (In imposing doubling when it does, my own proposal above (14) actually imposes more (overt) structure.) Their proposal runs into difficulty with cases in which neither type of pronoun (non-clitic or clitic) yields a fully well-formed sentence. One such case (cf. the discussion of (89) below) is that of French gerunds: (34) Jean ayant resolu le probleme, tout va bien. 'J having solved the problem, all goes well' Replacing Jean by a first or second person pronoun yields deviance: (35) *Moi ayant resolu le probleme, tout va bien. A (contrastively stressed) third person pronoun would be better, much as in (32): (36) LUI ayant resolu le probleme, tout va bien. The deviance of (35) is surely akin to that of (29). Yet here there is no clitic counterpart available at all:21 (37) **J'ayant resolu le probleme, tout va bien. Consequently, the deviance of (35) cannot be attributed to an economy principle dependent on the availability of a more minimally structured pronoun. 21
Subject clitics (but not object clitics) are limited to tensed sentences. Probably related to (37) is the impossibility of subject clitics in imperatives.
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On the other hand, on the assumption that the subject of French gerunds is in a structural Case position, (14) will impose a clitic double on (35), thereby correctly characterizing (35) itself as deviant. The resulting doubling sentence is sharply impossible, presumably for the same (not yet clear) reason as (37):22 (38) **Moi j'ayant resolu le probleme, tout va bien.
7 MORE GAPPING Appreciably better than (35) is: (39) Jean aime la physique et moi la chimie. 'J likes physics and me chemistry' Here, moi is the subject of the second conjunct of a well-formed gapping sentence, despite the absence of any overt doubling clitic, which would in fact be impossible: (40) **Jean aime la physique et (moi) je la chimie. The impossibility of clitic je in (40) is arguably identical to its impossibility in (37) and (38). More surprising is the contrast between (35) and (39). The former violates (14), i.e., the requirement that pronouns with structural Case be doubled by a clitic. The latter looks like it does, but it may be that its second conjunct contains a phonetically unrealized "... j'aime... ". That is, it may be that (39) does contain a subject clitic that is eliminated by whatever is involved in gapping (despite the fact that (39) contains no overt subject clitic in its first conjunct).23 Alternatively, the subject of the second conjunct of a gapping structure is not in a structural Case position. This proposal is close to one made by Johnson (1994) (following Siegel (1987)), and may fit well with Chomsky's (1998:43) suggestion that what is primary in general is not structural Case itself but rather the phi-features of T and v that it interacts with. Thus, if, as Johnson suggests, the second conjunct in gapping lacks a T layer and if (as is clear) the subject in that second conjunct is not drawn into the v layer of any higher predicate, then the second subject in gapping plausibly lacks structural Case altogether, so that the pronoun moi in (39) is not affected by the doubling requirement expressed by (14). 22
There may be a link to the fact that verbal person agreement is by and large limited to tensed verbs. (On the idea that person agreement should be strongly assimilated to a clitic, see Taraldsen 1992, Ordonez 1997, Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998 and Ordonez & Trevino 1999. On the different status of number agreement, cf. Kayne 1995.) It might be that subject clitics require nominative Case (and similarly for person agreement clitics/affixes — cf. Raposo 1987) and that French gerunds assign a structural Case to their (pre-verbal) subjects that is not nominative.
23
And similarly perhaps in (one word) answers to questions—cf. Kayne 1975, ch. 2, note 13.
198 Richard S. Kayne The idea that the second subject in gapping structures lacks structural Case allows an account of a striking fact brought to my attention by a question of Guglielmo Cinque's: (41) Jean ayant resolu le premier probleme et moi le second, tout va bien. 'J having solved the first problem and me the second, all goes well' This is an example of gapping in which the verb is gerundial. Yet here subject moi (in the second conjunct) is possible, in contrast to (35). The question is why the apparently empty gerund in the second conjunct does not induce a violation parallel to that of (35). The answer, I think, is essentially given by Johnson's proposal that the second conjunct lacks a T layer (and by extension in (41) a layer corresponding to gerundial morphology24), combined with Chomsky's idea on structural Case. The moi of (41) is not in a structural Case position (since the second conjunct lacks the relevant functional layer), whereas the moi of (35) is in a structural Case position (and therefore subject to (14)). For Jean-Yves Pollock, the following, with a past participle, have the same status as (34)-
(37). (42) Une fois Jean parti, . . . 'one time J left, . . . ' = 'Once J has left, (43) *Une fois moi parti, . . . (44) Une fois LUI parti, . . . (45) **Une fois je parti, . . . The analysis given of gerunds carries over, assuming the Case of Jean in (42) to be structural Case, so that (43) falls under (14). Again, there is a contrast with gapping, i.e., (46) is better than (43): (46) Une fois Jean entre et moi sorti, . . . 'one time J come-in and me gone-out, As before, this will follow if the moi of (46) has no structural Case, unlike the moi of (43).25 The object pronoun counterpart of (39) seems slightly less good (but better than (20)): (47) (?)Marie aime Jean et Anne moi. 'M loves J and A me'
24
Which in French is closer to tense than in English—cf. Kayne (1975, §1.3 and Pollock 1989:408.
2:1
According to Martineau & Motapanyane (1996:162), Quebec French has: (i) Moi/*je avoir dit <ja a mon pere, il... me haveinfin said that to my father he The contrast with (43) and (35) remains to be understood.
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If the second conjunct has a full v layer, we would expect the object moi to have structural Case (unlike the subject moi of (46) and (41)), and hence to be excluded by (14), unless there is a phonetically unrealized clitic in the second conjunct, i.e., a phonetically unrealized "... m'aime... " (whose inexact matching with the first conjunct might be the source of the slight deviance). Straightforwardly acceptable is: (48) Marie n'aime que moi. M neg loves than me 'M loves only me' As in Azoulay-Vicente (1985, ch. 3), this "ne... que" construction probably contains a covert autre 'other', so that the que in (48) is likely to be the que found in comparatives: (49) Marie connait mieux Jean que moi. 'M knows better J than me' It may be that, like (47), (48) and (49) contain, by virtue of involving a gapping-like derivation, a phonetically unrealized object clitic.26
8 MODIFIED PRONOUNS I have proposed partially dissociating the deviance of (29) from the availability of (33), and similarly for the object case. This dissociation is further supported by the fact that "modified" non-oblique pronouns remain quite deviant in the environments under discussion even though replacing the non-clitic pronoun by a clitic would lead to complete impossibility: (50) a. *Jean photographiait nous autres. 'J was photographing us others' b. *Jean a vu vous deux ce matin. 'J has seen you two this morning' In these examples, the (plural) direct object non-clitic nous/vous is modified by the word autres 'others' or by a numeral. Although perhaps slightly better than the corresponding sentences with a bare non-clitic, as in (51), they are clearly deviant:27 (51) a. *Jean photographiait nous, b. *Jean a vu vous ce matin.
26
It remains to be seen how best to integrate: (i) Elle connait ?(et) moi et Jean, 'she knows and me and J' Cf. Kayne 1975, ch. 2, note 140.
27
As opposed to: (i) Jean a vu chacun de nous. 'J has seen each one of us' in which nous must be oblique, in a way related to the presence of de.
200 Richard S. Kayne Cardinaletti & Starke's (1994) proposal is that the status of (51) is due to the availability of a clitic alternative, illustrated in (52) (in the first person and second person plural/polite, non-clitic and clitic have the same form in French): (52) a. Jean nous photographiait. b. Jean vous a vu ce matin. However, for (50) there is no available clitic alternative: (53) a. **Jean nous autres photographiait. b. **Jean vous deux a vu(s) ce matin. (54) a. **Jean nous photographiait autres. b. **Jean vous a vu(s) deux ce matin. In (53), we see that the modifier cannot occur next to the clitic, and in (54) that the modifier cannot occur stranded in post-verbal position. Nonetheless, (50) is deviant (thereby contrasting with modified non-clitic pronouns that are oblique): (55) a. Jean parle de nous autres. 'J speaks of us others' b. Jean parle de vous deux. 'J speaks of you two' The proposal that I have put forth in (14) above is repeated here: (56) Pronominal arguments that are structurally Case-marked in French must be doubled by a clitic. It claims that what is wrong with (50) is that (50) is missing the required doubling clitic. In this case, the presence of a doubling clitic is possible (as opposed to the subject clitic gerund case of (38)): (57) a. Jean nous photographiait nous autres. b. Jean vous a vu(s) vous deux ce matin. The subject clitic doubling case corresponding to (57) is also possible: (58) a. Nous autres, nous pardons. 'Us others, we were leaving' b. Vous deux, vous partiez. 'You two, you were leaving' (58) without the subject clitic would be impossible in colloquial French, although perhaps possible (and better than (50), for unclear reasons) in more literary French.28 The dative counterpart 28
More colloquial than (58a) would be: (i) Nous autres, on partait. 'Us others, one was leaving' The subject clitic on is what determines the third singular agreement here: (ii) **Nous autres partait.
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of (57) is possible: (59) a. Jean nous parlait a nous autres. J us was_speaking to us others b. Jean vous a parle a vous deux. J you has spoken to you two Without the doubling clitic, these are deviant to some degree, with subtle variation in judgments (cf. Kayne 1975, ch. 2, (342)): (60) a.??Jean parlera a vous autres. b. ?Jean parlera a vous deux. c. Jean parlera a vous tous. 'J will speak to you all' The deviance of (60a, b) is expected (although the exact degree needs further elucidation). The fact that they are somewhat better than the corresponding direct object examples in (50) is probably to be related to the discussion of (23) above, i.e., to the possibility of reanalysing a as a non-dative preposition (whereas the direct object examples have no preposition that could be so reanalysed).
9 QUANTIFIERS The quantifier present in (60c) leads to many questions that are beyond the scope of this paper. Let me note, though, that although dative counterparts of (54) are also not possible, one can have sentences with tous (with both accusatives and datives) that contrast sharply with (54): (61) Jean nous photographiait tous. 'J us was.photographing all' (62) Jean vous a parle a tous. 'J you has spoken to all' The separability of clitic and quantifier seen in (61) can almost certainly be assimilated to familiar English quantifier floating/stranding: (63) We/The boys were all talking. That is, (61) is not a case of clitic doubling of the sort under discussion.30
29
For relevant discussion, cf. Kayne 1975, ch. 1, Sportiche 1988, Shlonsky 1991 and Bobaljik 1998.
30
Cf. however note 9 above.
202
Richard S. Kayne
10 QUANTIFIERS WITH COVERT NON-CLITIC PRONOUNS Somewhat similar to (60c) is: (64) Jean a parle a tous. 'J has spoken to all' The quantifier tous by itself (and without any clitic present) can follow a, as well as other prepositions. It cannot appear in the same fashion as direct object, however: (65) *Jean a invite tous. 'J has invited all' This suggests that the object of a in (64) is not simply tous, but rather tous together with a covert non-clitic pronominal (limited to third person interpretation).31 The contrast between (64) and (65) is due to the fact that although the clitic doubling imposed on (non-clitic) pronominals by (56) can be suspended in some cases with datives (as seen in (60c)) it cannot be in the case of direct objects. Consequently, we can take (65) (containing postverbal tous + covert non-clitic pronominal) to be excluded as a violation of (56). One might ask if the covert non-clitic pronoun of (65) could be doubled by an overt clitic. If it could be, then a sentence like (66) could be analysed as an instance of clitic doubling: (66) Jean les invitera tous. 'J them will invite all' Thinking of the limitation to third person interpretation for the covert non-clitic pronoun in (64), we might expect a doubling analysis of this sort (with covert pronoun and tous forming a single constituent) to be available only with third person clitics: (67) . . . les invitera tous pro. 31
Relevant here are the following, from Ruwet (1978, (199)/(200)): (i) Tous/*toutes ces laiderons essaieront de seduire Antoine. allmasc/fem these ugly_women wilLtry to seduce A (ii) Ces laiderons essaieront toutes de seduire Antoine. The noun laideron is masculine in grammatical gender. It must take a preceding masculine quantifier, but can be followed by a "floating'V'stranded" feminine quantifier. This suggests that in (ii) toutes is really toutes plus covert feminine pronoun, so that the gender mismatch (cf. Ruwet 1967) in (ii) is really between pronoun and antecedent (rather than between quantifier and antecedent). Cf. the discussion of (66)—(73) below. Perhaps similar is the acceptability for some Italian speakers of (iii), with the feminine clitic l(a) in its use as second person polite appearing to simultaneously trigger feminine agreement on vista and masculine agreement on perso (where the person addressed is male): (iii) ?L'ho vista perso. her=you IJiave seenfem lost^c More likely, agreement on vista is being triggered by la (whose vowel has dropped), and agreement on perso by a covert masculine pronoun. In combination with the discussion of (78)-(83) below (plus the assumption that (iii) can have only one pro), this would lead to the expectation that (iii) will be acceptable only to those speakers who accept past participle agreement in (79).
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If so, then the following, with a first person clitic, could only be an instance of quantifier floating/stranding (i.e., without any pro), as in the discussion of (61): (68) Jean nous invitera tous. 'J us will invite all' ((66) would then be analysable in two ways, either as doubling or as floating/stranding.) The conclusion that tous linked to a third person clitic has an extra analysis available to it as compared with tous linked to a first or second person clitic is directly supported by the French of (at least) some speakers. For Marlyse Baptista, there is a sharp difference between (69) and (70).32 (69) Elle a tous commence a les insulter/apprecier. she has all begun to them insult/appreciate' 'She has begun to insult/appreciate them all' (70) a. *Elle a tous commence a vous insulter/apprecier. '... you...' b. *Elle a tous commence a nous insulter/apprecier. '... u s . . . ' For her, then, (69) must only be available as an instance of doubling, in which the clitic les is preceded by its double consisting of tous plus a covert pronoun (limited to third person). Similarly for the non-standard (71) vs. the impossible (72), which were brought to my attention by Isabelle Hai'k (cf. Kayne 1981, note 13). (71) ??J'ai tous vote pour eux. 'I have all voted for them' (72) *J'ai tous vote pour vous. Normally tous cannot be linked to a non-clitic pronoun to its right, i.e., in standard French neither of the above is possible. The contrast between them suggests that in some French a phrase consisting of tous plus covert pronoun can be linked to a non-clitic pronoun, but that, as before, the covert pronoun can only be third person. These in turn recall Ruwet's (1978, (218)): (73) Les candidats, j'aurais tous vote pour... 'the candidates, I would have all voted for...' Again, there must be a phrase tous plus covert (third person) pronoun, and, in this kind of example, another covert (third person) pronoun following the preposition.33 32
Similarly she finds the following to contrast, though a bit less sharply (with the difference probably related to the presence vs. absence of a): (i)
Elle aimerait tous les revoir. 'she wouldJike all them see_again'
(ii) */??Elle aimerait tous vous revoir. 33
(iii) */??Elle aimerait tous nous revoir.
The order of pronoun and preposition is not important for the text point. Similarly it might be that the covert pronoun adjacent to tous in (69), (71) and (73) precedes it. Relevant here is note 31 above.
204 Richard S. Kayne 11
MORE ON THE THIRD PERSON RESTRICTION ON COVERT NON-CLITIC PRONOUNS
This restriction is also visible in French with subjects: (74) Tous chantaient. 'All were_singing_3pl.' (75) *Tous chantiez. 'All were_singing_2pl.' In (74), the subject phrase must be tous plus a covert non-clitic (third person) pronoun. If such a covert pronoun could also be second person, then (75) would have been possible (with second plural verb agreement), but it is not. The question arises as to how general this limitation to third person is. There may well be languages for which it does not hold. But it is fruitful to postulate it to hold in a general way in (at least) French, Italian and the related dialects.35 The hypothesis that there are covert non-clitic pronouns that are in these languages restricted to third person would appear to imply a difference between, for example, the following two sentences: (76) Jean la voit. 'J her sees' (77) Jean me voit. 'J me sees' The first, with a third person clitic, could contain in addition a covert non-clitic pronoun. The second, with a first person clitic, could not. (Put another way, (76) might contain a pro in addition to la, whereas (77) could not contain a pro in addition to me? ) This might provide a novel way of understanding the fact that some Romance languages (e.g., Catalan and some varieties of Italian) allow past participle agreement with third person clitics but not with first or second person clitics: 34
In a pro-drop language (like Spanish), (75) could be possible with an analysis not parallel to that of French (74), namely, with an analysis in which tous is "floating'V'stranded" and the second person pronoun is the verbal agreement suffix—cf. Taraldsen 1992. The fact that (74) is much better than (65) should be related to the contrast above between (32) and (27). Both contrasts require further study. That they are related is supported by the fact that in both cases acceptability drops sharply (setting aside "pointing" contexts for (ii)) if the subject is postverbal as in "stylistic inversion": (i)
la fille a qui a parle Jean 'the girl to whom has spoken J'
(ii) *la fille a qui a parle lui ' . . . he/him' (iii) *la fille a qui ont parle tous ' . . . have spoken all' Cf. Pollock 1998, note 37. 33
Beyond the scope of this paper is the question why it should hold at all in certain languages. Part of the answer is presumably that in those languages third person pronouns are different in internal structure from first and second person pronouns—cf. Ritter 1995 and Kayne 2000 for relevant discussion.
36
What I am calling pro here is a covert doubled pronoun, entirely distinct from the trace of the clitic.
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(78) Gianni li ha visti/*visto. 'G them has seenm pi/seenno agr ' (79) Gianni vi ha visti/visto. '... you p ]...' In (78) (Italian) we see obligatory past participle agreement in the presence of an accusative (here, masculine plural) clitic. In standard Italian, the corresponding agreement with a second person plural clitic is generally considered optional, as illustrated in (79). For some speakers of Italian, though, agreement in (79) is not possible. More generally put, some Romance languages have past participle agreement only with third person clitics. No Romance language, to my knowledge, has such agreement only with first and second person clitics. We can understand this as follows. Of the Romance languages/dialects that have past participle agreement with object clitics, some take that agreement to be triggered by the clitic itself (at some point in the derivation); in those, all accusative clitics trigger agreement. Others, however, take past participle agreement to be triggered by pro, i.e., by the covert non-clitic pronominal double. Since a covert pronoun in these languages is limited to third person, it follows that for the relevant speakers the agreement itself is limited to sentences with a third person clitic. For Guglielmo Cinque, in whose Italian past participle agreement is usually possible with clitics of all persons, a contrast nonetheless appears in the particular case of clitic climbing: (80) Li ho potuti/*potuto criticare. 'them IJiave could criticize' (81) Vi ho potuto/?potuti criticare. 'you IJiave...' In both (80) and (81), the object clitic has "climbed" into the matrix. In (80), with a third person (plural) clitic, past participle agreement (on the matrix verb) is obligatory. In (81), with a second person (plural) clitic, past participle agreement is slightly off, and non-agreement is possible. This effect is stronger for him with matrix finire (probably because of the presence of complementizer di): (82) Li ho finiti di criticare. 'them I_have finished di criticize' (83) Vi ho finito/??finiti di criticare. What this seems to suggest is that in clitic climbing contexts past participle agreement on the matrix verb cannot readily be triggered by the clitic itself. To the extent that it cannot, past participle agreement must be triggered by the covert non-clitic pronoun. Such a "pro" can be called upon in the third person, as in (80) and (82), but not in the (first or) second person, as seen by the deviance of (81) and (83).37
31
If I read them correctly, Hernanz & Rigau (1984) state that Catalan past participle agreement is not available in clitic climbing contexts where the matrix verb is intentar or procurar, even in the third person. Much remains to be understood here.
206 RichardS. Kayne 12
AN EXTENSION TO COVERT SUBJECTS
A similar point can be made for subjects. Consider (in Italian): (84) Parlavano. 'they spoke' (85) Parlavamo. 'we spoke' The first is a third person (plural) null subject sentence. By previous reasoning, it may contain a covert non-clitic pronoun. The second of these is also a null subject sentence, but in the first person (plural). It may therefore not contain a covert non-clitic pronoun. Consequently, the pronoun subject of (85) must be overt, i.e., must be the agreement suffix -mo — cf. Taraldsen 1992—, whereas the agreement suffix -no of (84) needn't be pronoun-like. A plausible strengthening of this conclusion (at least for the languages under consideration) is: (86) a. Covert non-clitic pronouns can only be third person.38 b. An agreement suffix having the properties of a pronoun can only be first or second person.39 38
A plausible extension would be: (i) A covert clitic pronoun can only be third person. This might be relaxed in certain cases where the covert clitic is locally identified by a c-commanding pronoun. Thus in section 12 of Kayne 2000,1 suggested a link between (ii) and (iii) (from Lombardy dialects): (ii) Nun se lavom. 'we refl. wash' (iii) M i a m a s a lavi i man. me a me refl. wash the hands 'I wash my hands' (ii) arguably contains a covert first person plural object clitic parallel to the ma of (iii): (iv) nun CLipi se lavom If this covert clitic must be licensed by the identical (apart from Case) features of nun, then we may have an account of the absence in French dialects (as brought to my attention by Yves-Charles Morin) of: (v) *Je se lavons. T refl. washi p i/ This is absent despite the widespread Je parlons 'Ispeakipi.' = 'we speak'—cf. section 5 of Kayne 2000. The reason is that (v) would have to have the analysis: (vi) je CL se lavons But since ye is grammatically singular, the covert clitic would be possible only if it were singular, too, i.e., if it were the covert counterpart of me, which in the relevant French dialects must not be compatible with first person plural. (In effect, for (v) to be possible there would have to be a dialect in which bothj'e and me were compatible with Ipl.)
19
Cf. the discussion in Kayne 2000 of the fact that the /- of Romance third person pronouns/clitics never appears within possessives. Nor does it ever seem to appear as part of an agreement suffix (as opposed to first person in- and second person t-, which sometimes do). Presumably (86b) in part underlies the fact that in so many languages third person singular agreement is zero. (Beyond the scope of this paper is the question of null topics of the sort found in German or Portuguese — cf. the end of note 42 below and also Farrell's (1990) argument that Brazilian Portuguese has a.pro object limited to third person. Similarly for the question whether pronominal agreement suffixes can be covert.)
A note on clitic doubling in French
207
Given (86b), the agreement suffix in (84) must be non-pronominal. Therefore (84) must contain a covert non-clitic third person pronoun (pro). That is, (84) and (85) differ in that (84) must, but (85) cannot, contain pro. Consider now a language having pronominal agreement suffixes but (for some reason, unlike Italian) no pure subject (referential) pro. Such a language would need overt pronominal subjects in the third person, although not in the first or second person (when the agreement suffixes were present). This corresponds by and large to Paduan and Venetian (and various other North Italian dialects), which require overt subject clitics in the third person, but not in the first person, or in the second person plural. There may be a correlation here with the fact that Venetian, according to Cecilia Poletto, also lacks the object pro discussed by Rizzi (1986) for Italian. An Italian example is: (87) Questo costringe a parlare subito. 'this constrains to speak right away' (Venetian would add a second person singular object clitic,41 just as English would add either you or one.42) 40
Venetian and Paduan both have an obligatory subject clitic in the second singular, whose presence must be due to other factors—cf. Poletto 1993, 1995, 2000. This clitic does not, however, appear in imperatives (cf. note 21 above). Related to this is the fact discussed by Zanuttini (1997, ch. 4) that Italian second singular imperatives lack any verbal agreement morphology, despite which they do not require an overt subject, for unclear reasons. Like Paduan and Venetian with respect to null subjects is (to a significant extent) Hebrew— for a recent discussion, cf. Shlonsky 1997.
41
Apparently less necessary in Paduan. Note that the text approach never has a person feature of pro identified by verbal agreement morphology, unlike Rizzi (1986); at the same time, the text approach does not give an immediate account of the behaviour of (what seems to be) pro in the aux-to-Comp constructions he discusses. Controlled PRO does not seem to be sensitive to person features, reinforcing the familiar idea that it is distinct from pro. Its insensitivity to person features would be expected if it were really the trace of movement, as in O'Neil 1994, 1997.
42
English is usually thought not to have any pro (apart perhaps from imperatives — cf. note 40 above). But it does seem to with quantifiers, as in: (i) John would like to speak to both/all five. The interpretation is only third person (i.e., equivalent to both/all five of them), as expected. Cf.: (ii) Both/all five were behaving themselves/*ourselves/*yourselves. These facts carry over to non-universals, again suggesting the presence of pro: (iii) Five/most/not very many were behaving themselves/*ourselves/*yourselves. This indicates a link with Pollock (1998, §5), exploration of which is beyond the scope of this paper. The third person restriction does not hold for telegraphic English: (iv) Am waiting for an answer, which may, then, not involve pro—cf.: (v)*You know am waiting for an answer. The Italian counterpart of (iii) is limited to third person, as in English: (vi) Quattro sono venuti. 'four are^pi come' (vii)*Quattro siete venuti. 'four are2pi come' However, unlike French, the Italian counterpart of (i) does not seem to be so restricted, for reasons that remain to be understood.
208 Richard S. Kayne
13 Soi French has an anaphoric pronoun soi (cf. Italian se, German sich, Russian sebja, etc.) that is related (cf. Kayne 2000) to the first singular pronoun moi and second singular toi. Soi can be a long-distance anaphor in certain contexts; in those contexts it interacts in a striking way with clitic doubling. An example of long-distance soi (with antecedent on) is (cf. Kayne 1975, §2.16 and Pica 1984): (88) Quand on; dit aux gens de parler de soi;,... 'when one says to people to speak of soi,...' A comparable example with direct object soi would be impossible: (89) *Quand on; dit aux gens de photographier soij,... '... photograph soi,...' This contrast follows directly from (56), which imposes clitic doubling on (89) but not on (88), on the assumption that soi is a pronoun with structural Case in (89) (but not in (88)). For reasons having to do with the syntax of reflexive clitics (that go well beyond the bounds of this paper), adding the expected clitic double se (parallel to first singular me and second singular te) does not yield a grammatical sentence: (90) *Quand onj dit aux gens de se photographier soij, . . . Put another way, (56) excludes (89) on the grounds that (89) lacks a doubling clitic, even though French provides no admissible clitic in this case. That is, a violation of (56) is maintained even when the doubling counterpart is itself unacceptable. (The unacceptability of (89) is therefore not expected from the Cardinaletti & Starke perspective discussed above, at least not under the most straightforward interpretation of what is meant by having a corresponding clitic available.43)
43
Note that (90) with soi dropped is likewise impossible with on as antecedent of se. Possible is: (i) Quand on dit aux gens de vous photographier,... '... y o u . . . ' where vous seems to be taking on as antecedent—cf. Kayne 1975, ch. 2, note 123. This vous cannot double soi, however: (ii) *Quand on demande aux gens de vous photographier soi,... In addition, this vous is freer than long-distance soi in that it is not limited to subjunctive or infinitive complementation contexts: (iii) Quand on parle trop et que les gens vous mettent a la porte,... when one speaks too_much and that the people you put to the door '... and people throw you out, ...' (89)/(90) raise for OT the problem of language particular ineffability discussed recently by Legendre et al. (1998). (Cf. (35) above.) Whether the OT expectation that from a given candidate set there should always arise (at least) one fully acceptable sentence is contentful or not will depend on how restrictive the notion of candidate set can be held to be (and on how restrictive the OT notion of constraint can be made). In the case at hand, one might perhaps attempt to add in (i)-(iii). Other challenging cases are discussed in Kayne 1975, §§2.16, 2.17 and Postal 1990.
A note on clitic doubling in French
209
14 CONCLUSION The unacceptability of sentences like (89), (65), (60a, b), (51), (50), (35), (31), (29), (27), (20), (17), (15) and (4) can be attributed to the requirement stated in (56) that French structurally Casemarked pronouns must be doubled by a clitic. This requirement suggests that the subject in the second conjunct of a gapping sentence does not have structural Case. The doubling requirement in question sometimes rules out non-doubling sentences whose doubling and clitic counterparts are also not acceptable; this poses a problem for Cardinaletti & Starke's (1994) structure minimization proposal for such sentences. French non-doubling sentences with a clitic (and no corresponding non-clitic) can contain pro (in addition to the clitic) only in third person cases, with implications for the null subject phenomenon in other languages, for past participle agreement and for apparently bare quantifiers.
REFERENCES Alexiadou, Artemis and Elena Anagnostopoulou. (1998). Parametrizing Agr: Word order, Vmovement and EPP-checking. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 16, 491-539. Aoun, Joseph. (1996). Clitic-doubled arguments. Ms., University of Southern California. Azoulay-Vicente, Avigai'l. (1985). Les tours comportant I'expression de + adjectif. Geneva and Paris: Droz. Barbosa, Pilar, Danny Fox, Paul Hagstrom, Martha McGinnis and David Pesetsky. (1998). Is the Best Good Enough? Optimality and Competition in Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Belletti, Adriana. (1993). Case checking & clitic placement. GenGenP, 1, 101-118. Belletti, Adriana. (1999). Italian/Romance clitics: Structure and derivation. In Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.) Clitics in the Languages of Europe. Empirical Approaches to Language Typology. Vol 5. Berlin & New York: Mouton. 543-579 Bianchini, Sandra, Gianluigi Borgato and Romeo Galassi. (1982). Raddoppiamento del pronome in basso-mantovano/ferrarese. In Daniela Calleri and Carla Marello (eds.) Linguistica contrastiva. Atti del XIII Congresso Internationale di studi, Asti, 26-28 maggio 1979. Rome: Bulzoni. 371-389. Bobaljik, Jonathan D. (1998). Floating quantifiers: Handle with care. Glot International, 3.6, 3-10. Cardinaletti, Anna and Michal Starke. (1994). The typology of structural deficiency. On the three grammatical classes. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics, 4,41-109. (Also in Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.). (1999). Clitics in the Languages of Europe. Empirical Approaches to Language Typology. Vol. 5. Berlin & New York: Mouton. 145-233.) Cecchetto, Carlo. (1999). A comparative analysis of Left and Right Dislocation in Romance. Studia Linguistica, 53, 40-67. Cecchetto, Carlo, (to appear). Doubling structures and reconstruction. Probus. Chomsky, Noam. (1977). On wh-movement. In Peter W. Culicover, Thomas Wasow and Adrian Akmajian (eds.) Formal Syntax. New York: Academic Press. 71-132.
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Chomsky, Noam. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Chomsky, Noam. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. (1998). Minimalist inquiries: The framework. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 15. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1990). Types of A1-Dependencies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Couquaux, Daniel. (1976). Une regie de reanalyse en fran§ais. Recherches linguistiques, 4, 3274. Universite de Paris 8-Vincennes. Couquaux, Daniel. (1978). Sur une incompatibilite de pronoms clitiques en fran§ais. Lingvisticae Investigationes, 2, 211-214. Farrell, Patrick. (1990). Null objects in Brazilian Portuguese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 8, 325-346. Harris, James W. (1991). The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 22, 27-62. Hernanz, Maria Lluisa and Gemma Rigau. (1984). Auxiliaritat i reestructuracio. Els Marges, 31, 29-50. latridou, Sabine. (1988). Clitics, anaphors, and a problem of coindexation. Linguistic Inquiry, 19, 698-703. Johnson, Kyle. (1994). Bridging the gap. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Kayne, Richard S. (1972). Subject inversion in French interrogatives. In Jean Casagrande and Bohdan Saciuk (eds.) Generative Studies in Romance Languages. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. 70-126. Kayne, Richard S. (1975). French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Kayne, Richard S. (1981). Binding, quantifiers, clitics and control. In Frank Heny (ed.) Binding and Filtering. London: Croom Helm. 191-211. (Reprinted in Id. Connectedness and Binary Branching. Dordrecht: Foris.) Kayne, Richard S. (1994). The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Kayne, Richard S. (1995). Agreement and verb morphology in three varieties of English. In Hubert Haider, Susan Olsen and Sten Vikner (eds.) Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 159-165. Kayne, Richard S. (1998). Overt vs. covert movement. Syntax, 1, 128-191. Kayne, Richard S. (2000). Person morphemes and reflexives in Italian, French and related languages. In id. (ed.) Parameters and Universals. New York: Oxford University Press. (Also to appear in Christina M. Tortora (ed.) The Syntax of Italian Dialects. New York: Oxford University Press.) Koopman, Hilda. (1993). The internal and external distribution of pronominal DPs. Ms., UCLA. Legendre, Geraldine, Paul Smolensky and Colin Wilson. (1998). When is less more? Faithfulness and minimal links in w/i-chains. In Barbosa et al. 1998 : 249-289. Martineau, France and Virginia Motapanyane. (1996). Hypothetical infinitives and crosslinguistic variation in Continental and Quebec French. In James R. Black and Virginia Motapanyane (eds.) Microparametric Syntax and Dialect Variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 145-168.
A note on clitic doubling in French 211 O'Neil, John. (1994). Out of Control. Paper presented at NELS 25. (Proceedings of NELS 25. GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.) O'Neil, John. (1997). Means of Control: Deriving the properties of PRO in the Minimalist Program. PhD dissertation, Harvard University. Ordonez, Francisco. (1997). Word order and clause structure in Spanish and other Romance languages. PhD dissertation, City University of New York. Ordonez, Francisco and Esthela Trevino. (1999). Left dislocated subjects and the pro-drop parameter. A case study of Spanish. Lingua, 107, 39-68. Pica, Pierre. (1984). Liage et contiguite. In Recherches sur I'anaphore, D.R.L., Universite de Paris 7, 119-164. Poletto, Cecilia. (1993). La sintassi del soggetto nei dialetti italiani settentrionali. (Quaderni Patavini di Linguistica. Monografie 12) Unipress: Universita di Padova/CNR. Poletto, Cecilia. (1995). Split Agr and subject clitics in the Northern Italian dialects. GLOW Newsletter 34. Poletto, Cecilia. (2000). The Higher Functional Field: Evidence from the Northern Italian Dialects. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1989). Verb movement, Universal Grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 365-424. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1998). On the syntax of subnominal clitics: Cliticization and ellipsis1.'Syntax, 1, 300-330. Postal, Paul M. (1990). French indirect object demotion. In Paul M. Postal and Brian D. Joseph (eds.) Studies in Relational Grammar 3. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 104—200. Raposo, Eduardo. (1987). Case Theory and Infl-to-Comp: The inflected infinitive in European Portuguese. Linguistic Inquiry, 18, 85-109. Remacle, Louis. (1952). Syntaxe du parler wallon de La Gleize, Tome I. Bibliotheque de la Faculte de Philosophic et Lettres de I'Universite de Liege, Fascicule CXXVI. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Rigau, Gemma. (1988). Strong pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry, 19, 503-511. Ritter, Elizabeth. (1995). On the syntactic category of pronouns and agreement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 13, 405^443. Rizzi, Luigi. (1986). Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry, 17,501-557. Ruwet, Nicolas. (1967). Some problems about gender in French. Ms., MIT. Ruwet, Nicolas. (1978). Une construction absolue en fran9ais. Lingvisticae Investigationes, 2, 165-210. (Reprinted in Nicolas Ruwet Grammaire des insultes et autres etudes. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1982). Schmitt, Cristina. (1998). Lack of iteration: Accusative clitic doubling, participial absolutes and have + agreeing participles. Probus, 10, 243-300. Shlonsky, Ur. (1991). Quantifiers as functional heads: A study of quantifier float in Hebrew. Lingua, 84, 159-180. Shlonsky, Ur. (1997). Clause Structure and Word Order in Hebrew and Arabic. An Essay in Comparative Semitic Syntax. New York: Oxford University Press.
212 Richard S. Kayne Siegel, Muffy E. A. (1987). Compositionality, case, and the scope of auxiliaries. Linguistics and Philosophy, 10, 53-76. Sportiche, Dominique. (1988). A theory of floating quantifiers and its corollaries for constituent structure. Linguistic Inquiry, 19, 425-449. Sportiche, Dominique. (1995). Clitic constructions. In Laurie Zaring and Johan Rooryck (eds.) Phrase Structure and the Lexicon. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 213-276. Taraldsen, Knut T. (1992). Agreement as pronoun incorporation. Paper presented at the 15th GLOW Colloquium. (GLOW Newsletter, 28, 50-51.) Torrego, Esther. (1998). The Dependencies of Objects. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Uriagereka, Juan. (1995). Aspects of the syntax of clitic placement in Western Romance. Linguistic Inquiry, 26, 79-123. Villalba, Xavier. (1999). Right Dislocation is not Right Dislocation. In Olga Fullana and Francesc Roca (eds.) Studies on the Syntax of Central Romance Languages. Proceedings of the III Symposium on the Syntax of Central Romance Languages. Universitat de Girona. 227-241. Zanuttini, Raffaella. (1997). Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
11
EITHER "SUBJECT-ORIENTED" OR MERELY SENTENTIAL*
Lidia Lonzi
1 SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF "SUBJECT-ORIENTED" ADVERBS 1.1 Two competing approaches In recent theories (Laenzlinger 1993, 1996, Cinque 1995, 1997), adverbs are analysed as specifiers. The relevant position is the Spec A' position in the projection of a related head. According to Laenzlinger, this position allows a proper relation of non-morphological Spec-head agreement and satisfies the relevant formal criterion (Adverb Criterion). According to Cinque (see also Alexiadou 1994), the generation in the unique specifier position of an independently required head is more constrained than the adjunction to any maximal projection. Note that, in his proposal, the heads involved are only functional, whereas in an adjunction theory like Chomsky's (1995 : 329 ff), for instance, both lexical and functional projections are available (if the maximal projection is semantically active, it can be replaced by a single-bar projection: from the point of view of the computation of human language (CHL) "at tne point of adjunction, the target is an XP, not X'"). In Cinque's theory, this proposal is justified by the presence of an adequate number of functional heads ("at least forty-four") in the clausal architecture that may selectively host the adverbs as specifiers. One of his major arguments, in fact, is that in various (possibly all) languages there is a fixed order between the functional heads (that is auxiliaries, particles, and verbal affixes), matched by an equally fixed order between the adverbs related to them. Here I do not discuss any of these theories. In my analysis of the so-called "subject-oriented sentence adverb" (henceforth s. o. adverb) left adjunction to maximal projections will appear
* This paper has been presented at the Spring Syntax Seminar of DIPSCO in 1995.1 thank Carlo Cecchetto and Alessandra Tomaselli for their comments on an earlier version of it, and Richard Kayne for his observations on the topic.
214 Lidia Lonzi preferable to the generation in a Spec position. Hence, if this analysis proves correct, the generation in Spec cannot be the only legitimate treatment for adverbs.1 In my view, the solution of a left-adjoined position is in accordance with the peripheral position in the clause peculiar to the s. o. adverb among other ones. Adverbs of many kinds do not enter the base thematic structure of the clause, even though they can be seen as remnants of the base thematic structure of a reduced (adverbial) parenthetical clause. In the literature (see particularly Emonds 1976), parentheticals are a familiar notion, yet they have always been considered a marginal phenomenon. They are associated with the very few cases in which comma pauses seem to be obligatory rather than with the many cases in which these pauses are merely "virtual" (Lonzi 1991), as, possibly, in the crucial postauxiliary position. The present proposal of left adjunction for s. o. adverbs is grounded in this analysis of an inherent parenthetical status, which has three major consequences for their syntax. First of all, by a reasonable assumption concerning left adjunction, left-adjoined adverbs must be outside the scope of negation, independently from their specific position with respect to NegP. Secondly, no licensing criterion is required. Thirdly, there is no risk of unmotivated adverb movement. The number of possible positions in the string can parallel the number of places made available by maximal, ultimately lexical, projections, a traditional datum which does not exclude the importance of studying the relative order of various adverbs, including the parenthetical ones, in one and the same "position", along the lines of Cinque. This article is organized as follows. In the present section I take into consideration the essential syntactic features of s. o. adverbs, together with the relevant proposals that have been made by the authors mentioned above. In sections 2 and 3, I point out a contrasting behaviour within s. o. adverbs showing up in passives, and in section 4,1 show that this behaviour is entirely predictable in the framework of the standard theory of control (Lasnik 1992, Chomsky & Lasnik 1993). From this point of view the theory I am presenting here is a null theory.
1.2 The c-command condition A rather uncontroversial feature of the s. o. adverb is that it enters a predication relation with the agent subject, which c-commands it according to the standard definition in (1): (1) c-command a c-commands /3 iff a does not dominate /3 and every maximal projection that dominates a also dominates [3 We will see that this predication relation is best expressed in the specific terms of argument control. The requirement that the agent subject c-command the s. o. adverb provides an explanation for the fact that gentilmente 'kindly' or intelligentemente 'intelligently' can occupy the initial ' The general idea is that — apart from the much debated analysis of complement-like/VP-final adverbs — it would be useful to make a distinction between specifier-like/quantifier-like adverbs and left-adjoined/ parenthetical adverbs (Lonzi 1991).
Either "subject-oriented" or merely sentential
215
position of an active sentence but not of a passive one. See the (a) sentences vs. the (b) sentences in (2)-(5)—where (4)-(5) are the Italian counterparts of (2)-(3) (Laenzlinger 1993). (2) a. Kindly, the doctor visited John b. *Kindly, John was visited by the doctor (3) a. Intelligently, the doctor visited John b. *Intelligently, John was visited by the doctor (4) a. Gentilmente, il medico visito Giovanni b. * Gentilmente, Giovanni fu visitato dal medico (5) a. Intelligentemente, il medico visito Giovanni b. * Intelligentemente, Giovanni fu visitato dal medico In (2)-(5), we see that the adverb is not acceptable in the initial position of a passive sentence. The reason for this is that it must be c-commanded by the agent NP, a condition patently violated in passives.2 This can be said independently from whether the adverb must also agree with an associated head and, therefore, the Spec A7 analysis must be adopted. In Laenzlinger, for instance, the agreement of the s. o. adverb with an Event feature in Infl, is intended to implement the double predication over both the subject and the event attributed to these adverbs by Jackendoff (1972) and more recently by Goodall (1987), who has interpreted it with a "parallel" structure. This analysis was called in question by Sportiche (1988), as we will see further on.
1.3 Positions in the string In passive sentences, the da/by-NP does not c-command the adverb, whether the adverb is in the initial or in any other position. Passive sentences are ungrammatical due to their ill-formed configuration with respect to the predication of the adverb over the agent. The possible positions in the string for the s. o. adverb, tentatively suggested in (6), are predictably confined to the active form, in which the subject is always in a c-commanding position, with the possible exception of the final position.3
2
English passive-sensitive adverbs like courageously (Laenzlinger 1993) and cleverly (Jackendoff 1972), or, traditionally, deliberately and intentionally, do not enter this picture. They do not exhibit any opposition between active and passive, because in passives they are interpreted as predicated of the derived subject.
1
The illformedness of the configuration (6b) could possibly explain why s. o. adverbs in final position are better when a coordinate sentence follows, as in (i), from Lonzi 1991:407. (i) Giovanni non aveva mai eseguito il suo lavoro, irresponsabilmente ?(e la mole trascurata era enorme) 'Giovanni had never done his work, irresponsibly (and the amount neglected was enormous)' According to Kayne (1983), adopted in Cinque (1993), in coordinate structures the second conjunct is lower then the first. If the adverb adjoins to the left of the "andP" projection the required c-command configuration is obtained. The relative acceptability of the relevant position—as for instance in (8b) and (9b)—is however a problem for my analysis, unless it can be shown that it is due to an exploitation of the AgrP projection. In the following, I do not touch to this question anymore, for it is not crucial for the logic of this paper.
216 Lidia Lonzi (6) a. b. c. d.
Initial: adjoined to the left of AgrP Final: adjoned to the right of CP (the subject does not c-command) Between subject and verb: = initial, with CLLD subject Postauxiliary: adjoined to the lower AgrP (see Belletti 1990)
An illustration of (6) is given in (7) for English, and in (8) for Italian. (7) a. b. c. d.
Intelligently, Maria has instructed Giovanni Maria has instructed Giovanni, intelligently Maria, intelligently, has instructed Giovanni Maria has intelligently instructed Giovanni
(8) a. b. c. d.
Intelligentemente, Maria ha istruito Giovanni Maria ha istruito Giovanni, intelligentemente Maria, intelligentemente, ha istruito Giovanni Maria ha intelligentemente istruito Giovanni
Examples (7)-(8) show that s. o. adverbs occupy a parenthetical or peripheral position, with the prima facie exception of the (d) sentences, where, however, an actual comma intonation is always possible. In particular, in (7d) and (8d) the adverb can be assigned two different structural positions: the position specified in (6d) for the s. o. interpretation, and the preparticipial position, accessible to any agentive manner adverb (for this and other classes of adverbs see Lonzi 1991 ).4
1.4 The relation with sentential negation It is impossible to deal with s. o. adverbs without discussing their relation with negation. If they are generated in SpecTense (as tentatively suggested by Laenzlinger (1993)), and if we stick to the hypothesis of a clausal architecture preserving the NegP position between AgrS and Tense (see Belletti 1990, Pollock 1989, 1993), they should fall under the scope of negation, contrary to fact, as shown in (9). Even more so if they are generated in a much lower projection than Tense, as in Cinque 1997, and/or the sentential negative marker is generated in a higher projection, as in Zanuttini 1997. (I return to Cinque's proposal in section 4.2.) See, in particular, (9d) interpreted like (9a-c). (9) a. Stupidamente, Maria non aveva piu ripreso il discorso 'Stupidly, M. had not gone back to the matter anymore' b. Maria non aveva piu ripreso il discorso, Stupidamente 4
The postauxiliary position is ambiguous only in actives. In passives like (i) only the manner interpretation is allowed, as shown by the impossibility for the adverb to take scope over negation in (ii), where the interpretation that Giovanni has not been examined by his professor, who is therefore judged benevolent, is not accessible: (i) Giovanni e stato benevolmente interrogato dal professore 'Giovanni has been benevolently examined by his professor' (ii) Giovanni non e stato benevolmente interrogato dal professore
Either "subject-oriented" or merely sentential
217
c. Maria, stupidamente, non aveva piu ripreso il discorso d. Maria non aveva piu, stupidamente, ripreso il discorso Again, somebody could object that (9d) is different from (9a-c), for only in (9d) must the adverb be set aside by pauses (in fact, set aside from the accented adverb piu), a phenomenon not observed in (8d), even if interpreted like (8a-c). My suggestion is that this kind of phenomenon must be explained on the prosodic level, as proposed by Laenzlinger (1993). Note that a marked pause is possible also in (8d) with no effect on its interpretation. Interestingly, Cinque (1997) proposes two readings for the s. o. adverb in postauxiliary position without changing its s. o. nature. In one reading the adverb, as usual, takes negation under its scope, and in the other reading it falls under the scope of negation "as part of a larger constituent." See (10). (10) Gianni non si e astutamente nascosto 'G. didn't smartly hide'
(Cinque 1997 : 205, (54f))
Under one reading of (10) Gianni didn't hide (which was smart of him), under the other reading it is not true that Gianni hided (which would have been smart of him). It seems to me that the second reading is best obtained in a semi-quotation context, like (11). (11) — Gianni si e astutamente nascosto, quando tutti lo cercavano 'G. smartly hided, when everybody was looking for him' — Gianni non si e astutamente nascosto, era nella hall! 'G. didn't smartly hide, he was in the hall!' Here, I prefer to follow the usual convention according to which this type of negation deserves a separate study: as such, it somewhat conceals the data of our inquiry.5 In any case, the relation of the adverb with the negated sentence is indeed unaffected by negation. Arguably, the adverb cannot be negated "alone" because it has a parenthetical status. I think we are allowed to fill with a "+" the last slot in (12), where the three features checked in sections 1.2-1.4 are summarised, regarding two s. o. adverbs and two different manner adverbs (as for the "(+)" concerning intelligentemente in passives, see section 2). (12)
gentilmente 'gently' intelligentemente 'intelligently' accuratamente 'carefully' (mortalmente 'mortally' 5
HIGH POSITIONS IN ACTIVES
HIGH POSITIONS IN PASSIVES
SCOPE OVER NEGATION
+ + 4—
— — /(+) — —
+ + — —)
Note, for instance, that (i) below has the same status as (10) and can be interpreted as: 'It is not true that the letter had been returned to the addressee (which would have been paradoxical)', contra Cinque's predictions about evaluative adverbs (Cinque 1997: 206 ff): (i) La lettera non era paradossalmente stata rispedita al mittente The letter had not paradoxically been returned to the adressee'
218 Lidia Lonzi The most characteristic features of gentilmente and intelligentemente are: (i) their relation with negation and (ii) their contrasting behaviour in passives. Further on, I will argue that left adjunction can explain their properties in a straightforward manner, whereas accuratamente deserves a separate analysis (see section 1.5 below), like, obviously, mortalmente, which will be only mentioned here.
1.5 Parenthetical manner adverbs It is generally agreed that adverbs like gentilmente and intelligentemente are still oriented over the subject (of the active) even when they have a manner value (as in Giovanni non si e comportato intelligentemente 'Giovanni didn't behave intelligently'), like, for instance, accuratamente. The syntactic distinction between these two types of subject-oriented adverbs — respectively, "high" s. o. adverbs (gentilmente and intelligentemente in (12)) and VP s. o. adverbs (accuratamente in (12))—is however clear, and corresponds to the traditional distinction between "subject disjuncts" and "subject adjuncts", respectively. Here, the term subject-oriented is reserved for the former ones, which are the object of this study. As for the latter, referred to with the general term "manner adverbs", it must be said that they belong to the "agentive" manner adverbs class, in order to exclude the behaviour of the "resultative" ones, shown in (12) for mortalmente. When it occupies a high position (that is, any position in (6)), accuratamente (like, for instance., faticosamente) is not any different from s. o. adverbs: it obeys the c-command condition with respect to the agent subject, as the contrast between (13)-(14) shows. (13) Accuratamente/Faticosamente, il medico visito Giovanni 'Carefully/Painfully the doctor visited G.' (14) *Accuratamente/*Faticosamente, Giovanni fu visitato (dal medico) 'Carefully/Painfully G. was visited (by the doctor)' (15) *Accuratamente/*Faticosamente, il medico non ha dimesso Giovanni 'Carefully/Painfully the doctor has not dismissed G.' Now, if one excludes the semiquotation reading specific to VP adverbs (Lonzi 1992), which is irrelevant here, (15) is unacceptable. The reason for this is that manner adverbs, even in the initial position specified in (6a) — in my analysis, a parenthetical position — cannot take scope over negation (see section 4.2). The interesting datum concerning manner adverbs is the acceptability of (13), with accuratamente in the initial position. This datum poses a serious problem for a theory that generates adverbs of different classes in distinct Spec A' positions, since it implies an unexplained (and unwanted) sort of movement. Possibly, in Cinque's analysis, adverbs in (13) could be generated in a "scene setting" position just as certain speech time adverbs (Cinque 1997 :46). But if the projection relevant to this communicative function is in Comp (presumably higher than FocusP, Rizzi 1997) rather than adjoined to AgrP, there is no way for the adverb to be c-commanded by the subject. In my analysis, this position is licensed by syntactic control, as I argue in section 4.
Either "subject-oriented" or merely sentential
219
2 PASSIVE AS A TESTING BENCH FOR s. o. ADVERBS 2.1 The case of intelligentemente The picture becomes more complicated if we focus on intelligentemente. This adverb can also occasionally occur in passive sentences where, as already stated, it violates the relevant c-command condition. On the one hand the c-commanding NP is not the agent, on the other, the agent NP does not c-command the adverb, therefore neither NP is the appropriate subject of the predication. When this is the case, the s. o. adverb can occur in all positions accessible to a sentence adverb. In my analysis, this is due to the fact that intelligentemente, together with some other adverbs— like irresponsabilmente 'irresponsibly' and crudelmente 'cruelly' — under the ordinary conditions of semantic plausibility can have a typical sentential value, with no intended predication over the agent. In (16a) it is not Maria to be judged intelligent, but the fact that Maria is (or is not) the person who had instructed Giovanni. As a consequence, the person who can be judged intelligent is the agent responsible for this fact; that is an implicit agent, hierarchically superior to Maria. (16) a. Intelligentemente, Giovanni (non) era stato istruito da Maria 'Intelligently, G. had (not) been instructed by M.' b. Giovanni (non) era stato istruito da Maria, intelligentemente c. Giovanni, intelligentemente, (non) era stato istruito da Maria d. Giovanni (non) era stato, intelligentemente, istruito da Maria e. ?Giovanni (non) era, intelligentemente, stato istruito da Maria As shown by the acceptability of (16e), the passive brings into play the interauxiliary position with respect to the positions given in (6) and illustrated in (16a-d). This position pertains to the sentential versus manner adverbs (Lonzi 1991). See for instance (17) vs. (18). (17) a. II volume erafortunatamente stato riconsegnato in tempo da Giovanni 'The book had luckily been returned in time by G.' b. II volume era stato fortunatamente riconsegnato in tempo da Giovanni (18) a. *I1 volume era tristemente stato riconsegnato in tempo da Giovanni The book had sadly been returned in time by G.' b. II volume era stato tristemente riconsegnato in tempo da Giovanni If the postauxiliary position (6d) is structurally ambiguous—being interpretable either as a consequence of Aux Movement to Infl or as a simple preparticipial position (in the Spec of/leftadjoined to the projection relevant to the active or passive past participle, Cinque 1997) — the interauxiliary position can only be the effect of Aux Movement to Infl. It is possible to show, as it is theoretically desirable that the participle of the auxiliary (namely, stato 'been') also raise to a projection of Infl before spell-out (Lonzi 1998, ch. 10). Any adverb to the left of this participle can only originate in that or in a higher projection (whether a specifier or adjoined to XP). See the unacceptable (19a), with a s. o. adverb of the gentilmente class, where the (parenthetical) manner
220 Lidia Lonzi adverb interpretation is also barred for the lack of c-command by the agent NP, and compare it with (20a), with intelligentemente. (19) a. * II festeggiato non era distrattamente stato informato del programma (dal suo ospite) The honor guest had not inattentively been informed about the program (by his host)' b. II festeggiato non era stato distrattamente informato del programma dal suo ospite (20) a. II festeggiato non era intelligentemente stato informato del programma b. II festeggiato non era stato intelligentemente informato del programma Furthermore, while (20b) is predictably ambiguous, in (19b) the adverb can only have a manner value and can only be interpreted under the scope of negation. Now, going back to the "—/(+)" notation in (12) which is relevant to the occurrence of adverbs like intelligentemente in the high positions of passive sentences, we can observe that the "—" value is obtained when the intended interpretation implies a specific predication of the adverb over the agent, as in (2la) vs. (21b). (21) a. *Intelligentemente/*Gentilmente, la risposta e stata data da un passeggero 'Intelligently/Gently, the answer has been given by a passenger b. Intelligentemente/*Gentilmente, la risposta e stata data da un altro funzionario 'Intelligently/Gently, the answer has been given by another officer Whereas gentilmente is unacceptable in both (2la) and (21b), as desired, intelligentemente in (21b) appears acceptable, as opposed to (2la). This is so because in (21b) a predication over the event versus the agent is fully plausible, as it was in (16). Since the sentential interpretation of the s. o. adverb requires that the fact denoted be intentional, such an interpretation is paradoxically possible only if a responsible agent can be imagined. To this end, it is irrelevant whether the direct actor is expressed or not. In (21b) it is not the other officer who is intelligent but the unspecified agent responsible of the whole event. The necessary conclusion is that in passives the s. o. adverb is either allowed and it becomes something different (at least in Italian), or it is not allowed at all. With some predictable idiosyncratic variability, the relevant subset of adverbs must derive from those adjectives that do not admit of an event as their argument (see section 3.1).
2.2
FURTHER EVIDENCE
Decisive evidence in favour of the hypothesis that a s. o. adverb, in passives, is a mere (evaluative) sentence adverb, derives from the fact that intelligentemente can take scope over a coordinate structure only in passives, see (22b) vs. (22a). 6
The relevance of the causative agent vs. the direct actor is peculiar of control phenomena in passives, both in Italian and, arguably, in English (Lonzi 1997), and is problematic for any theory treating the da/by-NP as the true external argument (see Goodall 1998). In fact, in the active counterpart of (21b) it is the (unspecified) causative agent not the da-NP that should appear as the external argument.
Either "subject-oriented" or merely sentential
221
(22) a. Intelligentemente, Giovanni partecipo alia riunione e Maria ando al cinema 'Intelligently, G. took part in the meeting and M. went to the cinema' b. Intelligentemente, Giovanni fu liquidate e Maria fu assunta (dalla nuova amministrazione) 'Intelligently, G. was fired and M. was hired (by the new management)' According to the only possible interpretation of (22a), the intelligent behaviour singled out by the adverb is the participation to the meeting and not the fact of going to the cinema. In (22b), instead, both the choice of firing Giovanni and that of hiring Maria are judged intelligent. Both sentences in (22) have the configuration (23a), but their interpretation is different. Clearly, (22a) can only be interpreted according to the predication of the adverb over the subject of the first conjunct, whereas (22b) must be interpreted with both conjuncts under the scope of the adverb, as represented in (23b).
If the interpretation of (22a), with the scope of the adverb necessarily restricted to the first conjunct, must be explained with the fact that, in the relevant configuration (23a) only the subject of the first conjunct c-commands the adverb, the interpretation of (22b) shows that the sentential interpretation of the s. o. adverb, as given in the LF configuration (23b), does not require that it be c-commanded by the agent. Summing up, there are two instances of intelligentemente, which behave like two different adverbs: in (5b) like the s. o. gentilmente since it is unacceptable in the passive; in (22b) like a sentence adverb. We must admit that predication over the agent — subject to the relevant c-command condition—and sentential scope are two distinct properties of the adverb. They seem to be complementary because sentential scope, in passives, implies violation of c-command. We still do not know, however, whether c-command in actives is the only requirement for the s. o. interpretation of the adverb. It could be argued that it involves both properties, as traditionally assumed, and that this double condition is only satisfied in actives. Hence, before concluding that "subject-oriented sentence adverbs" do not exist, I must focus on this very point. I will start taking into consideration the syntactic behaviour of a class of adjectives these adverbs originate from.
222 3
Lidia Lonzi TWO TYPES OF ADVERBS
3.1
The relation with mental properties adjectives
As a general statement, the class of s. o. adverbs seems to derive from the class of mental properties (henceforth MP) adjectives (Stowell 1991), which "attribute an essential property to the mind or character of a sentient individual." In Stowell's analysis, adjectives like stupid, kind, generous, imprudent, farsighted and shortsighted belong to this class. They can be used as individual level adjectives and, furthermore, enter the paradigm shown in (24), where the action functions as a temporal delimiter of the relevant mental property. (24) a. II medico e stato intelligente/gentile a PRO visitare Giovanni The doctor was clever/kind to visit G.' b. E stato intelligente/gentile (da parte del medico) PRO visitare Giovanni 'It was clever/kind (of the doctor) to visit G.' In (24), the human argument is the agent of the (optional) action-denoting argument. This appears not only from (24a), but also from (24b), where the human argument, if omitted, is in any case implicit. As Stowell (1991 : 111) states, "MP adjectives cannot attribute a property to an action without simultaneously attributing this property to the agent of the action. Thus, [. . . ] punishing a dog cannot be clever without the punisher being clever in performing this action." Stowell (1991: 122) proposes that (24a) and (24b) have the same underlying structure, since both the event and the human argument are assigned the external theta-role in two distinct AP projections, as in (25).7
7
According to Stowell, (24a) derives from (24b). Note that not all MP adjectives exhibit paradigm (24) in Italian. For example, adjectives like negligente 'negligent', leggero 'light (careless)', superficiale 'superficial', enter (ia) and not (ib): (i) a. Giovanni e stato leggero/negligente a PRO non mostrare i documenti 'Giovanni was light (careless)/negligent not to exhibit his documents' b. E stato *leggero/*negligente da parte di Giovanni PRO non mostrare i documenti This datum has an interesting counterpart in English, where superficial gives marginal results when it is predicated of the event (Stowell, personal communication). Possibly these adjectives do not enter the MP class, and s. o. adverbs derived from MP adjectives are only a subset of a larger class, which includes the adverbs derived from the superficial class adjectives (negligentemente, leggermente, superficialmente). Anyway, it comes as no surprise that they cannot occur in passives, see (ii). (ii) *I documenti non erano negligentemente/leggermente stati mostrati The documents had not negligently/lightly (carelessly) been exhibited Note that the reverse is not true, as shown by the fact that gentile 'kind' enters the form (24b), but gentilmente doesn't occur in passives.
Either "subject-oriented" or merely sentential
223
The two constructions licensed by MP adjectives in (24) are the manifestation of one single argument structure, therefore the simultaneity of the predication over the event and its agent is automatic. We must be cautious in extending Stowell's analysis of MP adjectives to the s. o. adverbs because there is at least one crucial difference. See (26)-(27) with an adjective, and (28)-(29) with an adverb. In (26) and (28) (= (8a)) the subject of the predication is the sentient argument, in (27) and (29) (= (16a)) it is the action-denoting event. Now, whereas (26) and (28) show a uniform behaviour with respect to the subject of the predication, (27) and (29) behave differently. The predication over the event involves the agent in (27) but not in (29) (as already seen in (16) and (21b)). (26) Maria e stata intelligente a istruire Giovanni 'M. was intelligent to instruct G. (27) E stato intelligente da parte di Maria istruire Giovanni 'It was intelligent of M. to instruct G. (28) Intelligentemente, Maria ha istruito Giovanni 'Intelligently M. instructed G. (29) Intelligentemente, Giovanni e stato istruito da Maria 'Intelligently G. was instructed by M. In the passive form the predication over the agent must be derivative for configurational reasons, and by the same token it does not involve the da-NP but the implicit agent, favouring the causative versus the direct Actor. This difference in the interpretation of the two constructions makes it difficult to extend Stowell's analysis of the MP adjective to the corresponding adverb (see further discussion in section 3.3).
224
Lidia Lonzi
3.2
There is no such thing as a subject-oriented sentence adverb
In section 2 we have ascertained both that the c-command requirement is fulfilled in the active, and that the mere sentential value is possible in the passive, but we have not found evidence for the coexistence of the two properties. As stated there, we still do not know whether the s. o. adverb, when it obeys c-command, also has sentential value. We must take into consideration the possibility that simultaneity of predication on the subject and the event is valid for the active — that is, for the behaviour shown in the (a) sentences in (2)-(5). If this is so, we should conclude that subject-oriented sentence adverbs do exist, although, in passives, they are only allowed as mere sentence adverbs because they violate c-command. The relevant question, then, is the following: does subject-orientation involves sentential scope? Many consistent data, in addition to the indirect evidence of (22a), seem to deny an affirmative answer: (i) for semantic reasons, the hypothesis of sentential scope cannot be endorsed (and even less Laenzlinger's (1993) hypothesis of an agreement with the feature [Fact] in Infl) given the regular occurrence of this type of adverb in the imperative form, exemplified in (30).8 (30) a. E tu, intelligentemente, guardati intorao 'And you, intelligently, watch out' b. E tu, intelligentemente, non raccogliere la provocazione 'And you, intelligent^, do not get angry'
Zanuttini (1997:137) finds the following examples unacceptable: (i) Intelligentemente di di no! (true imperative) 'Intelligently sayJZsg no!' (ii) Intelligentemente dite di no! (suppletive imperative) 'Intelligently say_2pl no!' She argues that this result is predictable if the imperative verb moves to the head of NegP-1, immediately above MoodP, as in the tree portion below (see Zanuttini 1997:144), adapted from Cinque 1997:
Although (i) and (ii) are in my view acceptable, as is (30) in the text, it should be clear that the parenthetic analysis of these adverbs does not affect the core of Zanuttini's proposal about the distribution of negati' markers in Romance imperatives.
Either "subject-oriented" or merely sentential
225
(ii) The complement of a s. o. adverb can contain an anaphor to the subject, see (3la), like any argument control construction, as opposed to the complement of a sentence adverb, see (31b), a sentence control construction, as I have argued elsewhere (Lonzi 1995). (31) a. Coerentemente con i propri principi Giovanni ha accolto la proposta 'Consistently with his own principles G. consented to the proposal b. *Fortunatamente per i propri allievi Giovanni ha accolto bene la proposta 'Fortunately for his own students G. consented to the proposal (iii) in active, as opposed to passive, sentences a comparison between the agents is possible with s. o. adverbs, as with parenthetical manner adverbs, see (32) and (33). (32) Piu intelligentemente di Maria, Paola ha letto un romanzo di Balzac 'More intelligently than M., P. read a novel by Balzac (33) Piu accuratamente di Paolo, Giovanni rimise a posto tutti i libri 'More carefully than P., G. put back all the books A reasonable solution is the complete separation between the two properties, that is, predication over the subject and sentential scope. This solution is at hand if s. o. adverbs, rather than in a Spec A' position, are generated in a position adjoined to the left of XP/X', dispensing us with the need of a specific licensing criterion: they would be licensed like any infinitival adverbial in the same position. If we separate predication over the subject from sentential scope, the former explains, among other things, that s. o. adverbs can occur in imperatives and that parenthetical manner adverbs can occur in the slots of s. o. adverbs (in non-negative sentences; see section 4.2); the latter explains that an adverb like intelligentemente behaves oddly in passives — perhaps also intelligemment, in French, whose agentive interpretation could be explained derivatively along the lines of Sportiche (1988).10 I think that also the inverse phenomenon of passive-sensitivity in English could be investigated from this point of view, but this is a task that I cannot achieve here. 9
It can be useful to compare the predictably unacceptable (i) with the acceptable (ii), to be viewed as a semiquotation construction. In Lonzi 1992 this pragmatically marked construction is associated with the Infinitival Preposing construction described in Beninca 1988. Under this analysis the CLLD of the manner adverb implies no violation of the conditions on binding established in Cinque 1990 and Rizzi 1990. (i) *Piu intelligentemente che dalla vecchia amministrazione Maria e stata licenziata dalla nuova 'More intelligently than by the previous management M. was fired by the new one' (ii) ?Piu accuratamente che da Paolo i libri furono riposti da Giovanni 'More carefully than by P. the books were put back by G.'
10
"Although I will continue to assume it, I am in fact not entirely convinced by Jackendoff's proposal. [... ] It might be a case of an adverb modifying V" (or perhaps IP), where the appearance of subject modification is derivative: if John's answering the question was clever, the agent of the answering is clever. This would explain why (in French, at least) a manner adverbial in a subject-oriented adverb slot can qualify the actor (or the agent) and not the subject. A passive sentence like Jean a intelligemment ete surveille can be paraphrased as 'It was intelligent (of whoever) to keep close tabs on John' but not 'It was intelligent of John to be kept close tabs on' (Sportiche 1988 :431, fn. 11). Remember that, according to Jackendoff (1972:98), in John has cleverly been examined by the doctor, "the preferred (and perhaps only) interpretation" attributes cleverness to John. Sportiche's and Jackendoff's judgments have one point in common: the irrelevance of the by-N? with respect to control.
226 Lidia Lonzi In section 4, which is devoted to the advantages of this analysis, I argue that it is fully compatible with the control theory.
3.3
MP sentence adverbs
Before trying to verify the consistency and empyrical adequacy of my analysis, I would like to go back to Stowell's (1991) MP adjective analysis, exemplified by the two constructions in (24), and see whether it finds some correspondence with the one I have presented for adverbs. The most natural proposal seems to be that s. o. adverbs must be associated with (24a), and that only the corresponding sentence adverbs, which could be named MP sentence adverbs, a subset of the evaluative adverbs, must be associated with (24b). But whereas in the case of the adjective the two constructions would result from the same argument structure, in the case of the adverb they must result from two distinct structures, the relevant difference being the one between active and passive. Still adopting Stowell's analysis, and developing the observations in section 3.1 above, I suggest that the agent in (35b) with an adverb, vs. (34b) with an adjective, hasn't any syntactic relevance but only an interpretative one. (34) a. Giovanni e stato crudele a PRO non rispettare 1'impegnopreso 'G. was cruel not to fulfil his commitment' b. E stato crudele (da parte di Giovanni) PRO non rispettare 1'impegno preso 'It was cruel of G. not to fulfil his commitment' (35) a. Crudelmente, Giovanni non aveva rispettato 1'impegno preso 'Cruelly, G. had not fulfilled his commitment' b. Crudelmente, 1'impegno non era stato rispettato neanche da Giovanni 'Cruelly, the commitment had not been fulfilled by G. either' In (34a) there is an argument control relation between the agent and the subject of the actiondenoting event. In the English counterpart of (34b), control is agentive and involves the (implicit) agent. Irrelevantly, in the Italian example, the da parte di-NP could be seen as a referential specification of the generic antecedent of PRO, although not the syntactic antecedent of PRO. My proposal for the adverb is that whereas in (35a) control within the adverb is argumental (by the agent subject), in (35b) it is clausal (by the action-denoting event, with no structural relation with the agent). In (35b) the da-NP does not provide the referential specification of the antecedent of PRO as it could be argued for the da parte di-NP in (34b). What is "cruel" in (35b) is that the commitment has not been fulfilled (either by Giovanni or by other people). However, when an event is cruel we infer that also its responsible agent is cruel (Sportiche 1988, see also Lasnik 1988). Therefore, in certain cases, it may seem that agentive control applies, as for instance in (36a), where the agent would be implicit. (36) a. Crudelmente, tanta gentilezza non era stata ricambiata 'Cruelly, so much kindness had not been repaid' b. E stato crudele PRO non ricambiare tanta gentilezza 'It was cruel not to repay so much kindness'
Either "subject-oriented" or merely sentential
227
Also in (36a) the referential specification of the agent is not relevant. The asserted cruelty is in the lack of any reciprocity and is even compatible with the innocence of the occasional agent, a phenomenon that is impossible in (36b), with an adjective, as originally noted by Stowell.
4
A UNITARY ANALYSIS IN TERMS OF CONTROL
4.1
Full predictability of the parenthetical adverbs behaviour
Elsewhere, I have suggested an S-control analysis for sentence adverbs (Lonzi 1995; 1998, ch. 5). Sentence adverbs are listed in the lexicon with this value, and as such they select a generic abstract predicate which they modify (evaluative adverbs, for instance, could select the predicate BE (A FACT), as in the expression "may be"}. Sentence control is satisfied by an LF configuration where the PRO associated with the adverb is coindexed with the sentence over which it has scope, more precisely with the c-commanding CP projection, as we have seen in (23b),n where the adverb is coordinate to (adjoined to the right of) CP. Obviously, any other (otherwise licit) position in the clause violates the c-command requirement by CP, but it must be acceptable because the adverb has an interpretative address to be checked at the semantic-interpretive level. Instead, s. o. adverbs must be licensed at the syntactic level, hence they must respect the relevant configurational conditions. As we have seen, for all positions of the s. o.adverb there must be a c-commanding antecedent. The generic predicate selected by it—which I assume to be [ACT] (McConnell-Ginet 1982), or, rather, [BEHAVE] 12 —does not imply a sentential value. The antecedent of the associated PRO can only be the subject of the active, and the c-command configuration must be present at S-structure (at spell-out). These adverbs, derived from MP adjectives, also happen to select a predicate common to sentence adverbs of the evaluative class — as we know, an open class (Quirk et al. 1972) — in contexts where sentence control is syntactically productive, that is, in passives. Since this shifting to a sentential value is also observable for instance in the gerundival adverbial clauses 1
' For reasons of space I ignore the technical problems created by the standard definition of c-command with respect to configuration (23b), where it is necessary to consider the two CP projections of the adjunction structure as two distinct categories rather than segments (see Lonzi 1998, ch. 5). I also assume that the required c-command configuration obtains in all the other cases, relying heavily on the paradigm of argument control adverbials.
12
For McConnell-Ginet (1982), (ii) is the interpretation of (i), and (iii) its logical representation: (i) Louise cleverly had opened the vent (ii) Louise acted cleverly to open the vent (iii) ACT-CLEVERLY (Louise;, OPEN (xj, vent)) Ernst (1984), however, has noted that the predicate [ACT] in the interpretation of (iv) below gives the inaccurate (v): (iv) Ida realized, a day late, that she had carelessly forgotten to lock the barn door (v) Ida realized, a day late, that she had acted carelessly to forget to lock the barn door [BEHAVE] could indeed be preferable, but the question of the generic predicate is outside the scope of this study. Rather, it must be said that the altered relation between Presupposition and Assertion makes both (ii) and (v) incorrect as interpretations of (i) and (iv), respectively. In (iv), for instance, the focus of the information is that Ida realized that she had forgotten to lock the barn door and not that she had behaved carelessly.
228 Lidia Lonzi of (37) (the asterisk in the active (37b) refers to sentential interpretation), the odd behaviour of intelligentemente in passives can provide evidence in favour of the control analysis. (37) a. ?La malattia e stata defmitivamente debellata, PRO suggerendo che 1'organo non era stato leso The disease has definitively been wiped out, suggesting that the organ was not damaged' b. *I1 medico era riuscito a debellare la malattia, PRO suggerendo che 1'organo non era stato leso The doctor succeded in wiping out the disease, suggesting that the organ was not damaged' The PRO can take the matrix clause as antecedent in the passive sentence (37a), not, however, in (37b), where the only possible candidate is the subject. Possibly, this phenomenon must be traced back to the event value peculiar of passive sentences, according to a rather common view, but I have no evidence for this hypothesis. What is of interest here is the correspondence between adverbs and syntactic control constructions such as gerundivals.
4.2.
Control in manner adverbs
We can now go back to the problem of the possibility for manner adverbs to occupy a high position in the clause (see (12)). In (14) we have seen that a manner adverb does not take scope over negation in this position—and, at the same time, it is not under the scope of the latter, as it happens, instead, when it has undergone operator movement from under the VP. Examples (39a, b) and (41a, b) can be considered simple paraphrases of examples (38a, b) and (40a, b) with accuratamente13 and intelligentemente, respectively. As predictable, both (39b) and (41b) show incompatibility with the passive form, but only (39a) — vs. (41a) — does not allow negation. (38) a. Accuratamente, Giovanni (*non) ripose i libri 'Carefully, G. did (not) put back the books' b. *Accuratamente, i libri (non) furono riposti da Giovanni 'Carefully, the books were (not) put back by G.' (39) a. PRO Facendolo accuratamente, Giovanni (*non) ripose i libri 'Doing it accurately, G. did (not) put back the books' b. *PRO Facendolo accuratamente, i libri (non) furono riposti da Giovanni 'Doing it carefully, the books were (not) put back by G.' (40) a. Gentilmente, Giovanni ripose i libri 'Kindly, G. put back the books' b. *Gentilmente, i libri (non) furono riposti da Giovanni 'Kindly, the books were (not) put back by G.' 13
Possibly (38b) is not fully unacceptable (see also (14)) due to the possibility of a semiquotation intepretation for the parenthetical manner adverb, but not for the s. o. adverb.
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(41) a. PRO Agendo gentilmente, Giovanni (non) ripose i libri 'Behaving kindly, G. did (not) put back the books' b. *PRO Agendo gentilmente, i libri (non) furono riposti da Giovanni 'Behaving kindly, the books were (not) put back by G.' One could speculate that (39) and (41) are the correct, actual form at the syntax-semantics interface, whether (38) and (40) are the mere output of a deletion operation (such as the one observed in the speech-act adverbial (parlando) francamente '(speaking) frankly'), or require an abstract predicate for the interpretation of the parenthetical adverb, which contains a PRO. In any case, the verb required by accuratamente is a verb of activity, like [DO], the one required by intelligentemente is a verb denoting responsibility, like [ACT/BEHAVE], as noted. The different behaviour of the two classes of adverbs with respect to the scope of negation can be explained with this intrinsic semantic difference (Lonzi 1991). In Cinque's (1997) framework, preverbal negation does not provide decisive tests regarding the position of s. o. adverbs, because it can originate in several positions (actually, on top of any of the adverb-related projections below Mod epistemic). While AdvPs preceding negation cannot fall under its scope — as rapidamente in (42) below — AdvPs following it have two distinct behaviours, as seen in (10), because the base position of negation (before cliticizing to the verb) can be either to their right or to their left. But whereas (10), repeated here, with the s. o. adverb inside the scope of negation, is only pragmatically marked, as noted, with no effect for the relation of the adverb with the sentence, (42), with the parenthetical manner adverb rapidamente 'rapidly' taking scope over negation, seems to me unacceptable. (10) Gianni non si e astutamente nascosto 'G. didn't smartly hide'
(Cinque 1997 : 205, ex. (54f))
(42) Gianni rapidamente non accetto la loro offerta 'G. rapidly didn't accept their offer'
(Cinque 1997 : 204, ex. (53p))
Cinque's proposal underlines what seems to me a crucial aspect of adverb syntax, that is, any theory that generates adverbs in specific positions (hence either above or below the Neg projection^)), must face the traditional distinction between adverbs that are inside or outside the scope of negation independently from their surface position: s. o. adverbs always outside and manner adverbs never. Is this distinction an unfortunate commonplace or has it strong semantic roots? The generalization stemming from my analysis is that parenthetical adverbs contain a PRO and thereby select a generic predicate, not necessarily abstract. The predicate selected by parenthetical manner adverbs cannot take negation inside its scope, and the predicate selected by s. o. adverbs can. The relevant prediction is that s. o. adverbs and parenthetical manner adverbs can occupy the same positions in non-negative sentences. On the other hand, an adverb that does not select any generic predicate — as for instance mortalmente — cannot appear in any position occupied by s. o. adverbs (see (12)).
230 Lidia Lonzi
5 CONCLUSION Control theory promises to explain the complex phenomena associated with the distribution and interpretation of the adverbs considered in this study. The s. o. adverb is an argument control construction taking scope over negation. This feature excludes parenthetical manner adverbs from this class, even though they exhibit the same distribution in non-negative sentences (in particular, high positions in the active versus passive). There is no evidence in favour of the existence of s. o. sentence adverbs. Instead, a subset of s. o. adverbs displays an additional behaviour with respect to the one above: in the passive, they can have the value of evaluative sentence adverbs. This behaviour parallels the one of infinitival adverbials (which in Italian admit of sentence control only in passives), bringing evidence in favour of my analysis. Since control requires c-command of the antecedent of PRO, that is of the subject of the predication, these adverbs are licensed precisely by this configuration: c-command by the subject of the active at spell-out for s. o. adverbs (plus parenthetical manner adverbs in non-negative sentences); c-command by the relevant CP projection at LF for sentence adverbs. This analysis favours the left adjunction hypothesis, given the multiple positions occupied by these adverbs and their consistent behaviour with respect to negation over which they have scope. It seems to me that it deserves to be taken into consideration in view of a null theory of adverbs.
REFERENCES Alexiadou, Artemis. (1994). Issues in the syntax of adverbs. PhD dissertation, Universitat Potsdam. Belletti, Adriana. (1990). Generalized Verb Movement: Aspects of Verb Syntax. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. Beninca, Paola. (1988). L'ordine degli elementi dellafrase. In Lorenzo Renzi (ed.) Grande grammatica Italiana di consultazione. Vol. I. Bologna: il Mulino. 115-194. Chomsky, Noam. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam and Howard Lasnik. (1993). Principles and parameters theory. In Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld and Theo Vennemann (eds.) Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. Berlin: de Gruyter. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1990). Types of A1-Dependencies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1993). A null theory of phrase and compound stress. Linguistic Inquiry, 24, 239-297. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1995). Sull'ordine relativo di alcune classi di avverbi in italiano e in francese. In Gianluigi Borgato (ed.) Atti del 20° Incontro di Grammatica Generativa. Padova: Unipress. 163-177. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1997). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Ms., published in 1999 by Oxford University Press.
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Emonds, Joseph E. (1976). A Trasformational Approach to English Syntax. New York: Academic Press. Ernst, Thomas B. (1984). Towards an Integrated Theory of Adverb Position in English. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Goodall, Grant. (1987). Parallel Structure in Syntax: Coordination, Causatives and Restructuring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodall, Grant. (1998). ^-alignment and the by-phrase. In Audra Dainora, Rachel Hemphill, Barbara Luka, Barbara Need and Sheri Pargman (eds.) Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. 129-139. Jackendoff, Ray. (1972). Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Kayne, Richard S. (1983). Binary branching. Paper presented at the workshop "Features in Syntax", University of Tilburg. Laenzlinger, Christopher. (1993). Principles for a formal account of adverb syntax. GenGenP, 1, 47-76. Laenzlinger, Christopher. (1996). Adverb syntax and phrase structure. In Anna-Maria Di Sciullo (ed.) Configurations. Essays on Structure and Interpretation. Somerville: Cascadilla Press. Lasnik, Howard. (1988). Subjects and the 0-criterion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 6, 1-17. Lasnik, Howard. (1992). Two notes on control and binding. In Richard K. Larson, Sabine latridou, Utpal Lahiri and James Higginbotham (eds.) Control and Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 235-251. Lonzi, Lidia. (1991). II sintagma avverbiale. In Lorenzo Renzi and Giampaolo Salvi (eds.) Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione. Vol. II. Bologna: il Mulino. Lonzi, Lidia. (1992). Adverb dislocation vs. preposing vs. semiquotation: a "stylistic" rule. In Elisabetta Fava (ed.) Proceedings of the XVII Meeting of Generative Grammar (Trieste, 1991). Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. 249-263. Lonzi, Lidia. (1995). Sulla nozione di S-control. In Gianluigi Borgato (ed.) Atti del 20° Incontro di Grammatica Generativa. Padova: Unipress. 275-288. Lonzi, Lidia. (1997). On Lasnik's Subject Role. Lingua e Stile, XXXII, 397-432. Lonzi, Lidia. (1998). Avverbi e altre costruzioni a controllo. Bologna: il Mulino. McConnell-Ginet, Sally. (1982). Adverbs and Logical Form: a linguistically realistic theory. Language, 58, 144-184. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1989). Verb movement, Universal Grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry, 20, 365—424. Pollock, Jean-Yves. (1993). Notes on clause structure. Ms., Universite de Picardie, Amiens. Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. (1972). A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman. Rizzi, Luigi. (1990). Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Rizzi, Luigi. (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.) Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 281-337.
232 Lidia Lonzi Sportiche, Dominique. (1988). A theory of floating quantifiers and its corollaries for constituent structure. Linguistic Inquiry, 19, 425—449. Stowell, Tim. (1991). The alignment of arguments in adjective phrases. In Susan Rothstein (ed.) Argument Structure. Syntax and Semantics, 25, 105-135. Zanuttini, Raffaella. (1997). Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12
THE SYNTAX OF OBJECT CLITICS: Si IN ITALIAN DIALECTS*
M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo M. Savoia
1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND In his seminal contribution to the theory of cliticization in generative grammar, Kayne (1975) proposes that cliticization is a movement rule. Thus according to Kayne (1975), in the French example (la) the clitic le is generated in the object position of the verb, where full DP's such as Jean can also be found, and from there moved to a position left-adjoined to the verb, as indicated in (Ib). (1) a. Je le vois I him see 'I see him' b. Je [Vp le+vois le] While in languages like French pronominal clitics are in complementary distribution with full DP's, this is not the case in languages like Spanish where the pronominal clitic can double a full DP, as in (2). (2) Lo vio a Juan him s/he_saw to John 'S/he saw John'
* The research reported in this article has been financed partially through the following sources, which are hereby gratefully acknowledged: Fondi CNR granted to L. M. Savoia; Fondi del Ministero per la Ricerca (ex-40%) 1997-99 and Fondi d'Ateneo per la Ricerca (ex-60%) granted to L. M. Savoia and M. R. Manzini for the project Per una cartografia strutturale delle configurazioni sintattiche: microvariazione nei dialetti italiani. The article is a result of the collaboration of the two authors in all respects. Nevertheless, Rita Manzini takes responsibility for sections 1, 3.2 and 4, Leonardo Savoia for sections 2 and 3.1.
234 M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo M. Savoia Kayne's (1975) movement analysis for clitics predicts their complementary distribution with full DP's in French, but is directly contradicted by the phenomenon of clitic doubling in (2), since the full DP seems to fill the very position that the clitic ought to have moved from. In addressing this long-standing clitic doubling problem, Sportiche (1992) proposes that in a Spanish sentence like (2) it is only the lexical DP that is generated in thematic position. The clitic is merged as an autonomous functional head Voice, in this case AccV (Accusative Voice), positioned somewhere between I and V. The agreement configuration between the clitic and the doubling DP is created by movement of the lexical DP to the [Spec, AccV] position, as indicated in (3). Note that (3) does not represent the last step of the derivation; the finite V still must raise to I, as must the clitic which surfaces immediately to its left. (3) . . . [ACCVP a Juan [ AccV < lo [ V p vio a Juan ]]] According to Sportiche (1992) exactly the same analysis holds for French, (1), except that instead of a full lexical DP doubling the clitic, we find an empty category pro, as in (4). (4) . . . [ACCVP pro [Accv' le [VP vois pro ]]] The basic arguments in favour of this position are briefly suggested by Sportiche (1992). In particular, we expect that clitics should appear in rigidly ordered strings, since functional hierarchies in the sentence are rigidly fixed, for each language or universally. By the same token, we expect that the order in which the clitics appear does not necessarily match, or mirror, that of DP arguments generated in predicate-internal position. This means that we need not assume that the order in which clitics appear is determined by a filter, as originally proposed by Perlmutter (1972), or in any event by some post-syntactic mechanism. Interestingly, Bonet (1991) deploys very much the same type of argument in favour of a morphological treatment of clitics. Thus Bonet points out that the surface order of clitics does not in any way correspond to what may be taken to be the underlying order of arguments. Similarly, Bonet insists that a great range of variation is to be seen in clitic systems, which does not correspond to any difference in the system of full DP and PP arguments or adjuncts. But this again can be taken as an argument in favour of a specialized inflectional structure for clitics, as above, and need not count as an argument in favour of a post-syntactic treatment. In our work concerning subject clitics (Manzini & Savoia 1997, forthcoming, Manzini & Savoia, in preparation) we argue at length that pro can and must be dispensed with. In particular, we argue that the only reason to have pro in the absence of a lexical DP subject is that pro is necessary to fill the VP-internal argument position, something that the subject clitic, being generated as an inflectional head, cannot do. However, it is only within the GB framework (Chomsky 1981) that the architecture itself of the grammar imposes a one-to-one match of arguments and thetaroles at Merge; indeed D(eep)-S(tructure) is by definition the level at which the Theta-Criterion is satisfied by one-member chains. Within a minimalist grammar (Chomsky 1995) only additional assumptions can force the same state of affairs to hold. Suppose in particular that theta-roles are features and that as features they can abstractly move, among other things. It is then perfectly possible to eliminate the last residual role for pro in clitic configurations. The clitic is basegenerated as before in an inflection-like position, call it simply Cl; there its nominal features act
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as attractors for theta-features, yielding movement of the latter to the Cl domain. This schema of derivation is illustrated in (5) for subject clitics; no pro is required any longer, and at the same time ordinary movement constraints are predicted to hold because of feature-movement. (5) a. La vim MODENA CIS comes 'She comes' b. [CIP Th-la [IP vim [VP w» (Tfe) ]]] Adopting this analysis for object clitics, we can assume that the object clitic acts as an attractor for a thematic feature, which ultimately explains its argumental interpretation. In fact, notice that not only the classical analysis of Kayne (1975), but also that of Sportiche (1992) ultimately implies adjunction of the clitic to the verb. What we propose instead is that on the model of subject clitics, the object clitic is merged directly in the position where it surfaces. If we provisionally call this position Cl once again, we obtain a derivation of the type in (6) for the Italian counterpart of French (1). (6) a. Lo vedo him Lsee 'I see him' b. [cip Th-lo [ip vedo [yp vcdo (Th-) ]]] To be more precise, detailed analyses of Northern Italian subject clitics have uncovered not only a fine grained feature system underlying them (Renzi & Vanelli 1983), but also a clear syntactic hierarchy within such a system (Poletto 1993). In our own work (Manzini & Savoia, forthcoming), we argue that there are four subject clitic positions, corresponding to four major categories in the the structure of DP's, namely P(erson) for 1st and 2nd person clitics, N(oun) for 3rd person singular clitics, Num(ber) for 3rd person plural clitics, and finally D(efinetess) for otherwise uninflected clitics. These categories precede the position of verbal inflection (I) in the order indicated in (7), which we shall henceforward assume without discussion.
(7) [D [Num [N [P ... [I ... By analogy with subject clitics, we expect that every object clitic occupies its own Cl projection, characterized by a particular set of features and ordered in a particular way with respect to all other positions. In this perspective, the problem that faces us is to determine which features exactly are realized by object clitics and how they structure themselves in a syntactic hierarchy. Consider first the features in terms of which object clitic positions are defined. Once more we differ from Sportiche (1992), in that we exclude a characterization in terms of Case, mainly on theoretical grounds. Thus in the grammar of Chomsky (1995), Case turns out to be a noninterpretable feature both on the attractor and on the attractee in movement configurations, setting it aside from all other syntactic features. For this reason, we take it that Case is best conceived of not as a syntactic feature, but as a morphological reflex of some other such feature.
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The conception of object clitic positions that we wish to adopt here, following Manzini & Savoia (1998), makes use of thematic characterizations, or to be more precise of aspectual ones. In substituting aspectual features for thematic ones we adopt proposals by Tenny (1994), Borer (1994), Arad (1998). Under these proposals, transitive and unaccusative predicates are associated with an aspectual position that contains the specification of the Meas(ure) of the event; this characterizes the internal argument of transitives and of unaccusatives. For instance, in Mary ate three apples, three apples defines the measure of the event denoted by eat; the same holds of three boys relative to arrive in There arrived three boys. In turn, the external argument of transitives and unergatives is identified with a different aspectual category, that of the Or(igin) of the event. Given this construal of aspectual properties, we identify two object clitic positions in terms of the categories Meas and Or. Given that Meas positions are generally taken to be below Or position, we can enrich the clitic string in (7) as indicated in (8); naturally, we take object clitics to appear in the structure of the sentence between subject clitics and I. (8) [D [Num [N [P [Or [Meas [I ... At a first approximation it is obvious that so-called accusative clitics such as the lo 'him', la 'her', // 'them_m', le 'them_f' series of Italian, realize the Meas position. As argued in detail by Manzini & Savoia (in preparation), further insights into the nature of the Meas position are to be gained by looking into the interaction between accusative and dative clitics that characterizes most languages with clitics, including Italian dialects. In this article however we shall concentrate on the nature of the Or position and of the clitics that realize it. As we shall argue in section 2, the element that typically fills this position in Italian is si in all of its different construals (reflexive, impersonal, passive). In section 3, we shall then consider the problem of the ordering parameters associated with the clitic string in relation to the position of si in several different types of Italian dialects. As we shall show, these parameters can be accounted for in syntactic terms without recourse to morphological operations. Some potential problems are reviewed and solved in section 4.
2 THE NATURE OF OR The syntax of impersonal/reflexive elements such as si is one of the most enduring problems in Romance linguistics. Consider Italian: si is not only the 3p reflexive as in (9a), but also an impersonal, as in (9b), an element inducing passive, as in (9c), or unaccusativity, as in (9d). (9) a. Gianni si lava John himself washes 'John washes himself b. Si va one goes 'One goes'
c. I giornali si leggono tutti i giorni the newspapers one read_pl every day 'Newspapers are read every day' d. La luce si spegne the light itself extinguishes 'The light goes off
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Faced with this array of data, Burzio (1986) postulates the existence of at least two omophonous si's, namely a reflexive and an impersonal, the latter also responsible for passives; as for unaccusatives, they are a lexical variant of passives. This theory however misses the point that the various si constructions in (9) form a natural class, typically picked up in other languages by specialized verbal inflections. Following this observation, various attempts have been made in the literature at unifying the two si's of Burzio (1986). One line of thought (Marantz 1984) essentially aims at reducing reflexives to passives. Remember that passive is standardly analysed along the following lines: the passive morphology, in this case si, is associated with the external theta-role of the predicate; this forces the internal argument to externalize, yielding the typical promotion of object to subject in (9c). If reflexive si as in (9a) is thought of as the exact counterpart of a reflexive full pronoun se stesso 'himself, the derivation cannot but be different; indeed si cannot but be associated with the internal argument of the verb (Burzio 1986). Crucially, however, because a reflexive predicate is by definition symmetric, we have no way of knowing whether si corresponds to the internal or to the external argument of the verb. Suppose that exactly as passive si, reflexive si is associated with the external argument of the predicate; the derivation that ensues is identical to that of passive, with promotion of the object to subject position providing for a unification of the two si's. These parallel derivations of passive and reflexive are illustrated in (lOa) and (lOb), respectively. (10) a. [jp i giornali [r/ si leggono [yp leggono i giornali ]]] b. [IP Gianni [j/ si lava [yp lava Gianni ]]] Note that a unification of si does not appear to be possible if the parallelism between reflexive si and full DP reflexives is maintained; but it becomes possible if si is viewed as part of a layer of organization of the sentence that may have more in common with verbal inflection than with DP arguments. As it turns out, on the other hand, the theory in (10), reducing reflexive to passive, meets its own problems; thus it cannot easily account for the impersonal uses, since for instance (9b) involves associating si with an internal argument slot. Consider then the passive in (9c) again. Translating the classical analysis of passive si structures into aspectual terms, it is natural to assume that the Meas argument is externalized, while the Or argument, hence the Or position in (8), is realized by si. However, it is also well-known that there must be at least partial agreement between si in Or and the externalized argument; to be more precise, in passive si structures this agreement involves person, though not number (and gender) features. Thus sentences of the type in (9c) are indeed well-formed, in that both si and the lexical subject can be taken to be 3rd person forms, i.e., in present terms N's. On the contrary, it is not possible to have a passive si structure with a 1st or 2nd person subject, as illustrated in (1 la). This contrasts with the possibility of embedding 1st or 2nd person arguments in impersonal si structures of the type in (lib). (11) a. *(Tu) si rispetti (you) one respect 'You are respected'
b. Ti si rispetta you one respects 'One respects you'
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Our interpretation of this fact relies on the idea, already put forth by Manzini & Savoia (1998), that si is not associated with a single aspectual feature, contrary to what happens for instance in the case of accusative clitics, that are pure attractors for the Meas feature. Rather si attracts both Or and Meas, and both of these features therefore pass through the Or position. We assume with Manzini & Savoia (1997, forthcoming) that the lexical subject is in turn generated in a Top position from where it attracts at least one of the aspectual features associated with si. If it is the Meas feature that is attracted to Top, we obtain passive sentences of the type in (9c), whose derivation is outlined in (12). In (12) agreement in person between si in Or and the lexical subject is a by-product of the fact that Meas is attracted by si on its way to Top.
Reflexive si structures of the type in (9a) can be derived on the basis of the same assumption, namely, that si in Or attracts not one but two aspectual features: Or itself and Meas. Indeed, a reflexive structure is by definition one in which the Meas and Or arguments are associated with the same argument. Our idea is that this identification is carried out through the attraction of both aspectual features by si, and then eventually by the lexical subject in Top, as illustrated in the schema of derivation in (13).
Remember next that while Burzio (1986) provides syntactic derivations for reflexive si and passive si, he proposes that a predicate can become associated with si in the lexicon as well; the result is an "ergative" predicate of the type illustrated in (9d). The theory of si as a multiple attractor of aspectual features being pursued here, makes it possible for us to give an account of the "ergative" si structures of the type in (9d), which does not have recourse to lexical derivations. Indeed, sentences of the type in (9c) are formally indistinguishable from reflexive si structures of
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the type in (9a), from which they differ only with respect to their interpretation. Thus it is natural to associate both sentences of the type in (9d) with essentially the same derivation, schematized for "ergative" si in (14). In (14), as in (13) si attracts both the Or and Meas features of the predicate, which are attracted in turn by the lexical subject in Top. The only difference between (13) and (14) is interpretive, rather than derivational. In (13) the two aspectual roles still identify two separate points in the event structure of the predicate; in (14), the two aspectual roles actually identify a single point in the event structure of the predicate.
The analysis in (14) can also be extended to so called "inherent" si structures, such as (15a), which are characterized by the absence of any transitive si-less counterpart, as shown in (15b). The only difference between (15a) and (9d) appears to be that while si is optionally associated with the predicate in (9d), it is obligatorily associated with the one in (15); the derivation itself is identical in the two cases. (15) a. Gianni si siede John himself sits 'John sits down'
b. *Gianni siede Maria John sits Mary 'John sits Mary down'
The discussion of "ergative" and "inherent" si ultimately leads us to reconsider the whole matter of unaccusativity and even more generally the partition of predicates into unaccusatives, unergatives and transitives. Remember that according to Burzio (1986) transitive predicates have an internal and an external argument, i.e., in terms of the present theory an Or and a Meas argument; on the contrary, unaccusatives only have an internal argument, i.e., a Meas one, and unergatives an external argument, i.e., an Or one. In more recent literature on the other hand the distinction between transitives and unergatives is effectively eliminated; according to Hale & Keyser (1993), Chomsky (1995), among others, unergatives are concealed transitives, in which the Meas role is not lexicalized. But if the analysis that we suggested in (14) is extended from si predicates to unaccusatives in general, the latter can also be seen as having both an Or and a Meas feature, which however become identified in the course of the derivation. This can be true both of those si-less unaccusatives that alternate with transitives (such as affondare 'to sink') and of those that do not (such as venire 'to come'). Quite literally these verbs can be thought of as having a non-lexicalized si that triggers a derivation along the lines of (14). There are pointers in the interpretation of unaccusatives that this conclusion is correct; for instance, the one lexical
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argument of unaccusative verbs can be interpreted as an agent, contrary to what happens in passives. Indeed, the syntactic analysis of unaccusativity suggested here is recognizably related to the semantic analysis first suggested by Chierchia (1989) and more recently by Reinhart (1997). It is worth noting that a sentence of the type in (9a) actually allows not only a reflexive reading, but also a passive one ('John is washed'): the ambiguity is generally resolved only by pragmatic factors. For a sentence like (9c), it is only our knowledge of the world that excludes a reflexive reading ('Newspapers read themselves'); in a fantasy world, we can perfectly well accept such a reading as well. The same can also be said for (9d); the passive reading ('the candle is put off) is equally available, while the reflexive one is barred once again only by our knowledge of the world. These facts seem to support a unified theory of si, where a considerable part of the disambiguation task is taken care of not by the lexicon or the derivation, but rather by the interpretive component (cf. Castelfranchi & Parisi 1976). We are now in a position to consider also the last remaining type of si, so-called impersonal si. Consider first impersonal si sentences involving a transitive predicate, as in (16). We note that si in this case cooccurs with a clitic of the accusative series as in (16a); remember furthermore that no agreement in person or other features is required between si and the object of the sentence, as can be seen in (lib), repeated here in (16b). (16) a. Li si legge them one reads 'One reads them'
b. Ti si rispetta you one respects 'One respects you'
In present terms, the Meas feature can't but be associated with the accusative clitic, leaving si with the Or feature; the lack of any identification effect between the Or and Meas arguments, including agreement in person, leads us to believe that Meas is not associated with si in this case. Thus the derivation that we are led to postulate for (16a) takes the form in (17).
One problem raised by the derivation in (17) is that the relative order of si and the accusative clitic predicted by our analysis is actually the reverse of what is observed; the predicted order is the correct one only if si is associated with a reflexive derivation. This and similar problems will constitute the main topic of sections 3—4, and will be disregarded for the time being; we note nevertheless that the order predicted by (17) is found in many Italian dialects both in impersonal and in reflexive structures. What is of immediate interest to us here is to establish that the
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theory predicts both the passive derivation in (13) and the impersonal one in (17) while ruling out unwanted ones. In particular, it seems to be impossible to have a counterpart to (14) in which the Or feature is attracted by the lexical subject. In such case we would derive an "antipassive" with a generic Meas rather than Or argument, but this is impossible, as illustrated in (18). (18) *I1 giornale si spaventa the newspaper one frightens The newspaper frightens one' We propose that this asymmetry depends on the fact that while si acts as a multiple attractor and identifier of aspectual features, it is hosted by Or and not by Meas. Therefore, si must always end up being associated with the Or feature, though it may be associated with the Meas feature as well, at some point of the derivation or throughout it. On the contrary, the interpretation indicated for (18) requires that si ends up being associated with the Meas feature, which can now be seen to be impossible under the theory given. The existence of impersonal si structures with predicates traditionally classified as unergative, of the type in (19), are unproblematic in that si is associated with the Or feature, whether there is a non-lexicalized Meas argument (as we take it to be the case here) or not. (19) Si dorme One sleeps 'One sleeps' A potentially more problematic case for the theory of impersonal si is represented by its cooccurrence with predicates traditionally classified as unaccusative, of the type in (9b). However, our characterization of the different predicate classes as involving a Meas and an Or argument in all cases allows us to maintain the analysis of si as always lexicalizing the Or position and attracting (at least) the Or feature. We have so far considered the range of aspectual interpretations associated with si by the different syntactic derivations compatible with it. We have not explicitly considered however the range of references that can be associated with this same element. To be more precise, we have seen that in reflexive and "ergative" or "intrinsic" si contexts the two aspectual features Meas and Or are attracted both by si and by the subject. The resulting configuration is not substantially different from a clitic doubling one in which the clitic, si in this case, is bound by the argument with which it shares aspectual features. What we have not yet considered explicitly is how si comes to be associated with an "impersonal", i.e., a generic intepretation, when it remains associated with at least one autonomous aspectual feature. To pursue the parallel with pronominal clitics, note that the latter also take up independent reference, however, they are understood as definite. By contrast, we follow Manzini (1983, 1986) in assuming that si is indefinite and hence essentially a free variable in terms of Heim's (1982) theory. As such it must be bound by some operator, typically a generic operator, that we can associate with the
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C position. Manzini & Roussou (1998) develop an analysis along the same lines for so-called arbitrary control. The same treatment can furthermore be extended to passive si.!
3 THE POSITION OF OR IN THE CLITIC STRING 3.1 The parameters An examination of the position of si relative to object clitics reveals a number of interesting variations across Italian dialects, as already noted for standard Italian and the dialect of Venice by Lepschy (1989). In the data reported in (20)-(22) below, we include under (i) examples concerning the simple forms of impersonal and reflexive si. The examples in (ii) concern the ordering of si with respect to accusative clitics, both when si is construed as an impersonal, in (a), and when it is construed as a reflexive, in (b), its ordering with respect to the partitive clitic, in (c), the dative clitic, in (d), the locative clitic, in (e). We also consider its ordering with respect to clusters of dative + partitive clitics, in (f), and locative + partitive, in (g). While in some of the dialects in (20)-(22) an accusative clitic can indeed cooccurr with si when the latter is "impersonal", the majority of dialects seems to treat all non-reflexive, transitive structures with si as obligatorily passive; if this is the case in a given dialect, we indicate the passive si form under (a). Considerably more data are provided by Manzini & Savoia (in preparation). In the dialects in (20) si precedes all object clitics, i.e., accusative, dative, locative and partitive. This state of affairs generally characterizes Northern Italian dialects, in particular those of the Po Valley area, Alpine Lombardy, Liguria and Veneto; it is nevertheless also attested in southern dialects, as well as in Sicily and Sardinia. Sequences of the type impersonal si + accusative clitic are attested in Alpine Lombard dialects (e.g., Vezza d'Oglio); however, the majority of dialects do not have the relevant string and present instead a passive si form. We note further that in some dialects (e.g., Stienta) si can be both followed and preceded by two different copies of the same clitic; in other dialects (e.g., Vezza d'Oglio) it is two copies of si that appear both before and after the same clitic. (20) STIENTA
i. a z majia berj CIS one eats well 'One eats well' 1
Manzini & Savoia (forthcoming) simplify the theory presented here by assuming that passive, unaccusative and reflexive si are all characterized by a derivation where si is associated with Or, while the externalized argument, i.e., the one which agrees with the verb, is associated with Meas. The differences between the three structures are interpretive in nature, depending on whether si is (i) given the indefinite reading (passive), (ii) referentially identified with the externalized argument (reflexive), or (iii) referentially and aspectually identified with the externalized argument (unaccusative). Impersonal si is simplified in turn, since it corresponds to the case in which si is externalized, independently of whether it is associated with Or or Meas. The property of si that remains constant is its nature of pure variable and not its association with the Or property. This revision of the analysis bears on the conception of aspectual structure and of the nominal string in general. However, it leaves the empirical results in sections 3—4, which constitute the core of this article, essentially unchanged.
The syntax of object clitics: si in Italian dialects d
ii. a. i c^ur'nai i z le z tuti i di the newspapers CIS one read every day 'Newpapers are read everyday' b. la maria la s al kompra Mary CIS herself it buys 'Mary buys it for herself c. la maria la s irj kompra tri Mary CIS herself oLthem buys three 'Mary buys three of them for herself d. a s ag da tropi soldi CIS one him gives too much money 'One gives too much money to him' e. a s ag met tropi soldi CIS one there puts too much money 'One puts too much money there' f. a z g in da do CIS one him oLthem gives two 'one gives two of them to him' cf. a g in s in da do CIS toJiim oLthem one oLthem gives two a s in g in da do CIS one oLthem him oLthem gives two g. a s in. g in met tri CIS one oLthem there oLthem puts three 'One puts three of them there' VEZZA D'OGLIO
i. ('le) e z dorma fk there CIS one sleeps well 'There, one sleeps well' i se s e la'a CIS themselves themselves are washed 'They have washed themselves' ii. a. s el ve:t semper pa'sa one him sees always pass_by 'One always sees him pass by' b. el se 1 kompra CIS himself it buys 'He buys it for himself c. el se rj kompra tri CIS himself oLthem buys three 'He buys three of them for himself
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244 M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo M. Savoia d. (e) z ge se da di liber CIS one him one gives some books 'One gives him some books' e. ('le) z ge pasa |k there one there passes well 'There, one passes well' f. e z ge (se) n da tri CIS one him one ofJhem gives three 'One gives three of them to him'
g. e z ge (se) n met tant de sal CIS one there one of_it put a lot of salt 'Of salt, one puts a lot there' FONTANIGORDA i. (li) se majid^a berj there one eats well 'There, one eats well' ii. a. (latri) i se verj sempre pa'sa the others CIS one see always pass_by 'The others are always seen pass by' b. u s u katta CIS himself it buys 'He buys it for himself c. u s irj katta trei CIS himself oLthem buys three 'He buys three of them for himself d. se ge da sempre e palarjke one him gives always the money 'One always gives him the money' e. se ge passa one there passes 'One passes there' f. se g irj da dwi one him oLthem gives two 'One gives two of them to him' g. se g irj betta puoka one there of_it puts little 'One puts little of it there'
The syntax of object clitics: si in Italian dialects MODICA
i. si rommi bbuonu one sleeps well 'One sleeps well' ii. a. icjcji si 'virunu sempri they one see always 'They are always seen' b. s D kkatta himself it buys 'He buys it for himself c. si nn akkatta jri himself oLthem buys three 'He buys three of them for himself d. si tfi 'rununu libbra one him give books 'One gives him books' e. si tfi passa one there passes 'One passes there' f. si tfi ni 'rununu jri one him oLthem give three 'One gives him three of them' g. si tfi ni minti assai one there of_it puts a lot 'One puts a lot of it there' SINISCOLA i. zi drommi bbene one sleeps well 'One sleeps well' ii. a. 'issozo z idene zempere they one see always 'They are always seen' b. issu zi lu 'komporata he himself it buys 'He buys it for himself c. issu zi nd ata kamporatu treze he himself oLthem has bought three 'He has bought three of them for himself d. zi Ii dai ssu dinari one him gives his money 'One gives him his money'
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246 M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo M. Savoia e. zi bbi 'kolata one there passes 'One passes here' f. zi nde li dai mmetta de dinari one oLthem him gives a lot of money 'One gives a lot of money to him' In other dialects, si appears somewhere in the middle of the object clitic string, as illustrated in (21). Typically si precedes accusative and partitive clitics but follows dative and locative ones. This state of affairs characterizes the dialects of Northern Tuscany and Marche (Montefeltro) and generally Central and Southern Italian dialects; it is also attested in Sardinia (Gallura) and in Northern Italy. Standard Italian belongs to this general type, though as we remarked, accusative clitics actually precede si when the latter is associated with an "impersonal" derivation. As we anticipated, in the other dialects in which impersonal si is compatible with the accusative clitic, it is ordered with respect to it exactly as reflexive si; such is the case for instance in the dialect of Pinzano al Tagliamento. As one might expect, there are further instances of variation within this group. In particular, several dialects realize the dative and the locative clitic on opposite sides of si; in that case the locative more often precedes si and the dative follows it (e.g., S. Vittore), though the reverse situation is also attested. In a dialect such as Grumello, on the contrary, si only precedes the accusative clitic, while it is preceded not only by the locative, but also by the partitive; analogously in some dialects (e.g., S. Giorgio della Richinvelda), si tends to appear in final position in the string when it cooccurs with a clitic cluster. (21) STANDARD ITALIAN i. cf. (9)
ii. a. Lo si compra it one buys 'One buys it' b. Maria se lo compra Mary herself it buys 'Mary buys it for herself c. Maria se ne compra molti Mary herself oLthem buys many 'Mary buys many of them for herself d. Gli si da dei libri him one gives some books 'One gives him some books' e. Ci si va volentieri there one goes gladly 'One goes gladly there' f. Gli se ne da molti him one oLthem gives many 'One gives many of them to him'
The syntax of object clitics: si in Italian dialects g. Ci se ne mette tre there one ofJhem puts three 'One puts three of them there' GRUMELLO i. (le) ha dorma be there one sleeps well There, one sleeps well' ii. a. i ha et a pa'ha CIS one sees to pass_by 'They are seen pass by' b. la maria la ha 1 krompa Mary CIS herself it buys 'Mary buys it for herself c. al na ha krompa tri CIS ofJhem himself buys three 'He buys three of them for himself d. ga ha da di liber him one gives some books 'One gives him some books' e. ga ha met hemper there one puts always 'one always puts (it) there' f. ga na ha da du him of_them one gives two 'One gives two of them to him' g. ga na ha met tri there ofthem one puts three 'One puts three of them there'
PINZANO AL TAGLIAMENTO i. (u'i) a si dur'mis berj here CIS one sleeps well 'Here, one sleeps well' ii. a. a si lu ve:t simpri pa'sa CIS one him sees always pass.by 'One always sees him pass by' b. a si lu kompre CIS himself it buys 'He buys it for himself c. a si rj kompre doi CIS himself of_them buys two 'He buys two of them for himself
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248 M. Rita Manzini and Leonardo M. Savoia d. a i si regale un libri CIS him one gives a book 'One gives a book to him' f. a i n si n da mase CIS him oLthem one oLit gives too much 'One gives too much of it to him' S. GIORGIO BELLA RICHINVELDA i. (u'ki) a si dur'mis pu'li:t here CIS one sleeps well 'Here, one sleeps well' ii. a. a si odirj sempri pa'sa CIS one see always pass_by 'They are always seen pass by' b. a si lu kompra CIS himself it buys 'He buys it for himself d. a gi si da un libri CIS him one gives a book 'One gives him a book' f. a gi si ni da doi CIS him one oLthem gives two 'One gives two of them to him' g. a gi ni si met urj grurj CIS there of_it one puts a pinch 'One puts a pinch of it there' URBINO
i. (ma le) se dorme bein there one sleeps well 'There, one sleeps well' ii. a. ma 'lo se ve:d sempre to him one sees always 'One always sees him' en se ve:d mai not one sees ever 'He is never seen' b. la maria se 1 kompra Mary herself it buys 'Mary buys it for herself c. la maria s ne kompra tre Mary herlsef oLthem buys three 'Mary buys three of them for herself
The syntax of object clitics: si in Italian dialects d. i se/s i da kwalk libre him one him gives some book 'One gives some book to him' e. tfe se passa be:n there one passes well 'One passes well there' f. i s ne da tre him one of_them gives three 'One gives three of them to him' g. tf ne se met na mucca there of_it one puts a lot 'One puts a lot of it there' S. VITTORE i. S3 rorma bbusns one sleeps well 'One sleeps well' ii. a. isss S3 'versns semb a pas'sa they one see always to pass_by 'They are always seen pass by' b. isss S3 A akkatts he himself them buys 'He buys them for himself c. isss S3 n akkatts tre he himself oLthem buys three 'He buys three of them for himself d. S3 jfo ra tropps solds one him gives too much money 'One gives him too much money' e. tfs ss passa bbusns there one passes well 'One passes well there' g. tfs S3 n3 metts assajs there one of Jt puts a lot 'One puts a lot of it there'
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i. si drommi be one sleeps well 'One sleeps well' ii. a. si 'vedini bbasscndi one see passing_by 'They are seen passing by' b. si ru ggumparedd3a himself it buys 'He buys it for himself c. si nni ggumpareddjja dui himself oLthem buys two 'He buys two of them for himself d. si ri daddzi zempri ra3oni one him gives always right 'One always agrees with him' e. vi si bbassa be there one passes well 'One passes well there' f. si nni ri daddzi ddroppa one of_it him gives too much 'One gives too much of it to him' g. vi si nni bboni there one of Jt puts 'One puts some of it there' The dialects of Corsica deserve to be set apart in that they systematically present the order accusative clitic + si even if si is associated with a reflexive derivation. This order, illustrated in (22), contrasts with the order attested in all Italian dialects exemplified above and appears to be related to the fact that in Corsican dialects, as in French, accusative clitics precede dative clitics, if the two can cooccurr at all. (22) FIGARELLA
i. si 5oR.me bae one sleeps well 'One sleeps well' ii. a. elli zi VeSenu zempae pas'sa they one see always pass_by They are always seen pass by' b. u zi kompRa it himself buys 'He buys it for himself
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c. si ns kompRa 9ui himself oLthem buys two 'He buys two of them for himself d. i zi 3a un libru him one gives a book 'One gives a book to him' e. tfi zi passa there one passes 'One passes there' f. i zi nc 9a ddui him one of.them gives two 'One gives two of them to him' g. tf i zi ne mette uni poku there one of Jt puts a little 'One puts a little of it there'
3.2
Some analyses
The data at our disposal provide abundant evidence that si is generated within the aspectually characterized object clitic positions, rather than within the inflectionally characterized subject clitic ones. To begin with, the negation clitic, when present, is systematically ordered before si, though it can appear before or after any of the subject clitic positions, according to the dialect (Manzini & Savoia, forthcoming). What is more, in those Northern Italian dialects in which the subject clitic appears after the verb in questions, the si form is generally found in preverbal position like object clitics, as illustrated in (23a). As expected, in V2 dialects in which the verb appears in C in all focalized/topicalized contexts, si still appears preverbally, though the subject clitic appears postverbally (e.g., in the dialect of Mustair), as illustrated in (23b). (23) a. STIENTA a s lav-i? CIS themselves wash-CIS 'Do they wash themselves?'
VEZZA D'OGLIO
(se) s e-i la'a? (themselves) themselves are-CIS washed 'Have they washed themselves?'
PINZANO AL TAGLIAMENTO
si dur'mis-e berj? one sleeps-CIS well 'Does one sleep well?'
cf. dur'mis-e(l)? sleeps-CIS 'Does he sleep?'
GRUMELLO
cf. ha donna be? one sleeps well 'Does one sleep well?'
ha la-el? himself washes-CIS 'Does he wash himself?'
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(23) b. MUSTAIR a 'la a cbrm-i bail) there one sleep-CIS well 'There, one sleeps well'
cf. i za cbrma CIS one sleeps 'One sleeps'
Another argument of the same type can be based on those Piedmontese dialects that in auxiliary + past participle structures realize the object clitic, but not the subject clitic, on the past participle, or eventually double the object clitic (but not the subject clitic) on the auxiliary and the past participle. In these dialects the si form also appears on the participle (e.g., in the dialect of Montaldo, (24a)) or is doubled on the auxiliary and on the participle (e.g., in the dialect of Moncalvo, (24b)). (24) a. MONTALDO
u r a maji'd^a-se bcrj u r a la'va- se cf. u r a tfa'ma-ru CIS has eaten one well CIS has washed himself CIS has called- him 'One has eaten well' 'He has washed himself 'He has called him' b. MONCALVO s e semp dru'mi-si berj s a la'va- si one has always slept- one well himself has washed-himself 'One has always slept well' 'He has washed himself cf. m a tfa'ma-mi me has called-me 'He has called me' Let us then consider each of the groups in (20)-(22) in turn, starting with (20). The order of the clitic string illustrated by (20) is immediately compatible with our schema in (8), since si appears to the left of all other object clitics, in particular, accusative ones; the latter, as we have already proposed, lexicalize the lower Meas position in the string. As discussed at great length by Manzini & Savoia (in preparation), a great number of languages, including of course Italian dialects, present facts of complementary distribution between accusative and dative clitics, which argue in favour of the conclusion that they compete for the same position, namely, Meas. On this basis we correctly predict that dative clitics, as well as accusative ones follow the si form. We shall return immediately below to the fact that in standard Italian, dative and accusative are not in complementary distribution; as we shall see this is not unrelated to the fact that the dative actually precedes si in standard Italian. There is one clitic form among those exemplified in (20) that does not fit in any obvious way the schema in (8); this is represented by the locative clitic, which in no dialect we know of actually enters into competition with the accusative. As it turns out, in many of the dialects exemplified in (20), the etymological locative has supplanted the dative, and therefore freely combines with the accusative; this is the case notably for northern dialects and for Sicilian ones. Nevertheless there are other dialects belonging to the group in (20) which have a separate form for the dative (e.g., Siniscola). We shall incorporate the data concerning locatives within our theory by recognizing a third position within the aspectual string, generated between Meas and Or, which we shall provisionally refer to with the name of Loc(ative). On the basis of this
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articulate clitic string, we can adequately analyse the more complex clitic sequences in (20), as illustrated in (25). (25) Or se
Loc
Meas
g
ig
FONTANIGORDA
We are now in a position also to consider the apparently more complex dialects in (21), where in general the si form precedes accusative clitics but follows locative ones, as for instance in standard Italian. It is tempting to interpret this kind of variation as meaning that the three positions in (25) can be internally reordered; thus if (25) represents the order of object clitics in the dialect of Fontanigorda, in standard Italian we would have the order Loc-Or-Meas. We however exclude this solution on grounds of explanatory adequacy. If Universal Grammar allows the reordering of its categories, then there is in principle no boundary as to how far that reordering can go. Thus it is not explained why only some surface orders are attested and not others; for instance we do not have examples of the order Or-Meas-Loc. Furthermore, there is no reason why the aspectual categories could not be reordered to appear for instance within the set of verbal inflections or further afield. What is worse, the same would be true of any single category in the grammar, making the learning of the parameters certainly much more difficult than in the presence of an invariant syntactic skeleton, and perhaps impossible at all. In the grammar of Manzini & Savoia (in preparation), as in that of Cinque (1999), therefore, not only the repertory of categories is universal, but their order is equally universal. In such a grammar parametrization is limited essentially to whether a given category is lexicalized or not, and to how it is lexicalized in case it is, very much in accordance with the restrictive hypotheses of minimalist theory (Chomsky 1995). An intermediate solution between the one just discarded and the one we shall ultimately propose here is tentatively put forward by Manzini & Savoia (1998), who argue that the position lexicalized by si is characterized not aspectually but inflectionally, namely as a D position; and furthermore that such inflectional positions are freely interspersed among aspectual ones. This hypothesis is more restrictive than the preceding one, since it does not open the gate to reordering of categories in general, and also has more specific correct consequences such as that of blocking the order Or-Meas-Loc. Nevertheless, such a theory would predict among other consequences the possibility of systematically reordering subject clitics within the aspectual string; and contrary to what happens for si, there is no evidence for this. We have already indicated above, furthermore, a number of reasons why si itself has a behaviour consistent with that of aspectual (object) clitics, rather than inflectional (subject) ones. The analysis that we wish to advocate here is that while clitic positions are invariant across languages, what can vary is the range of elements they are lexicalized by. Thus concretely, in dialects where locative or dative clitics precede si, they do so because they lexicalize not an aspectual position, but rather the N/Num inflectional position, in virtue of their nominal properties. This analysis holds of dialects where the dative form is identical to the locative one, as in the vast majority of Northern Italian ones, for instance S. Giorgio della Richinvelda in (26), and for dialects in which the dative form is differentiated, for instance standard Italian or Urbino, in (27); similarly, we note that the former is a subject clitic language, while the latter is a classical null
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subject language like standard Italian. All of these parameters seem to be entirely independent of the one being considered here.
One general prediction made by the analysis just provided is that if object clitics can in principle lexicalize both aspectual and inflectional clitic positions, given that they are associated with both sets of relevant features, then we should find cases of multiple realization of the same clitic. Indeed, we observe that such cases exist, for instance in dialects of Po Valley area, here exemplified by Stienta, belonging to the group in (20), as well as in dialects clearly falling under the description of (21), e.g., Pinzano al Tagliamento. In particular, in the Stienta dialect the combination of si with the partitive and dative/locative clitic gives rise to the doubling of the partitive. To be more precise, the order directly predicted by the theory, namely z-g-in (si + dative/locative + partitive) is attested in this dialect. However, the doubling of the partitive also produces the order g-in-s-in (dative/locative + partitive + si + partitive). We assume that the ne copy that precedes si is in the inflectional N position; in this case the dative/locative is in turn associated with the inflectional position Num, as illustrated in (28).
As illustrated in (29), the same order is attested in other dialects, for instance, in Pinzano al Tagliamento, which present the dative/locative before si independently of the doubling of the partitive, since they belong to the group in (21).
Similarly, in the dialect of Urbino the partitive follows si in two-clitic clusters: however, in clusters including the locative as well, locative and partitive precede si. The only difference with respect to the dialects considered so far is that the partitive actually does not double, as illustrated in (30).
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Like any other clitic of the aspectual series, we now expect si to be able to realize an inflectional position as well. In effect this possibility seems to be attested in the presence of a double realization of the partitive in the Stienta dialect, since we also find the order s-in-g-in (si + partitive + dative/locative + partitive). In present terms the partitive appears both in Meas and in N exactly as in (28), while in this case it is si rather than the dative/locative that realizes Num, as illustrated in (31).
Pursuing this line of argument, we also expect that si itself is able to double, lexicalizing both its aspectual position and some inflectional position. Indeed, this situation is found in complex clusters with a dative/locative and a partitive in the dialect of Vezza d'Oglio, where the string s-ge-se-n (si + dative/locative + si + partitive) is attested. In terms of the present analysis, such a string implies a structure of the type in (32), where the lower position of si coincides with Or while the higher one coincides with Num; the realization of the locative/dative in N and of the partitive in Meas corresponds to the basic order of the dialects in (21), which include of course standard Italian as well.
Interestingly, in the dialect of Vezza d'Oglio we also find a doubling of the si clitic in the 3rd person forms of the present perfect, where the auxiliary is essere, as illustrated in (20) and in (33) below; the same phenomenon is found in other dialects of the Brescia area. (33) VEZZA D'OGLIO 1 (se) s e la'a CIS himself himself is washed 'He has washed himself c f . 1 £ jii CIS is come 'He has come'
l a Sur'mi CIS has slept 'He has slept'
Again our theory can accomodate these data, if we assume that the lower position of si corresponds to its aspectual Or slot, while the higher position is to be identified with an inflectional one. In this case, we are led to conclude that si realizes N, since the Num position is occupied by the differentiated subject clitic / 'he' or i 'they'. We have already remarked that while in general the dialects in (21) have the locative and the dative in a Num/N position preceding si, and the accusative and the partitive in the Meas position following it, there is in fact considerable variation with respect to the position of the dative and the locative in those dialects in which they are differentiated. Thus si precedes the dative form
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and follows the locative one in Central Italian dialects (e.g., S. Vittore) as well as in those of the Gallura and Sassari. Within the set of assumptions that we have now defined, in these dialects the locative lexicalizes the Num/N position, while the dative lexicalizes Meas. Manzini & Savoia (in preparation) show that in this type of dialect, the dative is in complementary distribution with the accusative, arguing for the conclusion that they compete for the same position, Meas. In other Southern Italian dialects, however, si precedes the locative and follows the dative, as for instance in that of Albidona (Manzini & Savoia, in preparation). In a dialect of this type, the dative lexicalizes an inflectional clitic position, namely, Num/N, while the locative appears in the aspectual Loc position. Another fact noted in our introduction to the data in (21) is that in the dialect of Grumello, si follows the partitive as well as the dative/locative, though it still precedes the accusative. Thus si is found to the right of clusters dative/locative + partitive. This state of affairs can again be accommodated by our theory, by assuming that the dative/locative lexicalizes Num while the partitive lexicalizes N, as schematized in (34). An analogous structure has already been proposed in (28) for dialects that double the partitive.
This analysis is also compatible with the subject clitic status of a dialect like Grumello. Thus in reflexive si sentences the partitive, whose position we have just identified with N, can be preceded by a differentiated subject clitic; the latter can of course lexicalize Num, as illustrated in (35). Indeed, note that while the partitive does not display any inflection for Number (or Gender), the subject clitic routinely does, and the dative does in at least some varieties.
We can now turn to Corsican dialects, that we grouped apart under (22), since in these dialects the accusative clitic precedes si. As already noted, we will turn later to the rather idiosyncratic situation of standard Italian, where the accusative clitic precedes impersonal si, but follows reflexive si. Obviously enough, if the position of si in Corsican dialects is identified with Or, then the dative and accusative clitics must both occupy an inflectional clitic position, Num/N, as illustrated in (36). In fact, in the dialect of Figarella, where the dative and the accusative are in complementary distribution, e.g., [i !5a] (toJiim gives) 's/he gives it to him', we can assume that they compete for the same inflectional position. We take it that the position they compete for is Num, on the grounds that at least the accusative is fully inflected for Number (and Gender).
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In dialects such as Macca, where as in French, we find sequences accusative + dative, e.g., [u di 'da] (it toJiim gives) 's/he gives it to him', we can assume that the (differentiated) accusative is in Num and the (non-differentiated) dative in N. The reverse dative + accusative order, characteristic of standard Italian and similar dialects, is predicted on the the basis that the dative lexicalizes Num/N, but the accusative lexicalizes Meas. Note that in the dialect of Figarella there still is a clitic that follows si, namely, the partitive. The latter appears then to lexicalize Meas, though the accusative and dative lexicalize Num, as illustrated in (37). Thus this dialect is in some sense the mirror image of that of Grumello, in (34)-(35), where the accusative lexicalizes Meas, while the partitive is to be found in N.
4 ASYMMETRIES BETWEEN IMPERSONAL AND REFLEXIVE STRUCTURES As we already noticed, a parameter that cuts across the one in (20) and (21) concerns the possibility of having impersonal si cooccurr with an accusative clitic. Indeed, many dialects — both of the type in (20) and (21) — seem to admit only passive and reflexive derivations with transitive predicates. Though accounting for this parameter is not our concern here, it is interesting to note that in certain Montefeltro dialects, for example, in the dialect of Urbino, in (21), passive si structures alternate with impersonal si structures, in which the pronominal object is introduced by the preposition ma, which seems to point to an incompatibility between impersonal si and accusatives. Let us then consider the dialects that allow for the cooccurrence of si with an accusative clitic. This construction characterizes several northern dialects, including Vezza d'Oglio, in (20) and Pinzano al Tagliamento, in (21). In these dialects, si systematically precedes the accusative clitic, exactly as in the reflexive derivation, and as predicted by the present theory. For instance, in the dialect of Vezza d'Oglio, belonging to the group in (20), we find [se 1 've:t 'semper pa'sa] (one him sees always pass_by) 'one always sees him pass by'; similarly in the Pinzano al Tagliamento dialect, belonging to the group in (21), we find [a si lu 've:t 'simpri pa'sa] (Cls one him sees always pass_by) 'one always sees him pass by'. Vice versa, as we have just seen, in the Corsican dialects the accusative clitic always precedes si. It is therefore all the more surprising to find that in standard Italian, as already remarked, the accusative clitic precedes impersonal si, though it follows reflexive si. The situation was altogether different in the literary language of the Middle Ages, where very much as in present day Corsican (or French) the accusative clitic tended to come first in clitic clusters. In connection with standard Italian, it is interesting to note that according to the grammar of Lepschy & Lepschy (1981 : 198), standard Italian admits not only of forms such as le si compra (them one buys_sg) 'one buys them' where the verb is in the 3rd person singular form agreeing with impersonal si, but also of forms such as le si comprano (them one buy_pl) 'one buys them', where the verb appears to agree with the 3rd person plural clitic le 'them'. Naturally, this suggests that the clitic
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le is being treated as a subject rather than an object. Thus it appears that to the extent that native speakers accept strings formed by a 3rd person clitic followed by si, they are not always clear as to the nature of the elements involved. In short, it seems fair to conclude, using the terms of Chomsky (1981), that accusative clitic + impersonal si structures in standard Italian belong to the periphery of the grammar, rather than its core. For a certain number of speakers, impersonal si with transitive verbs certainly belongs to the passive competence of the language, rather than to the active one. Thus we would not be surprised to find that it can be made compatible with the present grammar only at the price of some extra assumptions. Indeed, our grammar can accomodate the two different orders by assuming that the reflexive order corresponds to the realization of si in Or and of the accusative clitic in Meas. The impersonal order in turn must correspond to the realization of si in Or and of the accusative in the inflectional Num/N position. The lack of a deep explanation for this latter state of affairs seems to correspond to the peripheral status of the relevant construction. What is of more immediate relevance to us here is that the standard Italian contrast between the order accusative + impersonal si and the order reflexive si + accusative can in principle be used to argue for the existence of two separate si's, associated with different syntactic categories and positions. As briefly mentioned before, both the descriptive and the theoretical literature (Burzio 1986, Salvi 1988) generally split si into two major subtypes: reflexive si is treated as an object clitic which happens to be reflexive as well, while impersonal/passive si is treated as a subject clitic. By contrast, in the present theory there is one single si, namely, an indefinite pronoun (a free variable) associated with the Or position. These properties, essentially the same individuated by Manzini (1986), can however give rise to several different derivations. Thus the fact that the placement of the accusative clitic appears to depend on the presence of impersonal si or reflexive si does not in any way imply two separate lexical entries or positions for those two elements, since the derivation associated with them is entirely sufficient to tell them apart. In particular, in terms of the theory proposed here, impersonal si is associated only with an Or feature, while reflexive (or unaccusative) si identifies Or and Meas. As it turns out, some Italian dialects provide independent evidence for the contrast between impersonal and reflexive si. Several dialects of Northeastern Piedmont (Ticino area) are characterized by generalized enclisis of objects with finite verbs; subject clitics however appear in proclisis in these same dialects. By contrast, other Italian dialects, as well as standard Italian, generally present proclisis of objects in finite contexts. What is of immediate interest to us here is that some of the dialects with generalized enclisis of objects, e.g., Galliate, clearly treat both reflexive and impersonal si as object clitics, which as such appear in enclisis after the finite verb, as illustrated in (38). However a group of dialects with generalized enclisis of objects distinguish reflexive si, which appears in enclisis together object clitics, from impersonal si, which appears in proclisis together with subject clitics, as illustrated in (39) by the dialect of Quarna Sotto.
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(38) GALLIATE
i. a drym-si be CIS sleeps-one well 'One sleeps well' ii. a. i vy'gen-si sempru a pa'se CIS seeone always to pass_by 'They are always seem pass by' b. a krum-sru CIS buys- himself-it 'He buys it for himself c. a krum-sa 'dy CIS buys- himself-oLthem two 'He buys two of them for himself (39)
QUARNA SOTTO
i. B s droma pu'i:t CIS one sleeps well 'One sleeps well'
B y lava- s CIS washes4iimself 'He washes himself
ii. a. s Vogg-Bi semper a pasar one sees- them always to pass _by 'One always sees them pass by' b. By 'kromp-BSBy CIS buys- himself-it 'He buys it for himself d. s da- JB rj 'liber one gives-him a book 'One gives hims a book' e. s mBtt-Bi pok say one puts- there little salt 'One puts little salt there' f. s 'da- JB- n dyi one gives-him-of_them two 'One gives two of them to him' As we have already remarked in our discussion of the standard Italian examples, it is possible within our framework to provide a basis for the distinction between reflexive/unaccusative si, which acts as an identifier of Or and Meas, and impersonal/passive si, which is associated with the Or feature. Based on this distinction, several accounts for the facts in (39) are possible, according to exactly what the split between "object" and "subject" clitics is taken to be. One possibility is that the split between subject and object clitics corresponds to the split between those clitics that are found in the inflectional positions and those that are found in the aspectual ones. If so, we are led to the conclusion that in the dialects of Quarna Sotto, reflexive si indeed lexicalizes the Or position, while impersonal si actually lexicalizes an inflectional N position. Note that in these dialects, all other object clitics systematically follow even the lower
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reflexive si; thus as in the general Northern Italian type in (20), object clitics (other than si) are demonstrably internal to the aspectual string. Providing the analysis for the generalized enclisis phenomenon itself is beyond the scope of the present article. However, we can assume that in the relevant dialects the finite verb is lexicalized in C. Object clitics, which appear to its left, occupy the clitic positions between F and C. Subject clitics on the other hand realize a separate set of clitic position internal to the C domain that are independently motivated, for instance by the fact that in a number of Northern Italian dialects, the subject clitic is realized twice, in preverbal and postverbal position, when the verb is in C in questions (Manzini & Savoia, in preparation). Needless to say, the fact that in the dialects in (38) both reflexive and impersonal si appear together with the object string supports the conclusion that si can occupy the aspectual Or position in all cases. The phenomenon illustrated in (39) is not isolated; we find a comparable distribution of data in a set of Northern Italian dialects, of the Val Camonica area, whose question formation process involves the insertion of a fare 'do' form in C, with the lexical verb surfacing as an infinitive (cf. Beninca & Poletto 1998). These dialects, which include Vezza d'Oglio, realize the subject clitic in enclisis on the finite verb, namely,/are 'do', while they realize object clitics in enclisis on the infinitival. It should be noted that enclisis of the subject clitic on the finite verb is the rule in many Northern Italian dialects in questions; similarly, enclisis of the object on the infinitival is the rule in many other Italian dialects. As illustrated in (40b), reflexive si is treated as an object clitic to the extent that it appears as an enclitic on the lexical verb; impersonal si is treated as a subject clitic in that it appears in enclisis on the finite form of fare 'do', as in (40a). (40)
VEZZA D'OGLIO
a. s dorma be one sleeps well 'One sleeps well' s el ved semper one him sees always 'One always sees him' b. 1 se 'laea CIS himself washes 'He washes himself
fa- s dormer be? does-one sleep well 'Does one sleep well?' fa- s semper i39i-X? does-one always see- him 'Does one always see him?' fa- 1 la'a- s? does-CIS wash-himself 'Does he wash himself?'
We can extend to these cases the general explanation already adopted for (39). Once again it is beyond the scope of this article to provide an analysis for the do-support-like phenomenon of these dialects. We can assume, however, that it gives rise to a genuine biclausal structure (Manzini & Savoia, in preparation), with the subject clitic string realized in the matrix clause, but the aspectual string realized in the infinitival. If reflexive si appears in its Or position within the aspectual string, while impersonal si actually occupies an inflectional N position, we explain why the former patterns with object clitics and the latter with subject clitics. Notice that this analysis is compatible with what we independently know of the dialect of Vezza d'Oglio, since even reflexive si precedes other object clitics; the latter are therefore internal to the aspectual string in any case. What is more, Vezza d'Oglio provides overt evidence that si can in principle occupy both an Or and a Num/N position, in those cases where it doubles, as discussed in section 3.2.
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So far we have considered dialects which are akin to standard Italian in that they have one lexical item, si, triggering both reflexive and impersonal derivations; however, they can differ from standard Italian in that the two different derivations can be associated with si lexicalizing an aspectual or an inflectional clitic position, respectively. Other Romance dialects, however, make an even more radical distinction between impersonals and reflexives, in that they lexicalize impersonals and reflexives by means of two different items, as illustrated in (41). Thus the dialects of the Val Marebbe and Val Badia (e.g., La Pli de Mareo) lexicalize the impersonal by means of a form ag/oi) associated with a 3rd person singular verb. The dialect of Donat (Sutselva), like other Romantch dialects of the Orisons, in turn, realizes the impersonal by means of iji 'one'. In all of these languages, the reflexive is lexicalized by a si form. Interestingly enough, in the dialect of Donat the impersonal form iji can in turn be preceded by the non-specific form of the subject clitic; similarly the non-specific form of the subject clitic precedes impersonal si in the dialect of Mustair, in (23). This fact clearly points to the fundamental underlying similarities between the impersonal forms in the two languages, despite their contrasting lexicalizations. (41) LA PLI DE MAREO
i. arj dorm bug one sleeps well 'One sleeps well' ii. a. la tsaiturj 'liorj vijie de the newspaper reads-one every day 'One reads the newspaper every day' b. al s al kumpra CIS himself it buys 'He buys it for himself c. al s arj kumpra 0rj CIS himself of-them buys one 'He buys one of them for himself d. arj i da erj liber one him gives a book 'One gives him a book' f. arj i arj da tariff one him of_them gives so many 'One gives so many of them to him' DONAT i. iji darma ban one sleeps well 'One sleeps well' ii. a. iji la vetsa (a pa'sar) one her sees to pass.by 'One sees her pass by'
el sa lava he himself washes 'He washes himself
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The data in (41) are of course reminiscent of that of French, which realizes the impersonal by means of on. However, while French lexicalizes both the reflexive and the passive with se, the dialects in (41) only lexicalize the reflexive by means of a si form. Corresponding to Italian impersonal and passive si, we systematically find an impersonal structure. Thus the divide that the dialects in (41) are sensitive to is the same we already saw in (39) and (40): between reflexive/ unaccusative and impersonal/passive. On the basis of the data in (41) we can exclude that the different lexicalization of impersonals and reflexives depends on the status of the language with respect to the null subject parameter. Indeed, within subject clitic languages, we now find systems that lexicalize both impersonals and reflexives with si, and systems that employ two different lexicalizations. Similarly, in subject clitic languages, the impersonal si form can equally well be preceded by an undifferentiated expletive, of the type associated with the D position by Manzini & Savoia (forthcoming), and by a differentiated one, of the type associated by Manzini & Savoia (forthcoming) with the N position. The former state of affairs is exemplified by many dialects of the Po Valley area where impersonal si is preceded by the undifferentiated clitic a; in other dialects, for instance, of the Romagna, impersonal si is preceded by the differentiated clitic u (3rd person singular masculine). Thus we can also exclude that the lexicalization of impersonals depends on the nature of the expletive element in the language. Our idea, which is in fact implicit in the discussion, is that in the dialects in (41) the si is lexically characterized as an identifier of aspectual features; thus it will surface in Or when this node is associated with a reflexive/unaccusative derivation, but not when it is associated with an impersonal/passive one, where it does not identify Meas with Or, or it identifies them only partially. A treatment of French is within the reach of our theory as well. Evidently French lexicalizes Or as se whenever it attracts the Meas feature, independently of whether this gives rise to a full identification with Or (reflexive/unaccusative) or just agreement with respect to person (passive); on the contrary, French has a separate lexicalization for Or as on when it is associated with the Or feature only.
REFERENCES Arad, Maya. (1998). VP-structure and the syntax-lexicon interface. PhD dissertation, University College London. Beninca, Paola and Cecilia Poletto. (1998). A case of Jo-support in Romance. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics, 8, 27-63. Bonet, Eulalia. (1991). Morphology after syntax: Pronominal clitics in Romance. PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Borer, Hagit. (1994). The projection of arguments: Functional projections. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers, 17, 19-47. Burzio, Luigi. (1986). Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: Reidel. Castelfranchi, Cristiano and Domenico Parisi. (1976). Towards one si. Italian Linguistics, 2, 83-121.
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Chierchia, Gennaro. (1989). A semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences. Ms., Cornell University. Chomsky, Noam. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hale, Kenneth L. and Samuel Jay Keyser. (1993). On argument structure and the lexical expression of of syntactic relations. In id. (eds.) The view from Building 20. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 53-109. Heim, Irene. (1982). The semantics of definite and indefinite Noun Phrases. GSLA, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Massachussets at Amherst. Kayne, Richard S. (1975). French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Lepschy, Giulio C. (1989). Nuovi saggi di linguistica italiana. Bologna: il Mulino. Lepschy, Anna Laura and Giulio C. Lepschy. (1981). La lingua italiana. Milano: Bompiani. Manzini, M. Rita. (1983). On restructuring and reanalysis. PhD dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Manzini, M. Rita. (1986). On Italian si. In Hagit Borer (ed.) The Syntax of Pronominal Clitics (Syntax and Semantics 18). New York: Academic Press. 241-262. Manzini, M. Rita and Anna Roussou. (1998). A Minimalist theory of A-movement and control. Ms., Universita di Firenze/University College London and University of Wales, Bangor. Manzini, M. Rita and Leonardo M. Savoia. (1997). Null subjects without pro. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 9, 303-313. Manzini, M. Rita and Leonardo M. Savoia. (1998). Clitics and auxiliary choice in Italian dialects: Their relevance for the Person ergativity split. Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes, 27, 115-138. Manzini, M. Rita and Leonardo M. Savoia. (forthcoming). Parameters of Subject Inflection. In Peter Svenonius (ed.) Subjects, Expletives and the EPP. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manzini, M. Rita and Leonardo M. Savoia. (in preparation). Morfosintassi dei dialetti italiani. Ms., Universita di Firenze. (To be published by il Mulino, Bologna). Marantz, Alec. (1984). On the Nature of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Perlmutter, David M. (1972). Deep and Surface Constraints in Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Poletto, Cecilia. (1993). La sintassi del soggetto nei dialetti italiani settentrionali. (Quaderni Patavini di Linguistica. Monografie 12) Unipress: Universita di Padova/CNR. Reinhart, Tanya. (1997). Syntactic effects of lexical operations: Reflexives and unaccusatives. OTS Working Papers in Linguistics, University of Utrecht. Renzi, Lorenzo and Laura Vanelli. (1983). I pronomi soggetto in alcune varieta romanze. In Scritti linguistici in onore di G. B. Pellegrini. Pisa: Pacini. 120-145.
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Salvi, Giampaolo. (1988). La frase semplice. In Lorenzo Renzi (ed.) Grande grammatica Italiana di consultazione. Vol. 1. Bologna: il Mulino. 29-113. Sportiche, Dominique. (1992). Clitic constructions. Ms., UCLA. Tenny, Carol L. (1994). Aspectual Roles and the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
13
COMPLEMENTIZER DELETION AND VERB MOVEMENT IN STANDARD ITALIAN
Cecilia Poletto
1 INTRODUCTION In this work I will consider some cases of complementizer deletion (CD) in standard Italian subjunctive clauses and I will analyse them as cases of movement of the inflected verb to the complementizer position (from now on V to C). This will contribute to shed some light on the number and the type of functional projections which usually go under the definition of Comp. In this work I assume a split-CP perspective partially modifying Rizzi's (1995) proposal on the number of the CP positions activated in the CP layer in standard Italian. Cinque (1999) makes a similar move in the IP domain, providing evidence for a very fine-grained functional structure on the basis of the relative positions of the verb (past participle and inflected verb) with respect to adverbs. Combining the two proposals we obtain a very rich structure of the sentence that I will use in order to explain the phenomenon of CD. Cases of complementizer deletion are well known in the literature of languages like English and modern standard Italian. Rizzi (1982) already notes that subjunctive clauses embedded under bridge verbs have an optional complementizer. Beninca (1995) distinguishes among four types of CD. She considers ancient Italian complementizer deletion, which is extended to a wide range of contexts: (1) ma dice Niccolo non ha el capo (Beninca 1995 : 139, (7)) but says Niccolo not has the head modern English complementizer deletion, where the complementizer can be omitted in restrictive relative clauses on the object, but cannot be omitted in appositive relative clauses and in restrictive relative clauses on the subject:
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(2) a. the man (whom) I saw b. the man *(who) saw me c. John, *(whom) I saw yesterday modern Tuscan deletion in appositive relative clauses: (3) L'ho detto a Mario, Thai visto ieri it Lsaid to Mario, him you_saw yesterday and modern Italian complementizer deletion in subjunctive clauses selected by bridge verbs already noted by Rizzi (1982). Probably not all these cases are to be intepreted as V-to-C movement which blocks the insertion of a complementizer, but can be better accounted for by a theory including null complementizers. I will restrict my field of inquiry here to the cases of complementizers in modern standard Italian, showing the advantages of an approach cast in terms of V-to-C movement. The traditional analysis of Germanic V2 is based on the intuition that the asymmetry between main and embedded clauses with respect to verb movement is due to the presence of a complementizer: in main clauses where no complementizer is present, the verb can move to the second position of the sentence, analysed as C°. In embedded contexts, the presence of the complementizer filling the C° position bans verb raising to C°, yelding verb final order in languages like German and Dutch: (4) a. Hans hat seinen Freund gesehen Hans has his friend seen b. . . . dass Hans seinen Freund gesehen hat that Hans his friend seen has This analysis accounts for the complementary distribution of V in second position and presence of a complementizer. I will try to apply it to the standard Italian CD cases, partially modifying it inside a split-CP perspective. I will then consider other cases of optional complementizers in suppletive imperatives to which we can extend the V-to-C analysis: (5) a. Che nessuno si muova! 'That nobody moves!' b. Entri pure, signer Antonio 'Come in, Mister A.' Even for these cases, there are some cross-linguistic implications which can only be accounted for through a V-to-C analysis in the terms I adopt here. The paper is organized as follows: in section 2 I will examine CD in subjunctive clauses embedded under a bridge verb. I will try to put forth an analysis of this effect in terms of verb movement to a low C° position, probably the lowest C° position of the CP layer, which has been assumed to encode a [ifinite] feature by Rizzi (1995). In section 3 I will apply this analysis to cases like (5), which are interesting as they are not selected contexts. Here the feature triggering
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verb movement is given by the presence of an operator in CP, and is similar to cases of main interrogative sentences where the wh-operator triggers verb movement to the CP layer.
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COMPLEMENTIZER DELETION AND VERB MOVEMENT IN ITALIAN
The first empirical observation to be made is that the possibility to omit the complementizer in embedded structures is not general, but it is restricted to some particular contexts. Moreover, CD gives to the sentence the flavour of a higher stylistic level. I will show that an analysis in terms of verb movement to the C position where the complementizer originates is plausible for three reasons: the class of verbs selecting CD complements is exactly the same as in Germanic embedded V2 contexts. Moreover, when the complementizer is deleted the verb cannot occur to the right of higher adverbs, while this is possible when the complementizer is realized. The third argument regards the possibility to have a preverbal subject: for a class of speakers a preverbal subject is ungrammatical as it is in interrogative sentences, where the verb raises to C. Hence, the distribution of the subject is analogous to the one noted in structures where V-to-C applies. This supports the idea of V-to-C movement in CD contexts.
2.1
Complementizer deletion as V-to-C: the data
Complementizer deletion is possible in standard Italian under some particular conditions. (6) illustrates the case in point. (6) a. Credo che abbia gia parlato con te Lthink that heJiave+sUBJ already spoken with you b. Credo abbia gia parlato con te CD is felt to be optional and stylistically marked: the sentence in (6b) is slightly more formal as compared to (6a). CD is possible only if the embedded verb is inflected for subjunctive (as in (6)), future indicative or conditional as in (7) and (8), respectively. For some speakers CD is possible only with a subjunctive, but not with a future indicative or a conditional, for others it is possible with all three verbal forms but is felt more marked with conditional and future indicative. This seems to suggest that there is a difference between two types of CD, as we will see below. (7) Credo sara interessante ascoltarlo Lthink it_be+FUT interesting to listen to him (8) Credo funzionerebbe meglio, se lo riparassi Lthink it_work+COND better if you_repaired it Moreover, CD is possible only if the embedded sentence occupies the basic complement position, as in (9), and not if it is left dislocated as in (10). This fact has already been noted for
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English by Stowell (1981), who gave a treatment of English complementizer deletion in terms of the ECP. He postulates an empty category in C which must occur in a position governed by the selecting verb. In the minimalist framework all governement relations have to be rethinked in other terms, as governement is not more a proper syntactic relation inside UG, even though all empirical observations made in terms of governement retain their value. In this paper I will propose an alternative analysis to capture the contrast between (lOa) and (lOb). (9) a. Tutti credono che sia una spia everybody thinks that is a spy b. Tutti credono sia una spia (10) a. Che sia una spia, lo credono tutti that he_be+suBJ a spy, everybody believes it b. *Sia una spia, lo credono tutti On the basis of these examples we can conclude that CD is submitted to at least two requirements, one regarding the position of the embedded clause, and one regarding the kind of inflection on the embedded verb. Only subjunctive, future indicative and conditional in the embedded sentence permit CD, and only when the embedded sentence occupies a complement position. The third restriction on CD regards the selecting verb, which must be of a particular class:1 (11) a. *Mi displace lo faccia I am sorry it he_ do+SUBJ b. Credo lo faccia Lthinkit he_do+SUBJ Note that CD is also possible when the selecting element is an adjective or, at a higher stylistic level, a noun: (12) a. Sonocerto tu lopossafare Lam certain you it can do b. La probabilita si tratti di uno scambio di persona, e molto remota The probability it_is an exchange of person, is very remote Thus, we can sum up the facts in the following way. CD is submitted to three distinct conditions: (13) a. the embedded clause must be in a complement position, b. the embedded verb must be a subjunctive, a conditional or a future indicative c. the selecting element must be of a special class. In the next section I will give an account for this pattern.
1
We will specify the class in question in the next section.
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2.2 The analysis The phenomenon of CD has originally been noted by Rizzi (1982), who connects it to Aux-to-C structures, without explicitly arguing that CD is a case of verb movement to the C° position. Scorretti (1991) treats CD as a case similar to raising contexts, where the CP projection is not projected and the structure embedded under the main verb is simply an IP. Verbs like Italian credere 'believe' are similar to raising verbs in that they can select an IP and not a CP as their complement. Note that the CP versus IP selection possibility would be completely optional. This view, though appealing, is not the one I will take here. First of all, it is quite difficult to deal with optionality in the minimalist framework. Moreover, bridge verbs in standard Italian would be completely different from bridge verbs in the Germanic languages, which are assumed to select a recursive CP, hence a larger structure with respect to other verbs and not a smaller structure as IP. Instead, I will capitalize on the observation that the class of Italian verbs permitting CD is the same class that permits V2 in embedded contexts in V2 languages like German, where V2 is a generally confined to matrix sentences. This class of verbs is known in the literature as bridge verbs (see the discussion in Vikner 1995 on the terminology). It seems interesting to establish a connection between Italian bridge verbs and Germanic bridge verbs which permit embedded V2.2 Therefore I will hypothesize that the selectional properties of bridge verbs are the same in Italian and in Germanic languages. In other words, I will draw a parallel between the following two sentences: (14) a. Credo sia gia partito Lthink he_is+suBJ already gone b. Ich glaube er ist schon weg The traditional analysis of V2 in Germanic languages, such as German, Dutch and mainland Scandinavian (MLSC), is well known and has already been sketched in the introduction: it treats V2 as a case of V-to-C° movement and movement of an XP into the SpecC position. The fact that V2 is in these languages essentially a matrix phenomenon is immediately captured by the fact that in embedded sentences a complementizer occupies the C° position preventing V-to-C° movement. What about our cases of embedded V2 selected by a special class of verbs in German and MLSC?3 This seems to constitute a counterexample to the claim that the complementizer and the verb can occupy the same position. Note that in German the complementizer alternates with the moved verb, while in MLSC the complementizer and the moved verb cooccur (cf. Vikner 1995 for a detailed discussion and examples for various Scandinavian languages). In the literature we find essentially two proposals to solve this problem. They both refer to the selectional properties of bridge verbs, which are seen as "special" in some sense. The first one assumes a recursive CP which can only be selected by bridge verbs. In this way both a complementizer and the inflected verb can occur in two distinct C° positions. This is clearly the 2
I will not discuss languages that have unrestricted V2 in embedded contexts, limiting the parallel to German and mainland Scandinavian, which restrict the context of embedded V2 to the class of verbs we are considering. In the paper I will use German for the examples concerning Germanic languages.
3
Dutch has no cases of embedded V2 (cf. Vikner 1995).
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solution that has to be adopted for MLSC, as both the complementizer and the verb are visible at the left edge of the sentence. Moreover, it is compatible with the German data too. The other possible analysis is that bridge verbs do not posses any selectional properties at all, as the CP projection of their complement is free from selectional features and can host V2 exactly as matrix contexts. This hypothesis can handle the German facts but not the MLSC, which need two positions at the left periphery of the sentence. The third possibility is to analyse embedded V2 as a case of V-to-I movement, on a par with the analysis proposed by many authors (cf. among others Santorini 1989) for languages with generalized V2 in both main and embedded clauses. In this case we would have to assume a difference between main V2 and embedded V2 in German and MLSC: main V2 has to be treated as V-to-C movement (cf. the arguments given by Schwartz & Vikner (1996)) while embedded V2 would be V-to-I movement. Moreover, it seems that the arguments discussed in Schwartz & Vikner 1996 are valid also for embedded contexts. Hence, I will discard this hypothesis referring to this work for a detailed discussion of the various arguments. Let's thus assume for the moment that embedded V2 is a case of V-to-C at least in the subset of Germanic languages we are considering here. Hence, we can maintain the hypothesis that all instances of V2 are cases of V-to-C movement. This is true even in embedded contexts, where the complementizer is not realized because the inflected verb occupies its position as in (14b) in German or when a higher complementizer is realized in mainland Scandinavian. If we want to adopt this analysis for the Italian CD phenomenon as well, we can formalize our proposal as follows: the difference between (6a) and (6b) is of a syntactic nature and precisely the one illustrated in (15).
When the complementizer is not realized as in (15b) the inflected verb has moved to C° and fills this position, exactly as in German V2 contexts. Before this hypothesis can be applied to Italian CD, we have to solve at least two problems. If CD is a case of embedded V2: (i) why is standard Italian not a V2 language in all matrix clauses?, (ii) in CD contexts why do we find only half of the V2 phenomenon, namely, V-to-C0 movement, but we do not see an XP in the SpecC position as it is the case in Germanic languages? As for the first problem, there are many proposals in the literature (see among others Tomaselli 1990 and Vikner 1990) that consider V2 as a movement phenomenon triggered by a morphological feature in C°, which must attract the verb in order to be satisfied (or checked,
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in more modern terms). Standard Italian is not a V2 language, so no morphological feature is realized in C in declarative sentences. Nevertheless, I will propose that only in the CD context and in other restricted cases, as interrogatives, is there a feature in C° which can attract the verb to C in standard Italian. We will see later what kind of feature this can be. Let's for the moment call it feature F. Feature F must clearly be selected by the main verb. Hence, I will not propose anything new with respect to the analyses that consider embedded V2 under bridge verbs as a consequence of special selectional properties of these verbs. In standard Italian bridge verbs select a feature F on the embedded C° position, a feature which can be expressed by a complementizer or by the inflected verb through raising to the relevant position. Hence, the fact that standard Italian is not a general V2 language does not imply that V-to-C is banned from all contexts. In some special structures, like CD contexts or interrogative sentences, the the inflected verb can raise to C° even in standard Italian. The second problem we have mentioned concerns the second half of the V2 phenomenon, namely, the movement of the XP to the SpecC position. This is indeed possible in Italian, at least for some speakers, as the following example shows: (16) a. Credo lamela abbia mangiato Lthink the apple he_has eaten b. Ich glaube den Apfel hat er gegessen The example is grammatical only with a strong focus on the preposed object la mela 'the apple'. However, in standard Italian it is not obligatory to fill the SpecC position in CD structures, as it generally is in V2 languages. CD is thus from the observative point of view more a V1 than a V2 phenomenon, as the inflected verb raises to C° but the SpecC position is (at least phonetically) empty. Note that even in V2 languages there are some restricted cases of VI: in German they are only cases in which a null operator can be plausibly assumed in SpecC, as yes/no interrogatives or imperatives. In other languages (generally Old Romance and Old Germanic languages) VI can be found in the so called narrative contexts, where the null operator analysis is less obvious, even though it has been proposed. In CD structures the verb can be the first element of the embedded clause, as the above examples show (cf. (14)). If we consider the V2 phenomenon as a combination of two separate types of movement, namely, V° to C° (in order to satisfy a morphological feature located in the C° head, as we have seen above) and movement of an XP to the SpecC position, the problem disappears. In fact, it is in principle possible to have one type of movement without the other, as they are triggered by (partially) different mechanisms. Therefore, I will provisionally assume that CD can be treated as a case of V-to-C movement, though it partially differs from Germanic embedded V2, because it does not require the movement of an XP to the SpecC position. In the next section I will provide three arguments in favour of this hypothesis.
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2.3
Arguments for V-to-C
2.3.1 A parallel with German bridge verbs. The first piece of evidence for treating CD as a case of verb movement to C° is constituted, as we have seen in the previous section, by the parallel between CD and embedded V2 in V2 languages like standard German. The class of elements (verbs, adjectives or nouns) which permits CD in Italian is the same class which permits embedded V2 in German:4 (17) a. Ich glaube du hast es getan I think you have it done b. Credo (che) tu 1'abbia fatto Lthink you it have+SUBJ done (18) a. Es ist sicher, er tut es it is sure he does it b. E sicuro (che) lo faccia (19) a. Die Hoffnung, er wird es schaffen, nimmt standig zu the hope, he will succeed, is increasing b. La speranza si tratti di un errore non e ancora svanita The hope it is an error has not faded yet Moreover, elements which do not select embedded V2 clauses in German as factive verbs do not permit CD in Italian: (20) a. *Johann bereut, John regrets b. *Mi rammarico I regret
er konnte nicht kommen he could not come non ti abbia parlato not to_you heJiave+SUBJ spoken
It is interesting to note that both in Italian and in German embedded V-to-C is stilistically a slightly marked phenomenon. This renders the two constructions even more similar than it seems at first sight. 2.3.2 Movement around adverbs. The second piece of evidence for assuming that CD is verb movement to C° is provided by adverb positions. As already mentioned in the introduction, I will assume Cinque's analysis of the number and the type of FPs which correspond to IP in more traditional terms. I will not sum up all the arguments Cinque gives for proposing such a complex structure, but will limit myself to briefly sketch the higher portion of the FPs contained in IP which will be relevant to our analysis.
4
There is a certain amount of variation inside the class of bridge verbs, which is not always the same in all Germanic languages. Some verbs, like believe, costitute the "core" of the class and are bridge verbs in all languages, some others belong to the periphery and do not have the property of triggering embedded V2 in all languages.
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The structure of the higher portion of IP as proposed by Cinque (1999) is the one illustrated in (21).
(21) indicates the order of the FPs and the adverbs located in the specifiers position of each FP.5 Hence, we have a quite complex syntactic realization of mood and modality: the highest position is the one occupied by speech act adverbs like frankly, located in the specifier of a speech act modal head, the following is an evaluative MoodP, which hosts adverbs like luckily, followed by epistemic modality projection, which hosts epistemic adverbs. The series of Mood projections is broken up by the two tense projections (past and future) which are higher than the irrealis mood and the modal FPs (only the highest is represented here by RootModP). If this complex structure is contained in the IP layer, and assuming with Cinque that adverbs cannot be moved from the position where they appear (apart from topicalization, which is easily detectable) the position of adverbs with respect to the inflected verb constitutes a good test to establish where the verb is located. As each of these projections has a head position, we could in principle find that the verb can be found in all possible positions or only in some, perhaps depending on its inflection.6 Let's restrict our inquiry to subjunctive, conditional and future indicative under bridge verbs, namely, the context where CD can apply. If CD does not apply, a main verb can appear lower or higher than epistemic adverbs:
5
I have not indicated the internal structure of each FP for space reasons.
6
Cinque proposes that the verb can stop in a head position if it is marked strong for the feature corresponding to the head.
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(22) a. Credo che sicuramente lo faccia Lthink that surely he does it
b. Credo che lo faccia sicuramente7 I_think that he does it surely
Following Cinque's proposal we have to postulate that the verb can raise to the EvalMod0 head crossing the position of the epistemic adverb or remain below, perhaps in the epistemic head, or even lower down in the structure. Main verbs cannot move to the left of evaluative adverbs as (23) shows. (23) a. Credo Uhink b. *Credo Lthink
che fortunatamente lo faccia sempre that luckily he does it always che lo faccia fortunatamente (sempre) that he does it luckily (always)
Again following the structure presented in (21) we can interpret the contrast in (23) as showing that the verb cannot move higher than the evaluative modal head.8 Let's now examine the same examples where CD has applied: (24) a. *Credo sicuramente lo faccia Lthink surely he does it
b. Credo lo faccia sicuramente Lthink he does it surely
Note that if the complementizer is deleted, the verb has to cross the epistemic adverb raising higher, while this movement is not obligatory at all in non-CD contexts. We have seen that in non-CD contexts the verb is not forced to move to the EvalMod0 head leaving the epistemic adverb at its left. However, the movement to the left of epistemic adverbs becomes obligatory when the complementizer is not present. The relevant contrast is thus the one in (25). (25) a. Credo che sicuramente lo faccia Lthink that surely he does it
b. *Credo sicuramente lo faccia Lthink surely he does it
This fact has a natural explanation following the idea I am proposing here, namely, that CD is an instance of V-to-C movement. As the verb has to move to C°, it must occur in a higher position with respect to epistemic adverbs. Hence, it must move not only to the EvalMod head, but higher to the C° position. This is not the case for the non-CD context, where the verb can move to EvalMod but can also remain in a lower head position. If our claim that the verb moves to C° in CD contexts is correct, we expect that the same type of judgment is found with higher adverbs like evaluatives: they must be found to the right of the verb which has raised to C and cannot occur to its left as it is the case in non-CD contexts:9 7
Not all epistemic adverbs are grammatical in this position, for instance an adverb like probabilmente yelds ungrammaticality. This might be ude to some independent factor. It is important to note however, that all epistiemic adverbs give an ungrammatical result if the are placed in front of the verb when CD applies.
8
It is interesting to note that speech act adverbs like 'frankly' seem to resist embedding: *Credo che francamente lo fard.
9
The adverb fortunatamente 'luckily' can be found in a right dislocated position with the typical pause intonation. We will not consider this case.
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(26) a. *Credo fortunatamente lo faccia sempre Lthink luckily he does it always b. *Credo lo faccia fortunatamente sempre Lthink he does it luckily always (26a) is out, but (26b) is also impossible, if a dislocation intonation is excluded. It is not clear why the evaluative adverb cannot occur in (26b). One could think that this type of adverb needs a sort of Spec-head agreement relation as it is the case for other types of elements (see for example Rizzi (1991) for wh-elements, Haegemann & Zanuttini (1996) for negative XPs) and that it cannot occur (apart from the right dislocated position) if the verb has not remained in the EvalMod0 head. However, as this point needs a detailed discussion of this adverb type, we will leave the problem open, noting that the fact that (25a) is out already confirms our hypothesis that the verb has to raise to C° in CD contexts but not when the complementizer is overtly realized. The relevant contrast is the one between (23a) and (26a), here repeated as (27). (27) a. Credo che fortunatamente lo faccia sempre Lthink that luckily he does it always b. *Credo fortunatamente lo faccia sempre (26a) shows that the verb has to cross the evaluative mood position in order to reach the lowest C° position. We have assumed so far that CD is analogous to the verb second phenomenon in the sense that it is an instance of V-to-C movement. We mentioned German and mainland Scandinavian languages, which exibit embedded verb second under bridge verbs. We have seen that in German no complementizer appears when the verb moves to C° in the context just mentioned. However, it is a well-known fact that this is not true of all the Germanic languages we are considering: mainland Scandinavian languages show embedded V2 and a complementizer which appears above the CP where the verb is moved: (28) a. Ich glaube I think b. Hun sagde she said
du hast es getan you have it done at vi skulle ikke kobe denne bog that we shoud not buy this book
German Danish
With respect to to (28b) Vikner (1990, (103)) suggests that there are two C positions in these structures. He considers the phenomenon of embedded V2 as a case of CP recursion. We do not need to postulate CP recursion as the split-CP analysis we adopt here provides us with the tools to account for cases as (28b). The claim that there exists more than one C position in the Germanic domain has been put forth in a number of recent work. Hoekstra (1992) shows that in Dutch dialects three distinct C positions are available, as three complementizers can cooccorr as illustrated in (29) (which corresponds to (Ib) of Hoekstra 1992). (29) Dat is niet zo gek als of dat hij gedacht had that is not as crazy Cl C2 C3 he thought had
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Hoekstra notes that it is possible to coordinate sentences at the level of the first, the second or the third complementizer, as in (30) (Hoekstra 1992, (4)). (30) a. Als of dat hij koning is en dat zij koningin is Cl C2 C3 he king is and C3 she queen is b. Als of dat hij koning is en of dat zij koningin is Cl C2 C3 he king is and C2 C3 she queen is These examples show that the three complementizers occupy different head positions and force us to assume that the structure of the sentence above AgrP is much more complex than what is normally assumed.10 As for the Romance domain, Rizzi (1995) has proposed a split-CP account considering languages like French and standard Italian. Some Northern Italian and Provengal varieties clearly show that the split-CP hypothesis is necessary by exhibiting a phenomenon quite similar to Dutch multiple complementizers illustrated in (30) above (SCI = subject clitic): (31) a. pensu che u Mario ch' u fagga staseia L'Ago di Borghetto di Varo LthinkthatM. that it does tonight b. pensu che tutti ch i 1'aggian avu in bellu vutu Lthink that everybody that SCI it have had a good note (32) quan credou que la mourt que tustabe au pourtau when he.believed that the death that knocked at the door
(Ronjat 1937)
These data are interesting as they show two complementizers with the subject in between. Note that, at least in the Northern Italian variety reported here, this is not a left dislocated position as quantifiers can also occur there (cf. (31b)). I will assume then that Rizzi (1995) is right when he proposes to split up the CP projection in several different XPs, each hosting a different type of category. Moreover, it seems that the preverbal subject position, at least in some Northern Italian and Provencal varieties, is located inside the CP layer. The examples in (31) and (32) thus show that a layered structure of CP must contain a subject position at some point as in the following structure: (33) [CP [Co che [speccsubj DP [Co che] IP]]] This is probably true also for standard Italian that does not directly show two complementizers, but has some interesting properties in interrogative or Aux-to-C sentences which can be shown to derive from the fact that the subject position is in the CP layer and not in SpecAgr as it has been claimed so far.11
10
Still on the basis of a Germanic variety Alber (1994) has proposed a complex structure of the CP domain.
11
For a more detailed discussion on the fine structure of the CP, see Poletto 1997.
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Not many dialects present a structure like (33) above, but many more varieties admit a subject in the pre-complementizer position in suppletive imperatives where a subjunctive verb is realized: (34) a. Gnun ch' a s bogia! nobody that SCI moves b. Mario ch' a s presenta... M. that SCI presents himself c. Caidun ch' a m giuta! somebody that SCI me helps d. Nissugn ch' i s movi! nobody that SCI moves e. Qualchedun ch' um ma giuta! somebody that SCI me helps f. Mario ch' u s present!... M. that SCI presents
Torinese
Riva di Chieri Cevio Valle Maggia Borghetto di Varo Carcare
This shows that the hypothesis of a subject position inside the CP layer is correct for many dialects. In Poletto 1997, I have claimed that languages with only one complementizer have complementizer movement inside the CP layer: the complementizer is merged into the lowest C° position and then moved higher depending on the features it has to check in every single structure, declarative, relative, etc. Hence, the difference between, say, Provencal which has two complementizers, and standard Italian, which only has one, would be similar to the difference found in the verbal domain, in which some languages use an auxiliary and a main verb in order to express the same strong features that are expressed in other languages by a unique verbal form raising up to the position of the auxiliary. If it is true that also in standard Italian there is a layered structure of the CP and that the complementizer can start in the lowest position and then raise to other positions, the question is: assuming that CD is V-to-C° in standard Italian, to which C does the verb move in these cases? In order to capture the CD phenomenon it suffices to say that the inflected verb has access to the CP layer. In fact, as the complementizer is merged in the lowest C° position and then possibly raised, the verb simply needs to fill the lowest C° through movement from IP and it will prevent the occurrence of a complementizer as it occupies the position in which the complementizer is merged. Thus, even though the complementizer is superficially found in higher C° positions, the lowest position of the CP layer can never be filled by any other element, at least in languages like standard Italian.12 12
On the contrary, in languages like Provencal which admit merging of a complementizer at a higher level inside CP, it is possible to have a complementizer and V-to-C movement. In fact, there are some examples in some Piedmontese varieties, which are judged old-fashioned but still grammatical, where a complementizer cooccurrs with subject clitic inversion, which can be plausibly analysed as V-to-C: (i) Lon ch' a va-lo? Crucially, the speakers who accept (i) are the same who accept the double complementizer structure.
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It is possible to find some clue of how far the verb moves looking at the way in which the CP layer is structured in standard Italian. Recall that CD is subject to three distinct restrictions, listed in (13) in section 2.1, repeated here: a. the embedded clause must be in a complement position, b. the embedded verb must be a subjunctive, a conditional or a future indicative, c. the selecting element must be of a special class. Note that CD is possible only if the embedded verb is a subjunctive, a future or a conditional form. These forms all have a modal quality, in the sense that they all express a possibility and not a reality. Hence, they all express a [—realis] feature. Moreover, the class of selecting elements (verbs, adjectives and nouns) all express an opinion. Therefore, the feature they select can be plausibly assumed to be a [—realis] feature which is realized on the head of the complement and attracts the verb into the CP domain. We can follow Rizzi's (1995) observation that modal features are realized in some languages very low in the CP layer, it could be assumed that this is true also for standard Italian, and that in CD contexts a [—realis] feature occurs on the C° head located lower than the interrogative subdomain. This feature must be realized by some overt element: a complementizer or the inflected verb, if the verb is compatible with it; hence if it can express the [—realis] feature as subjunctive future or conditional. Following this hypothesis, it must be assumed that the complementizer can occupy the head of this low head in the context we are considering. Rizzi (1995), on the contrary, assumes that finite complementizers in standard Italian are realized only on the highest head, namely, Force0. As already mentioned this contradiction is easily solved by assuming that the complementizer is merged in the lowest C° position and then moved depending on the strong features it has to check. There is one piece of evidence that the movement of the verb in this context does not cross the left dislocation position, as it is the case for V2 in Rhaetoromance varieties: (35) Credo, il tuo libro che loro lo apprezzerebbero molto T believe, your book, that they would appreciate it a lot' In this sentence there is a left dislocated element (// tuo libro 'your book'), which precedes the complementizer. As Rizzi judges this sentence ungrammatical, he concludes that a complementizer such as che 'that' can only occupy a head position located higher than TopP, namely, the head of ForceP. However, the sentence in (35) is judged well formed or at most marginal by many speakers. Hence, one could conclude exactly the opposite, namely, that the complementizer can be realized in a position lower than TopP, at least in contexts like the one we are examining. It could be the case that for some speakers the complementizer has to raise to the highest C position, while for others it can remain lower. As the data need a more extended inquiry among Italian speakers, I will leave this problem open. Let us sum up the proposal put forth in this section: verb (as well as adjectives and nouns) which express an opinion select a [—realis] feature located in a low C head inside the CP domain. This feature has to be realized by the complementizer or by the verb which moves into this C°. This analysis could be applied to Germanic languages as well, distinguishing beteween the core V2 cases found in matrix clauses, where V movement would be triggered by an Agreement
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feature in the Comp domain (as proposed by many authors cf. section 2.2), and embedded V2 under bridge verbs, which would be triggered by a [—realis] feature inside the Fin0 head. I will not pursue this idea any further.
2.4
A third argument: the subject position
In this section I will discuss part of an issue which has not been mentioned until now, namely, the subject position. I will limit myself here to show that a prediction the analysis of CD as V-to-C makes is correct. If CD is a case of V-to-C, there should be some effects visible on the subject, and notably these effects should be similar to those found with other V-to-C cases, like main interrogatives, for instance. The data regarding the subject position are rather delicate, as speakers give different judgments. Giorgi & Pianesi (1997) show that speakers split into two classes: those who admit only a pro subject (class I speakers) and those who admit a lexical subject (class II speakers). For class II speakers, who admit a lexical subject, it can only appear to the left of the inflected verb: (36) a. Credo Gianni arrivi stasera Lthink John arrive+SUBJ tonight
b. Credevo nessuno arrivasse in tempo Lthought nobody arrive+sUBJ in time
No one accepts sentences where the subject has been inverted as in Germanic V2 contexts, exactly as in interrogative sentences: (37) a.*Credevo fosse Gianni arrivato Lthough had John arrived
b.*E Gianni arrivato? has John come
Let us concentrate for the moment on class I speakers, who only admit a pro subject.13 This situation is identical to main interrogative contexts, where no subject can intervene between the wh-element and the inflected verb. Moreover, there is no postverbal position for the subject as in (38). (38) a. *Cosa Gianni ha fatto? what John has done
b.*Cosaha Gianni fatto? what has John done
Hence, it seems that this class of speakers treats the subject in interrogative and in CD contexts exactly in the same way: only pro-drop subjects are admitted. This fact is immediately captured by our hypothesis that CD is a case of V movement into the CP domain, while it would remain unexplained if we assumed an analysis in terms of CP deletion or of empty complementizers.
Ll
Speakers who admit a pro subject also find that the second person pronoun is possible in the preverbal position, but this pronoun has a particular distribution in subjunctive contexts, as it is obligatory and no pro-drop is licensed. I will not pursue this matter any further, but it is clear that the second person pronoun in these contexts is different from tonic pronouns normally found in standard Italian (cf. Cardinaletti 1997).
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One problem remains concerning the second class of speakers, who admit a lexical subject in CD contexts. This problem will not be treated here, for a detailed discussion see Poletto 1997.
2.5
Conclusion
The CD phenomenon found in standard Italian can be treated as a case of V-to-C movement triggered by a [—realis] modal feature located in a low C° position on the basis of three arguments. The first is the analogy found with German embedded V2 contexts, where V-to-C is selected by the same class of verbs that selects CD in standard Italian. The second argument is based on Cinque's hypothesis on adverb positions: it is shown that the verb cannot occur to the right of higher adverbs in CD contexts, while it can if the complementizer is realized. This suggests that the verb must raise higher than the adverbs only when the complementizer is deleted. The third argument regards the subject position: for a class of speakers CD shows exactly the same subject obviation phenomenon found in main interrogatives where V-to-C applies. In the next section I will examine another case of CD which can also be treated as V-to-C movement.
3 DISJUNCTIVE CLAUSES In this section I will consider another case of CD where the complementizer is apparently totally optional in standard Italian, namely, disjunctive clauses, which usually show a subjunctive form of the verb both in standard Italian and in most Northern Italian varieties. The data in (39) illustrate the optionality of the complementizer.14
14
Standard Italian also shows the possibility of omitting the complementizer of the second conjunct: (i) Che piova o non piova, noi facciamo una passeggiata that rains or not rains, we make a walk It is not possible to omit the complementizer in the first conjunct and realize it in the second conjunct: (ii) *Piova o che non piova, noi facciamo una passeggiata rains or that not rains, we make a walk The difference between (i) and (ii) could be interpreted as a constraint imposed by the disjunctive element o 'or', which, on a par with conjunction structures with 'and', needs that the two conjuncts be of the same structural category. In (i) the two structural portions conjoined are IPs, where the verb reaches Agrs, leaving the complementizer out of the conjoined portion of the structure. In (ii) it is not possible to conj oin the two IPs leaving the complementizer out. Hence the constraint imposed by the coordinating element o is not respected and the sentence is ungrammatical. This explanation of the contrast between (i) and (ii) entails that the verb does not move to C when no complementizer is present, or in a split-CP perspective as the one adopted here, that the inflected verb and the complementizer do not occupy the same position inside the CP domain. Note that if we attribute the contrast between (i) and (ii) to the structural asymmetry between the two conjuncts, an analysis which postulates a null complementizer (and not V-to-C movement) when no complementizer is realized cannot be persued. This is so because the explanation of the structural asymmetry between the two conjuncts crucially assumes that,
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(39) a. Che piova o che non piova, noi facciamo una passeggiata that rains or that not rains, we make a walk 'Whether it rains or not we are going for a walk' b. Che venga o che non venga, noi facciamo una passeggiata that comes or that not comes, we make a walk 'Whether he comes or not, we are going for a walk' c. Piova o non piova, . . . rains or not rains d. Venga o non venga, ... comes or not comes In the following discussion I will try to show that cases like (39c) and (39d) are instances of verb movement to a C° position inside a CP layer which is split in several CP positions, each of which realizes a different semantic feature. In the Northern Italian region the most widespread structure is the one represented in (39a) and (39b), where the complementizer is realized in both conjuncts. In many varieties this is the only accepted possibility, as in the Vicentino variety of Cereda or in the Friulian variety of Palmanova. (40) a. Che piove o che no piove, noialtri ndemo fora that rains or that not rains, we_others go out b. *Che piove o no piove,... that rains or not rains c. *Piove o no piove, . . . Rains or not rains
Cereda (Vicentino)
(41) a.
Palmanova (Friuli)
Cal plovi o ca noi plovi, . . . that_SCl rains or that_SCl not_SCl rains b. *A1 plovi o noi plovi, . . . SCI rains or not_SCl rains c. ??Cal plovi o (a) noi plovi,... that_SCl rains or (SCI) notJSCl rains
Note that also this type of dialects, on a par with standard Italian, can be treated only by the V-to-C analysis. The null complementizer analysis proposed by Stowell (1981) would predict these cases to be ungrammatical both in standard Italian and in the Northern Italian dialects (NIDs), as there is no head which governs the C° position, which is the highest head in the structure, and the constraint on governement of emtpy categories seems to be universal. Moreover, when no complementizer is phonetically realized, the structurally conjoined portion is the one containing the verb, namely, an IP. Hence, the explanation of the contrast between (i) and (ii) on the basis of a structural asymmetry is in contrast both with an analysis which considers sentences like (39c) or (39d) as cases of V-to-C movement, and with an analysis that treats these cases as having a phonetically null complementizer. The only possible explanation remains an analysis in which (39c) and (39d) are treated as pure IPs. This amounts to saying that the CP layer is only optionally activated in these structures, but as optionality cannot be handled in a minimalist framework (or even in other theoretical frameworks), I will not pursue this analysis.
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this case of CD cannot be accounted for by an analysis as the one proposed by Scorretti (1991) for the CD cases examined in section 2, as there is no selecting verb here which can either select CP or IP. The basic idea of having alternatively a CP, when the complementizer is present, or an IP, when it is absent, could still be applied. We should have to assume that standard Italian can realize disjunctive clauses as CPs or as IPs, while in the NIDs the only possibility would be a CP, whence the obligatoriness of the complementizer. However, this analysis is only a pure description of the facts without any intrinsic explanatory value as it does not derive the alternance between CP and IP in standard Italian and the necessity of having a CP in the NIDs from any other feature which distinguishes standard Italian from the NIDs considered above. One could try to relate the difference between standard Italian and the NIDs to some other feature, as the "weakeness of Agr§P" manifested by the presence of subject clitics in the NIDs. But, if we pursue the analysis of disjunctive sentences in the NIDs, we find that some varieties also show the possibility of deleting both complementizers as in standard Italian, as in the example in (42). This type of structure is quite rare, as it has only been found in six dialects out of a sample of a hundred varieties. The six cases are Brione s. M. (spoken in Switzerland but being typologically a northern Lombard dialect), Vaprio d'Adda (Lombard), Cles (Trentino), Forni Avoltri (Friulian), Pramaggiore (Veneto), Remanzacco (Friulian). (42) a. Vegni o no vegni,... comes or not comes 'Whether he comes or not, . . . ' b. Plovi o no plovi,... rains or not rains
Remanzacco
Forni Avoltri
Again, the difference among dialects in which it is not possible to omit the complementizer and dialects in which CD is grammatical is not clear if we assume the CP-versus-IP hypothesis, as it cannot be related to some more general property (as for instance the weakness of the AgrS projection). Another interesting structure which can shed some light on the problem regarding the difference among languages that omit the complementizer and languages that do not is the one found in many Friulian, Lombard and Trentino varieties which shows subject clitic inversion (SC1I): (43) a. Piov-el o non piov-el, . . . rains-SCl or not rains-SCl b. Plov-el o non plov-el, . . . c. Pio- el o pio- el mia,... rains-SCl or rains-SCl not
Castello (Trentino) Forni Avoltri (Friuli) Malonno (Brescia)
The existence of SC1I, and the fact that it never cooccurs with a complementizer15 shows that these varieties have V-to-C movement of the inflected verb in disjunctive structures, both preventing the insertion of a complementizer and showing the enclitic morpheme.
15
See Poletto 1997, ch. 3, §2 for the general criteria to determine if SC1I is V-to-C.
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As the verb moves, (and movement can only be forced by feature checking according to a minimalist view of the grammar) we have to assume that some strong feature inside the CP layer must be checked by verb movement. The structure of sentences like those in (43) would thus be very similar to the structure of main interrogative sentences, where the verb raises to C°, as it has been proposed by Rizzi (1991), who claims that 1° is endowed with a [+wh] feature which has to raise to C° in order to enter a Spec-head relation with the wh-operator. Hence, the structure of disjunctive sentences should be similar to interrogatives also in the sense that an operator is located in a specifier position of the CP layer. Note that the existence of a disjunctive operator is directly visible in some languages, like e.g., English. The very existence of these structures where V movement to the CP layer is visible through inversion favours the analysis of V-to-C for all varieties where no complementizer is present, hence even for cases like (42). I will therefore assume that also in disjunctive sentences the CD phenomenon has to be interpreted as V-to-C movement. In the varieties in which the only possible structure is the one in (39a) and (39b), where the complementizer is realized in both conjuncts, the strong disjunctive feature is checked by the complementizer, which is in fact obligatory in both conjuncts. The difference between dialects that have SC1I and dialects that have a complementizer would be the same as the one found in interrogative sentences, where some dialects have maintained SC1I and others have a complementizer after the wh-element. What about the varieties where no complementizer is present and no SC1I is triggered, as in the examples in (42)? In this case we have no direct evidence of V-to-C movement. We could well assume that these dialects and standard Italian have a zero complementizer, which is used in these contexts and it is restricted to this usage because it is marked with a strong disjunctive feature which can only be checked in these structures. The second possibility is to admit verb movement to the CP layer even in those varieties where no SC1I is visible. Why do these dialects not show SC1I? Again the choice between a zero complementizer and verb movement to C° is an empirical matter, which has to be decided for every single dialect. Standard Italian does not offer us tools in order to decide which option is preferable, because it has no SC1I. Even though the verb should raise to C°, this movement is not visible, exactly as in main interrogative structures. The same seems to be true for dialects like many Ligurian and Lombard varieties. Note, however, that in the varieties in which SC1I is attested in disjunctive structures, the verbal form used is not the subjunctive, but the indicative (or in some cases the indicative form is indistinguishible from the subjunctive when SC1I is added): (44) a. Plo- el o plo- el miga, . . . rains-SCl or rains-SCl not b. Che 1 ploes o che 1 ploes miga,... that SCI rains or that SCI rains not
Monno
In the variety of Monno (eastern Lombardy), SC1I only occurs with the indicative. If the subjunctive mood is used, a complementizer is realized. In the variety of Malonno inversion occurs with the indicative form:
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Cecilia Poletto
(45) a. Egnel o egnel mia, . . . comes+INDIC-SCl or comes+INDIC-SCl not b. pioel o pioel mia, ... rains+lNDlC-SCl or rains+lNDlC-SCl not
Malonno
In the variety of Bagnolo S. Vito (Mantova), an Emilian dialect, only inversion is attested, and the form is ambiguous between indicative and subjunctive: (46) Vegna-1 o vegna-1 mia,... comes-SCl or comes-SCl not
Bagnolo S. Vito
In the variety of Villa Lagarina (a Trentino dialect) inversion only occurs when the form is ambiguous between and indicative and a subjunctive, while when the form is unambiguously subjunctive no inversion and no complementizer appears. The same is true in the Friulian dialect of Forni Avoltri. (47) a. Piov-el o non piov-el, . . . rains-SCl or not rains-SCl b. Vegna o nol vegna, . . . Comes or not_SCl comes
Villa Lagarina
(48) a. Plovi o no plovi, no i fazin uno chiaminada rains+SUBJ or not rains+SUBJ we make a walk b. Plovel o no plovel,... rains+lNDlC-SCl or not rains+lNDlC-SCl
Forni Avoltri
It thus seems that inversion is possible only when the verb is inflected in its indicative form (or the form can be interpreted as an indicative). Present subjunctive does not seem to tolerate SC1I. This opens up the possibility that present subjunctive also moves to the C domain, but this movement is not visible. Note that in order to explain the distribution found in dialects like Forni Avoltri we have to assume that V-to-C is possible in disjunctive structures, as SC1I is attested. Cases like (47a) could still be treated as involving a null complementizer, but at this point we would have a redundancy in our analysis. In cases like (47a) the complementizer is not realized as the verb has moved to the lowest C, the position where the complementizer is usually inserted (or merged, in minimalist terms), and then moved further to an higher C°. In cases like (47b) the absence of the complementizer is due to a null form occupying the lowest C position. It seems to me more interesting to eliminate the second possibility and hypothesize that even in (47b) the complementizer is not realized because the verb has moved at least up to the lowest C position, even though no SC1I is visible. There are two possible reasons for SC1I being incompatible with present subjunctive: (i) a morphological one and (ii) a strictly syntactic one. As we have assumed that SC1I is the morphological instantiation of verb movement to a C position (see Poletto 1997 for a detailed discussion), one could further assume that this morphological reflex of verb movement is not found in present subjunctive forms for purely morphological reasons (it is a fact that subjunctive shows in most
Complementizer deletion and verb movement in standard Italian
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varieties less agreement morphology than the corresponding indicative form) and V movement to Agrc occurs all the same. However, imperfect subjunctive also shows less agreement morphology than the corresponding indicative form, and nevertheless SC1I with imperfect subjunctive is found in many contexts and in many dialects. Alternatively, one could assume that present subjunctive does not have SC1I because this form never reaches C, but remains lower in the structure. In dialects like Monnese in (44b), repeated here, subjunctive remains inside IP and a complementizer is realized, in varieties like Forni Avoltri it raises to the lowest C position, thus preventing the occurrence of the complementizer. (49) a. Che 1 ploes o che 1 ploes miga, . . . Monno that SCI rains or that SCI rains not b. plovi o no plovi no i fazin uno chiaminada Forni Avoltri rains+SUBj or not rains+suBJ we make a walk The sample of a hundred dialects examined does not contain a single variety that admits SC1I with the present subjunctive form, in any of the contexts where SC1I is triggered. This is clearly a fact that requires an explanation, but for the moment I will leave the matter open as it requires a very subtle analysis of verb movement of all verbal forms in all varieties considered. If it is true that SC1I is possible only for the indicative form (whatever the reason might be), and that present subjunctive never shows inversion even though it moves to the CP layer, we can treat also those dialects which show no SC1I and no complementizer (cf. (42)) as involving V-to-C movement, at least to the the lowest C position. Nevertheless, this movement is not visible because the present subjunctive form does not "record the path" of the movement of the verb to the CP layer through the morphological encoding of SC1I as the indicative form. This treatment of NIDs opens up the possibility of assuming a V-to-C analysis for standard Italian too. Disjunctive structures without a complementizer could thus be considered as cases of V-to-C movement, probably connected to the presence of a null disjunctive operator inside the CP layer.
4 CONCLUSION In this work I have examined some cases of complementizer deletion and I have proposed a V-to-C analysis for them. As already mentioned, it is not easy to reduce all cases of complementizer deletion to V-to-C, but I have tried to show that at least in some cases this is a viable hypothesis. A split-CP analysis combined with V-to-C movement gives us the tools to account for many interesting facts, both in standard Italian and in the NIDs. The semantic feature attracting the verb into the CP layer is not always the same: for embedded subjunctives it is a [—realis] feature, for disjunctive sentences it probably is an operator feature connected with the null operator in a SpecC position. I have not discussed here any extension to other languages which present a similar pattern, as English, but the plausibility of an hypothesis in the terms proposed here must first be evaluated language internally.
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REFERENCES Alber, Birgit. (1994). Indizi per 1'esistenza di uno split-CP nelle lingue germaniche. In Gianluigi Borgato (ed.) Teoria de linguaggio e analisi linguistica. Padova: Unipress. 3—23. Beninca, Paola. (1995). I dati dell'ASIS e la sintassi diacronica. In Italia settentrionale: crocevia di idiomi romanzi. Tubingen: Niemeyer. 133-144. Cardinaletti, Anna. (1997). Subjects and clause structure. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.) The New Comparative Syntax. London: Longman. 33-63. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Giorgi, Alessandra and Fabio Pianesi. (1997). Tense and Aspect: from Semantics to Morphosyntax. New York: Oxford University Press. Haegemann, Liliane and Raffaella Zanuttini. (1996). Negative concord in West Flemish. In Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi (eds.) Parameters and Functional Heads. New York: Oxford University Press. 117-180. Hoekstra, Eric. (1992). On the parametrization of functional projections in CP. Ms., Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Amsterdam. Poletto, Cecilia. (1997). The higher functional field in the Northern Italian languages. Ms., Universita di Padova. Rizzi, Luigi. (1982). Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Rizzi, Luigi. (1991). Residual verb second and the wh-Criterion. Technical Reports in Formal and Computational Linguistics, 2. Universite de Geneve. Rizzi, Luigi. (1995). The fine structure of the left periphery. Ms., Universite de Geneve. Ronjat, Jean. (1937). Grammaireistoriquedesparlersprovencauxmodernes. Montpellier: Societe des langues romanes. Santorini, Beatrice. (1989). The generalization of the Verb-Second Constraint in the history of Yiddish. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Schwartz, Bonnie and Sten Vikner. (1996). The verb always levase IP in V2 clauses. In Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi (eds.) Parameters and Functional Heads. New York: Oxford University Press. 11-62. Scorretti, Mauro. (1981). Complementizer ellipsis in 15th century Italian. Journal of Italian Linguistics, 6/1, 35-47. Stowell, Tim. (1991). Origins of phrase structure. PhD dissertation, MIT. Tomaselli, Alessandra. (1990). La sintassi del verbofinito nelle lingue germaniche. Padua: CLESP. Vikner, Sten. (1990). Verb movement and the licensing of NP-positions in the Germanic languages. PhD dissertation, Universite de Geneve. Vikner, Sten. (1995). Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages. New York: Oxford University Press.
14
ON THE POSITION "INT(ERROGATIVE)" IN THE LEFT PERIPHERY OF THE CLAUSE
Luigi Rizzi
0 INTRODUCTION Recent research on the nature of structural configurations has shown that the complementizer system is to be conceived of as a structural zone consisting of distinct functional heads and their projections, much as the IP system and the DP system. The analysis proposed in Rizzi (1997) postulates a fixed component, involving the heads specifying Force and Finiteness, and an accessory component involving the heads of Topic and Focus, which are activated when needed, i.e., when there is a topic or focus constituent to be accommodated in the left periphery of the clause. In this paper, I would like to investigate more closely the position occupied by the interrogative complementizer se 'if occurring in embedded questions in Italian, and show that it occupies a position distinct from and lower than the position of the declarative complementizer che 'that'. 1 will then suggest that the projection headed by such an interrogative head is presumably one that may host the Wh-elementperc/ze 'why' and other sentence adverbials in main and embedded interrogative clauses, an assumption which helps explain certain peculiarities of such elements in Italian and other Romance languages.
1
THE LEFT PERIPHERY OF THE CLAUSE
The primary role of the complementizer system is the expression of Force (distinguishing various clause types: declarative, interrogative, exclamative, relative, comparative, different types of adverbial clauses, etc.) and Finiteness (the specification distinguishing at least between finite and non finite clauses). We may think of Force and Finiteness as two distinct heads closing off the complementizer system upward and downward, respectively (and perhaps coalescing into a single head in the simple cases). The need for two distinct positions becomes apparent when the
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Topic/Focus field is activated. Consider for instance the following paradigm (adapted from Rizzi 1997), involving a topic and complementizers che 'that' and di 'of, which occur in Italian finite and infinitive declaratives, respectively: (1) a. Maria crede che potra leggere il tuo libro 'Maria believes that (she) will be able to read your book' b. Maria crede di poter leggere il tuo libro 'Maria believes of to be able to read your book' (2) a. *Maria crede, il tuo libro, che lo potra leggere 'Maria believes, your book, that (she) will be able to read it' b. Maria crede che, il tuo libro, lo potra leggere 'Maria believes that, your book, (she) will be able to read it' (3) a. Maria crede, il tuo libro, di poterlo leggere 'Maria believes, your book, of to be able to read it' b. *Maria crede di, il tuo libro, poterlo leggere 'Maria believes of, your book, to be able to read it' I will assume, on the basis of the evidence presented in Kayne (1983) and Rizzi (1982), that di is the infinitival complementizer. Given the single layer approach to the C system, che and di then occupy the same position, and indeed this is the traditional assumption. On the other hand, the multiple layer approach opens up the possibility that che and di, while both being elements of the C system, occupy distinct positions. This possibility is straightforwardly supported by the ordering of the two elements with respect to other structural positions: che must precede the topic phrase in the Clitic Left Dislocation Construction (Cinque 1990), as in (2), whereas di must follow the topic, as in (3). This and other analogous types of evidence lead to the conclusion that che occupies the highest C position, Force, while di occupies the lowest position, Finiteness. On the basis of similar kinds of positional evidence, Rizzi (1997) arrives at the conclusion that the C system has the following structure: (4) Force
(Top*)
Foe
(Top*)
Fin
IP
The different kinds of positions are overtly manifested in sentences like the following: (5) Credo che ieri, QUESTO, a Gianni, i tuoi amici avrebbero dovuto dirgli Force Top Foe Top 'I believe that yesterday, THIS, to Gianni, your friends should have said to him' More precisely, che expresses the Force head, ieri and a Gianni fill Spec positions of two Top heads, questo fills the Spec position of the Foe head, while the Fin layer is not overtly realized in this kind of sentence.
On the position "Int(errogative)" in the left periphery of the clause
289
2 THE POSITION OF SE Embedded yes/no questions are introduced by se 'if in Italian. This element has certain positional properties in common with declarative che. For instance both are compatible with a focussed phrase which must follow them (in Italian the left peripheral focus position is restricted to contrastive focus, so that in the relevant examples we will always overtly express a contrast; the focussed phrase is capitalized): (6) a. Credo che QUESTO avreste dovuto dirgli (non qualcos'altro) T believe that THIS you should have said to him, not something else' b. *Credo QUESTO che avreste dovuto dirgli (non qualcos'altro) 'I believe THIS that you should have said to him, not something else' (7) a. Mi domando se QUESTO gli volessero dire (non qualcos'altro) T wonder if THIS they wanted to say to him, not something else' b. *Mi domando QUESTO se gli volessero dire (non qualcos'altro) 'I wonder THIS if they wanted to say to him, not something else' On the other hand, se can be preceded and followed by a topic, while che can only be followed by a topic, as we have seen: (8) a. Credo che a Gianni, avrebbero dovuto dirgli la verita 'I believe that to Gianni, they should have said the truth to him' b. *Credo, a Gianni, che avrebbero dovuto dirgli la verita 'I believe, to Gianni, that they should have said the truth to him' (9) a. Non so se, a Gianni, avrebbero potuto dirgli la verita 'I don't know if to Gianni, they could have said the truth' b. Non so, a Gianni, se avrebbero potuto dirgli la verita 'I don't know, to Gianni, if they could have said the truth' c. Mi domando se questi problemi, potremo mai affrontarli 'I wonder if these problems, we will ever be able to address them' d. Mi domando, questi problemi, se potremo mai affrontarli 'I wonder, these problems, if we will ever be able to address them' This suggests that se occupies a position distinct from, and lower than, the one occupied by che, a position which is necessarily higher than Foe, but can be preceded by a topic. So, if che expresses Force, we should postulate a distinct position, call it Int(errogative) for se, to be inserted in the sequence of positions (7) in the following way (see Aboh (1998) for independent evidence in favour of an interrogative position distinct from the landing site of Wh-movement in Gungbe): (10) Force
(Top*)
Int
(Top*)
Foe
(Top*) Fin
IP
A question that arises at this point, given the distinct positional properties of che and se, is whether we should now understand Force in (10) as specialized for declarative force, with
290 Luigi Rizzi interrogative force expressed by the lower Int position. There are reasons to reject this option. First of all, the presence of a topic to the left of Int in examples like (9b) shows that additional clausal structure is involved above Int, minimally a Topic Phrase hosting the topic in its specifier (see Rizzi (1997) for detailed evidence against an adjunction approach to topic-comment configurations); moreover, it is implausible that the proposition may be closed upward by a Topic Phrase because of selectional reasons: the main verb selects for an indirect question, not for a clause with a topic. So, there must be a (phonetically null) Force head whose projection closes the structure upward in (9b), thus locally meeting the selectional requirement of the higher verb. A second reason for postulating a Force position higher than Int in yes/no questions is that in a closely related language, Spanish, some embedded questions overtly express the force head in cooccurrence with Int by allowing the que si 'that if sequence in this fixed order (examples from Plann (1982: 300), Suner (1994: 349)): (11) a. Maria decia / preguntaba que si no debieramos dejarlas en paz 'Maria was saying / asking that if we shouldn't leave them in peace' b. Me preguntaron (que) si tus amigos ya te visitaron en Granada 'They asked me that if your friends had already visited you in Granada' In such cases, it is transparent that two distinct positions are involved. See McCloskey (1992) for an analysis of the fine semantic properties of the subclass of indirect questions allowing the cooccurence of que and si or a Wh-element. (The other subclass of indirect questions selected by such verbs as 'find out', 'discover', etc., not allowing initial que, nor an initial topic, may perhaps be analysed as not involving the Force layer at all, a direct translation into our system of McCloskey's CP recursion analysis). Languages like Dutch permit the sequence in the opposite order ofdat 'if that'. Presumably here 'that' expresses a position different from and lower than Force, as in the many Romance and Germanic varieties allowing for the sequence Wh that. Going back to the expression of (10) in Italian, the three topic positions following Force, Int and Foe, respectively, can be simultaneously realized in examples like the following, which sounds somewhat cumbersome but not grammatically degraded: (12) Mi domando, a Gianni, se, ieri, QUESTO, alia fine della riunione, 'I wonder, to Gianni, if, yesterday, THIS, at the end of the meeting, avremmo potuto dirgli (non qualcos'altro) we could have said to him (not something else)' The structural layer whose head is se is clearly distinct from the position occupied by the Whelements in the main question: we have seen that se can cooccur with a lower focus (as in (7a)), whereas Wh-elements in main questions cannot cooccur with a focus, in either order: (13) a. *A chi QUESTO hanno detto (non qualcos'altro)? To whom THIS they said (not something else)? b. *QUESTO a chi hanno detto (non qualcos'altro)? 'THIS to whom they said (not something else)?'
On the position "Int(errogative)" in the left periphery of the clause
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c. *A GIANNI che cosa hanno detto (non a Piero)? 'TO GIANNI what they said (not to Piero)? d. *Che cosa A GIANNI hanno detto (non a Piero)? 'What TO GIANNI they have said (not to Piero)? This incompatibility is interpreted in Rizzi (1997) as showing that Wh-elements in main questions move to the specifier of the Foe head, therefore they compete with focussed constituents for this position. Clearly, (7) shows that se occupies a position higher than Foe. What about Wh-elements in embedded clauses? The absolute incompatibility with focus by and large disappears, even though the judgments become somewhat murky and graded: (14) a. *?Mi domando a chi QUESTO abbiano detto (non qualcos'altro) 'I wonder to whom THIS they have said (not something else)' b. *?Mi domando QUESTO a chi abbiano detto (non qualcos'altro) 'I wonder THIS to whom they have said (not something else) c. Mi domando A GIANNI che cosa abbiano detto (non a Piero) 'I wonder TO GIANNI what they have said (not to Piero) d. *?Mi domando che cosa A GIANNI abbiano detto (non a Piero) 'I wonder what TO GIANNI they have said (not to Piero) When the focalized constituent is the direct object and the Wh-element is a PP, both orders appear to be degraded (as in (14a, b)), whereas when the Wh-element is the direct object and the focalized constituent a PP, the order Foe Wh is significantly more acceptable (as in (14c)). The possible cooccurrence shown by (14c) clearly suggests that Wh-elements in embedded questions are not forced to move to the Spec of Foe, contrary to main questions; therefore, there must be a position lower than Foe available to Wh-elements in embedded questions. If this position is necessarily lower than Foe, we expect both (14a) and (14d) to be excluded, as they express the wrong order. What remains to be explained is why (14b), but not (14c), is well-formed. The contrast between (14b) and (14c) is reminiscent of the crossing constraint (Pesetsky 1982 and references cited there): the two A' dependencies are crossed in (14b) and nested in (14c). Whether or not the crossing explanation is correct, and whatever the exact nature of the position filled by the Wh-element in (14c), the well-formedness of this example with this particular order shows that the position occupied by se is distinct from, and higher than, the position occupied by Wh-elements in embedded questions like (14c) (compare this example with (7b)). As the position occupied by se is higher than the position occupied by Foe (see (7)), and the Foe position is higher than the position occupied by Wh in embedded questions like (14c), we conclude, by transitivity, that the position of se is higher than the position of embedded Whelements. So, whatever the exact position of the latter (noted here as Wh), we have the following ordering in embedded clauses: (15) . . . Force . . . Int . . . Foe . . . Wh . . . (embedded clauses)
292 Luigi Rizzi
3 THE POSITION OF PERCHE What about the position Int in main clauses? As main yes/no questions are not introduced by any special morphological marker in Italian, we do not have direct evidence bearing on the presence and position of Int in main questions. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for concluding that a small class of Wh-elements fills a higher position than ordinary Wh-elements, and it is tempting to conjecture that this position is Int. Let us consider the relevant evidence. Wh-elements corresponding to arguments or lower adverbials require inversion in Italian main interrogatives, as is shown by the fact that the subject cannot intervene between the Whoperator and the inflected verb: (16) a. *Che cosa Gianni ha fatto? 'What Gianni did?' a!. Che cosa ha fatto Gianni? 'What did Gianni?' b. *Dove Gianni e andato? 'Where Gianni went? b' Dove e andato Gianni? 'Where went Gianni?' c. *Come Gianni e partito? 'How Gianni left? c' Come e partito Gianni? 'How left Gianni?' This may be due to the Wh-Criterion (Rizzi 1996): the inflectional node carrying the feature Wh must move to the C system in interrogatives to create the required Spec-Head configuration with the Wh-operator, and as the word order shows, this operation has not taken place in (16a, b, c). I-to-C movement has applied in (16a', b', c'), which then satisfy the Wh-Criterion (the subject appears in final position in these examples, and not in between the Aux and the past participle possibly for case theoretic reasons, along the lines of Rizzi & Roberts (1989)). The necessity of I-to-C movement in these cases is also illustrated by the distribution of certain adverbs: short adverbs like gia, ancora, solo, typically occur in between the auxiliary and the past participle, but may also occur, at least in some varieties, immediately to the left of the auxiliary (or other inflected verbs): (17) a. I tuoi amici hanno gia fatto il lavoro 'Your friends have already done the work' b. I tuoi amici gia hanno fatto il lavoro 'Your friends already have done the work' (18) a. Che cosa hanno gia fatto? 'What have (they) already done? b. *Che cosa gia hanno fatto? 'What already (they) have done?'
On the position "Int(errogative)" in the left periphery of the clause
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(19) a. Voi siete gia andati a Milano 'You have already gone to Milan' b. Voi gia siete andati a Milano 'You already have gone to Milan' (20) a. Dove siete gia andati? 'Where have (you) already gone? b. *Dove gia siete andati? 'Where already (you) have gone?' Evidently, the richly articulated structure of the IP (Cinque 1999) specifies a position for such adverbs in between the subject and the inflected verb in cases like (17b) and (19b). But in questions like (18) and (20) the inflected verb must move to C to satisfy the Wh-Criterion, thus bypassing this high adverbial position; whence the ill-formedness of (18b) and (20b). A number of alternatives to the analysis involving the Wh-Criterion and I-to-C movement have been explored in the literature. The evidence based on adverbial distribution (like in (18)(20)) is important because it suggests that the facts of (16) should not be uniquely attributed to some peculiarity of the preverbal subject position, as some alternative analyses propose. I will not discuss these issues here; what is relevant in the context of the present discussion is that some Wh-operators behave differently from ordinary operators like those in (16), (18) and (20). Perche 'why' and other higher adverbials, like the near synonym come mai 'how come', do not require inversion: (21) a. Perche Gianni e venuto? 'Why Gianni has left?' b. Come mai Gianni e partito? 'How come Gianni has left?' They are also consistent with short adverbials preceding the inflected verb: (22) a. Perche (i tuoi amici) gia hanno finite il lavoro? 'Why (your friends) already have finished the work?' b. Come mai (voi) gia siete tornati a Milano? 'How come (you) already have come back to Milan?' Clearly, these elements do not require I-to-C movement. Why is it so? Suppose that perche and come mai, may occupy the specifier position of Int in Italian. This is not implausible: the Spec of Int is presumably filled by a null operator in main and embedded yes/no questions, so it may be specialized for other operator-like elements which can be base-generated there. Perhaps, Int selects clausal operators in its Spec, which are first merged there, in the sense of Chomsky 1998. If Int is intrinsically endowed with the feature Wh, no inversion is needed in cases like (17). Wh-arguments and lower adverbials such as those in (16), contrary to higher sentence adverbials, cannot be first merged in the Spec of Int because of their selectional and interpretive requirements, demanding first merge in some lower, IP-internal, position; so they can only meet the Wh-Criterion by being moved to a suitable landing site in the left periphery (the specifier of
294 Luigi Rizzi the Foe position in main clauses, or the lower position involved in embedded clauses like (14c), whatever its label) and by triggering inversion. Clear independent evidence that perche and come mai fill a position distinct from and higher than the position of ordinary Wh-elements in main clauses is that they can cooccur with focus: (23) a. Perche QUESTO avremmo dovuto dirgli, non qualcos'altro? 'Why THIS we should have said to him, not something else?' b. Come mai IL Mio LIBRO gli ha dato, non il tuo? 'How come MY BOOK you gave to him, not yours?' The order is fixed: the focussed element cannot precede perche and come mai, on a par with se (see (7)): (24) a. *QUESTO perche avremmo dovuto dirgli, non qualcos'altro? 'THIS why we should have said to him, not something else?' b. *IL MIO LIBRO come mai gli hai dato, non il tuo? 'MY BOOK how come you gave to him, not yours? Remember that ordinary Wh-elements are incompatible with a focussed element in main questions (see (13)), a property that we have interpreted as showing that ordinary Wh-elements move to the specifier of Foe in main questions, thus competing with focussed elements. So (23)(24) and the contrast with (13) are directly accounted for if perche is first merged in the Spec of Int, while other Wh-elements are moved from their first merge position to the Spec of Foe, lower than Int. We have seen that in embedded clauses Wh-elements do not have to move to the Spec of Foe, and they are consistent with a preceding focussed element (see the contrast (13)-(14)). No such main/embedded asymmetry is found concerning perche and similar elements: they are consistent with a following focus in both main and embedded clauses: (25) a. Mi domando perche QUESTO avremmo dovuto dirgli, non qualcos'altro 'I wonder why THIS we should have said to him, not something else' b. Non so come mai IL MIO LIBRO gli hai dato, non il tuo 'I don't know how come MY BOOK you gave to him, not yours' These special distributional properties follow from the assumption that in both main and embedded questions special adverbial Wh-operators like perche can be base-generated (first merged) in the Spec of Int in (10), a head endowed with the Wh feature (hence no inversion is needed) and inherently selecting a clausal interrogative operator (hence unable to function as the landing site of movement, and uniquely consistent with elements that are base-generated there). As is expected, both topic positions higher and lower than Int can be filled, thus surrounding perche (the topics are expressed here by the Clitic Left Dislocation construction, as in previous cases):
On the position "Int(errogative)" in the left periphery of the clause
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(26) II mio libro, perche, a Gianni, non glielo avete ancora dato? 'My book, why, to Gianni, you still haven't given it to him?' It is well-known that perche can also be construed with an embedded clause in cases like the following: (27) Perche ha detto che si dimettera? 'Why did he say that he will resign?' This sentence is ambiguous: it may be asking the reason of his saying something, or of his resigning. Clearly, in case of long distance construal, perche cannot be base-generated in the Spec of Int: movement from the embedded clause must be involved. We therefore predict that in case of long distance construal perche should behave as any other Wh-element: incompatible with Foe in main clauses, requiring I-to-C movement, etc. Judgments are not easy, but the prediction seems to be correct. For instance, if a focus is inserted, the sentence seems to cease to be ambiguous, only the local construal with the main clause remaining available: (28) Perche A GIANNI ha detto che si dimettera (non a Piero)? 'Why TO GIANNI he said that he will resign (not to Piero)?' Along similar lines, Contreras (1989) points out that the Spanish equivalent does not require inversion when construed locally, but it does when construed with the embedded clause. That locally construed pourquoi 'why' in French may allow and in fact require base generation in the left periphery is suggested by the fact that it doesn't naturally license Stylistic Inversion (a construction which is parasitic on a genuine operator-variable configuration: see Kayne 1983), nor can it be left in situ in an IP-internal position.
4 CONCLUSIONS Se, the complementizer introducing embedded yes/no questions in Italian, fills a position in the C system which is lower than Force, the position filled by the declarative complementizer che, but higher than Foe and the position filled by Wh-elements in embedded questions. Perche and other Wh-elements corresponding to higher adverbials can fill the position of Spec of Int (at least when construed locally); this explains why such elements can cooccur with a following focus in both main and embedded questions; it also helps us to understand why these elements do not trigger obligatory I-to-C movement in main questions.
296 Luigi Rizzi
REFERENCES Aboh, Enoch. (1998). From the syntax of Gungbe to the grammar of Gbe. PhD dissertation, Universite de Geneve. Chomsky, Noam. (1998). Minimalist inquiries: The framework. MIT Occasional P apers in Linguistics, 15. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1990). Types of A1-Dependencies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Contreras, Heles. (1989). Closed domains. Probus, 1, 163-180. Kayne, Richard S. (1983). Connectedness and Binary Branching. Dordrecht: Foris. McCloskey, James. (1992). Adjunction, selection and embedded Verb Second. Ms., University of California at Santa Cruz. Pesetsky, David. (1982). Paths and categories. PhD dissertation, MIT. Plann, Susan. (1982). Indirect questions in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 13, 297-312. Rizzi, Luigi. (1982). Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Rizzi, Luigi. (1996). Residual verb second and the wh-Criterion. In Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi (eds.) Parameters and Functional Heads. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 63-90. Rizzi, Luigi. (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.) Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 281-337. Rizzi, Luigi and Ian G. Roberts. (1989). Complex Inversion in French. Probus, 1, 1-30. Suner, Margarita. (1994). V-movement and the licensing of argumental Wh phrases in Spanish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 12, 335-372.
15
THE Two SENTENCE STRUCTURES OF EARLY ROMANCE
Giampaolo Salvi
That the Old Romance languages had a V2 sentence structure has been recognized for a long time and has been studied in depth in the frame of generative grammar too, primarily since Paola Beninca's work in the early eighties (now collected in Beninca 1994). But it has been hardly ever noted (Skarup 1975, ch. IX; Salvi 1991, §4.1.2; 1995) that Old Romance texts marginally present also sentences of another structural type, which represent a sort of transition between the Latin and the Romance sentence structure. In what follows, I will present the principal features of the two types of the Romance sentence structure (section 1) and the relevant features of the sentence structure of Latin (with a sketchy analysis —• section 2), then I will advance a hypothesis about the structure and the derivation of the two Romance structures individuated (section 3).
1
THE SENTENCE STRUCTURE OF OLD ROMANCE
1.1
Main clauses
Old Romance languages are characterized by a V2 system: the verb occupies the second position in the linear order, while the first position is occupied by a constituent with the pragmatic function of Theme (e.g., (2a)) or Focus (e.g., (2b)), independently of its syntactic function (it may be Subject, (1), Direct Object, (2), etc.); the preverbal position may be empty, too, and in these cases the verb is first in the linear order, (5):1
1
In the following examples I indicate the position of clitic pronouns, too, which are placed according to a variant of Wackernagel's Law (Salvi 1991 and the references cited there); the position of clitics can thus be used as a criterion to establish the beginning of the core sentence. In this paper I will not in general treat the peripheral elements which can precede the core sentence.
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(1) S d V a. (Port.) Pedro Saluadorez, clerigo de Poagro, me deue vij. modios & medio de ceueyra (Doc. 55.39) 'P. S., cleric of P., owes tcune...' b. (Sp.) Hyo lo vere con el Cid (Ramsden 1963 : 77) 'I wilLsee him...' c. (Fr.) Deus les ad a mort livrez (de Kok 1985 : 74) 'God has given them...' d. (Prov.) lo reis lo pres de felni' a reptar (Boecis 64) The king began to blame him...' e. (It.) questa mi sembra piu bella e di maggiore valuta (Nov. 11.33) This_one seems tojne...' (2) O d V a. (Port.) esta uina uos damos per taes codicoes que... (Doc. 63.3) This vineyard we_give youp\...' b. (Sp.) la cara se santigua (Ramsden 1963:83) '(On_)his face he_madeJhe^sign^of_ the.cross' c. (Fr.) cest afaire // mustrad (de Kok 1985 : 75) This thing he_showed toJiim' d. (Prov.) Filla-/ doned de tan bon grad (Ramsden 1963 : 84) 'Daughter he.gave him...' e. (It.) cotanto vi dico (Nov. 11.18) This Lsay you' (3) X d V a. (Port.) da mesa se levantava, se chegavom a tempo que el comesse (D. Pedro VI.24) 'From the table he_rose...' b. (Sp.) a gran honor la re9ibieron (Ramsden 1963:70) 'With great honour they_ welcomed her' c. (Fr.) De ses guarnemenz se devesti (de Kok 1985 : 75) 'His ornaments heJook off d. (Prov.) per eveia lo mesdren e preiso (Boecis 27) 'With envy they.put him...' e. (It.) di grande scienzia ti credo (Nov. 11.45) 'Of great knowledge Lbelieve you (to be)' (4) Adv cl V a. (Port.) Outrossi lies dou todo o meu herdamento que... (Doc. 55.6) 'Likewise Lgive them...' b. (Sp.) bien las abastad (Ramsden 1963 : 66) 'Well supply imp them" c. (Fr.) Mult le tindrent bien li troi (de Kok 1985 :75) 'very him held well the three' (The three held him very well) d. (Prov.) molt s'en penet (Boecis 26) 'Much he_grieved aLit' e. (It.) manifestamente /'hoe veduto nelle cose in ch'... (Nov. 11.45) 'Clearly Lhave seen it...'
d (Port.) doulas en tal condizo a Sancta Maria que... (Doc. 95.3) 'Lgive them...' (Sp.) Fecist me nueva festa (Ramsden 1963 :99) 'You_made me...' (Fr.) Enveierent le en terre de Philistfim (de Kok 1985 : 80) They_sent him...' (Prov.) Ers se vas Deu aqell veilz cans (Ramsden 1963 : 100) 'rose towards God that old_man white-haired' (That white-haired old man rose and turned to God) e. (It.) fu-li detto che... (Nov. II. 11) 'iLwas said toJiim...'
(5) V a. b. c. d.
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When the Subject is expressed and does not occupy the preverbal position, it appears immediately after the finite verb (after the auxiliary in the case of compound verb forms): (6) X Aux S Vpart/Inf/Ger a. (Port.) entonce foi Sam Matias enlegido por apostolo (Vidas 1.10) 'Then was Saint M. elected...' b. (Fr.) Messe e matines ad li reis escultet (ChR 164) 'Mass and matins has the king heard' c. (It.) qui ne aviano li diavoli gittata la carogna (Nov. XVIIB.27) 'Here had the devils thrown its carcass' We can sum up all these facts in the following schema: XTheme/Focus Vfin (S)...
As in the oldest stages of the Romance languages V2 structures were common also in subordinate clauses (or at least in one type of these—cf. below), I will assume that the functional projection implied in this type of structure is T/F" (for Theme/Focus), which dominates I"2 Thus (6b) has the structure represented in (7). (7) [T/F" Messe e matines [T/F/ ad [ r // li reis tv escultet to]]]
1.2
Subordinate clauses
V2 phenomena are documented in dependent clauses for the oldest stages of all Romance languages:
(8) que XT/F V (S) ... a. (Port.) que estas letras nom visse nhuum (Padua 1960: 159) 'that this letter not see anybody' (that nobody see this letter) b. (Sp.) si grant amor pusieremos en vno (Don Juan Manuel IX.21) 'if great love we_put in one' c. (Fr.) que bien li doit I'en porter honor (Skarup 1975 : 186) 'that really to_him must one have honour' (that really one must honour him) d. (Prov.) qu'ara vos a el ben mestiers totz (Razo 10) 'that now to_you has it really need whole' (that now you really need the whole of it) e. (It.) che di tutte le cose t'intendi (Nov. 11.27) 'that in all things you_are_an_expert'
2
One may wonder if the projection used for thematization and the one used for focalization are not two different projections, as was proposed for several modern V2 languages. Although this hypothesis seems probable, I am not aware of any data that support it, therefore I keep here to the hypothesis of a unique projection.
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Giampaolo Salvi
But Skarup (1975, ch. IX), for Old French, and Salvi (1991, §4.1.2; 1995), for Old GalicianPortuguese, distinguish two types of stucturally different subordinate clauses.3 In Galician-Portuguese the former type corresponds to the one exemplified above: it has the same structure as main clauses and is characterized by at least the following features: a. V2 phenomena, so postverbal Subject if the preverbal position is occupied by another constituent (9a, b, d), (8a); b. ad verbal clitics (9b, c, d); c. possible Left Periphery (9c); d. if they do not occupy the prevebal position of the V2 structure (cf.. (4a)), adverbs follow the verb (9d). (9) a. que no fique nem huum a vyda (Cronica 277.29) 'that remain nobody. ..' b. que os outros Ihe dera de peita (D. Pedro 13.48) 'that the others he_had_given him...' c. por que as obras de feiticaria [... ] eu Ihes dou pouca fee (Riiho 1988 : 84) 'for, the deeds of witchcraft, I give them little credit' d. que per tall sentenca se livravom depots semelhantes casos quando... (D. Fernando 10.41) 'that with such decision wereJiandled later similar cases...' The other type of subordinate clause has the following characteristics: a. the Subject is always preverbal (lOa, b, c); b. clitics immediately follow the subordinator and must not be adverbal (lOa, b, c); c. between subordinator and verb we may find any number of constituents without the typical features of peripheral elements (as e.g., the resumptive clitic—cf. (lOc, d)); d. at least some types of adverbs (mainly sentence and circumstancial adverbs) always precede the verb (lOb, d); some, like logo, nunca, generally occupy first position (lOb). (10) a. como quer que Ihe esta mais custosa fosse (D. Pedro 15.95) 'although toJiim this,one more costly was' b. que Ihe logo el-rrei nom mandou cottar a cabe§a (D. Pedro 9.33) 'that toJiim immediately theJdng not ordered cut the head' (that the king did not immediately order his head to be cut) c. Quando Ihe aquello el rey ouvyo dizer (Cronica 275.15) 'when toJiim that theMng heard say' (When the king heard him say that) d. depois que esto assi ouve feito (Cronica 469.53) 'After this so he_had made'
In fact Skarup distinguishes three types of subordinate clauses: the first, with the verb in final position, would be represented only by the Oaths of Strassburg. Since we cannot be sure that the word order of this text is not influenced by a Latin model or by the model of the German text, I will not consider this a possible type. It otherwise coincides with the Latin type and is limited to three sentences: in o quid il mi altresi fazet, si cum om per dreit sonfradra salvor dift, qui mean vol cist meonfradre Karle in damno sit. (The other subordinate clauses may all be classified in the other types distinguished by Skarup).
The two sentence structures of Early Romance
301
Notice especially that in (lOc, d) the Direct Object (aquello, esto) does not immediately precede the finite verb, but as opposed to main clauses4 there is no resumptive clitic. Skarup identifies two types of subordinate clauses, a more archaic one and an innovative one (but both present from the beginning in the Old French documents). Innovative dependent clauses have the same word order as main clauses, that is, the typical V2 system (cf. (8c)). The more archaic type presents the following order of constituents: i. subordinator; ii. pronominal Subject; iii. adverb of the class of ja/onques', iv. some preverbal constituents, among them the non-pronominal Subject; v. verb; vi. postverbal costituents. Some examples follow for the order pronominal Subject-adverb, (11), adverb-preverbal constituent^), (12), pronominal subject-preverbal constituent(s), (13) and nominal subject-other preverbal constituent(s) or vice versa, (14): (11) qu'// onques eiist veil (Skarup 1975 :494) 'that he ever had seen' (12) a. ki unches ben ne volt (Skarup 1975 :483) 'who never good (not) wants' b. dont onques chevaliers n'avoit gueres veu a celui tens (ibid.) 'oLwhich never knight (not) had at_all seen...' c. que ja mes en cestui pechie ne rencharroiz (Skarup 1975 :484) 'that never into this sin (not) youjwilLfalLagain' (13) a. que jo de la repaire (Skarup 1975 :495) 'that I from there come_back' b. k'ele dignement nos donst dire (Skarup 1975 :497) 'that she worthily to_us give to_say' (that she permit us to speak worthily) (14) a. Que que Rollant a Guenelun forsfesist (Skarup 1975 : 505) 'whatever (wrong) R. to G. did' b. Quant // barun co orent fait (Skarup 1975 : 508) 'When the barons that had done' c. si cum prophetes anz mulz dis canted aveien de Jesu Crist (Skarup 1975 : 507) 'as prophets many days before sung had...' d. Se le uoir ie vous en weil dire (Skarup 1975 :510) 'If the truth I to_you p ] of_it want to_say' e. car mout gran deul oil en avront (Skarup 1975 :438) 'for great grief those ofJt will-have' The comparison between the Old Galician-Portuguese and the Old French data allows us to establish some features/positions common to both types of archaic subordinate clause: 4
Cf. (Port.) outrossy uossos maqebos & mafebas & uossos hommes\ assy os\ quito commo uos Costa^a Fernandez de todo o moordomadigo (Doc. 66.14) 'likewise your servants and your servant maids and your men, so them Lfree...'
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Giampaolo Salvi
— after the subordinator we have a pronominal form: the oblique clitics in Galician-Portuguese and the subject pronoun (which Roberts (1993) and Vance (1997) analyse as a clitic) in French; — then a temporal adverbial (logo/nunca, ja/onques); — then a certain number of preverbal constituents, among them the nominal Subject, possibly adverbs: normally the Subject comes first, but we can find the order Direct Object-Subject, too (cf. (lOc), (14d)), which is found in main clauses only if the Direct Object is leftdislocated. These observations are strengthened by some facts that we can observe in main clauses. In Old Portuguese (Salvi 1995) there occur many examples of main clauses in which, instead of a V2 structure, we find a structure similar to that of the subordinate clauses of the archaic type: the sentence begins with an adverb of the class of logo/nunca/sempre/tanto, then we find the clitic pronouns, then one or more constituents (among them the subject), then the verb and possibly postverbal constituents: (15) a. logo Ihe el-rrei taxava que. . . (D. Pedro 4.64) lat_once to-him the king imposed. . . ' b. nunca vos de mym verra mal (Cronica 48 1 . 1 3) 'never to_you from me wilLcome pain' 5 c. tanto vos eu mui mais precei (Joan Airas 120) 'sojnuch you^o I much more valued' This structure is found in subordinate clauses, too, with the facultative presence of left-dislocated elements (in this case we have main clause structures grafted in a subordinate clause, as one may see from the final part of (16b) (cryava-os), with the postverbal position of the clitic typical of main clauses). (16) a. que nunca Ihe mais fez pagamento (D. Fernando 13.69) 'that never toJiim any more did payment' b. que todollos filhos dos seus altos homeens, depois que eram de idade de oyto anos, logo os elle tomava e cryavaos (Cronica 446.2) 'that alLthe sons of(_the) his noble men, after they .were of age of eight years, atjonce them he took and reared them' The only difference between this type of main clause and the archaic type of subordinate clause we examined above consists in the position of clitics: in the embedded clause they precede the adverb (and are preceded by the subordinator), in the main clause they follow the adverb (they could not precede it, since clitics may not appear at the absolute beginning of a sentence). The Old French facts are less evident because we have no reliable syntactic criterion (as clitic position in Galician-Portuguese) to distinguish a special type of main clause, but here too we find a certain number of facts which seem to point in the same direction. First, we often have the sequence ja/onques-one or more constituents-verb:
5
Here the Subject is postverbal, but we have an unaccusative verb and in this case the unmarked position of the Subject corresponds to that of the Direct Object.
(17) a. ja ledece n'ert an tei demenede (Skarup 1975 :449) 'no_more joy (not) will-be in you manifested' b. Ja Deu ne placet qu'... (Skarup 1975 :450) 'No_more to_God (not) please...' c. Ja mais en tere ne porterat curone (Skarup 1975 :451) 'Never in earth (not) he_will_ wear crown' d. Ja mais Karlon de nus n'avrat servise (Skarup 1975 :452) 'Never K. from us (not) will-have service' (Never will we serve Charles) e. Ja devers els bataille n'ert lessee (ibid.) 'No_more against them fight (not) wilLbe lefLoff' We have then examples in which more than one constituent is in preverbal position and the first of these is clearly focalized (so, it cannot be in a left-dislocated position—cf. also (14e)): (18) a. Rien qu'il dei'st ge ne croiroie (Skarup 1975 :438) 'Nothing that he could_say I (not) would_believe' b. Reis de Westsexe cil esteit (Skarup 1975 :441) 'King of W. thats was' c. Si grant dolur or m'est apareiide! (Skarup 1975 :436) 'So greaLa grief now to_me has appeared' We can tentatively sum up the discussion in this section in the following terms: in the Old Romance languages there existed a second type of subordinate clause, which was more archaic and was destined to disappear in the first half of the 14th c. in Old French (Skarup 1975 :515) and at the end of the Middle Ages in Galician-Portuguese; it consisted of the subordinator, a focalized element (often an adverb of the class of ja/onques, logo/nunca, but other focalized constituents, too), one or more preverbal constituents, the verb and other postverbal constituents, according to the following schema: que Focus X . . . V X . . . Oblique clitics appear between the subordinator and the Focus element in Galician-Portuguese, in French this is the position of the Subject pronoun, whereas oblique clitics are preverbal. This type is found, more rarely, in main clauses, too, with the following schema: Focus X . . . V X . . . Oblique clitics appear after the Focus element in Galician-Portuguese; in Old French this is the position of the Subject pronoun, whereas oblique clitics are preverbal.
304 2 2.1
Giampaolo Salvi WORD ORDER AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE IN LATIN The unmarked word order
The unmarked word order of Latin has the verb in sentence final position, as we can see from the following short passage: (19) [lam diu ignoro [quid agas]]; [nihil enim scribis]. Neque [ego ad te his duobus mensibus scripseram]; [[quod cum Quinto fratre meo non eras], [quo mitterem] aut [cui darem] nesciebam] (Cic. Fam. VII.9.1) 'It is long since I heard how you are', you never write, and I have not written to you for the last two months. Since you were not with my brother Quintus, I did not know where, or by whose hand, to send a letter' The verb is always the last element of its clause, except in the first main clause of the passage, in which the verb ignoro is followed by a heavy constituent, a subordinate clause.
2.2
Marked word orders
I will consider here only those marked word orders which concern the initial part of the sentence and are relevant for our discussion. 2.2.1 Focalization. It is possible to contrastively focalize a constituent putting it to the beginning of the core sentence. This applies to interrogative, (20), quantified, (21) and other types of constituents, (22). (20) quid me ista res consolatur in tantis tenebris et quasi parietinis rei publicae? (Cic. Fam. IV.3.2) "What consolation is that to me, amid this oppressive gloom, and what I may call the crumbling walls of the Republic?' (21) nihil te omnino fefellit (Cic. Fam. IX.2.2) 'nothing whatever escaped your notice' (22) ita se cum multis conligavit (Cic. Fam. IX. 17.2) 'so inextricably has he tied himself up with his multitude of counsellors'
2.2.2 Sentences with the verb in first position. The verb may appear at the beginning of the sentence, too, because of focalization or emphasis and in some other cases (Schneider 1912, §§1333; Kroll 1918). Especially, in sentence initial position we may find the verb of a jussive sentence, (23), of a sentence with concessive value, (24), of a sentence with asseverative value, in which one asserts that an event really occurred, (25), in cases of contrast, (26), in presentational sentences, both those which introduce a new Subject into the universe of discourse, (27), and those which introduce an event in its globality, (28). (Examples (24), (26), (27) and (28) are from Schneider (1912, §§14-15, 25-26)).
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(23) cognosce nunc humanitatem meam (Cic. Fam. V.2.9) '/ would have you now at last recognize my kindness' (24) Erat multo inferior numero navium Brutus, sed electos ex omnibus legionibus fortissimos viros, antesignanos, centuriones, Caesar ei classi attribuerat... (Caes. Bell. civ. 1.57.1) 'Brutus war an Zahl der Schiffe weit unterlegen, doch hatte Caesar aus alien Legiones die tapfersten Kampfer, Elitesoldaten und Centurionen [... ] ausgesucht und zur Flotte abkommandiert' (25) (Ego tua gratulatione commotus, quod ad me pridem scripseras velle te bene evenire quod de Crasso domum emissem,) emi earn ipsam domum IXXXVI aliquanto post tuam gratulationem (Cic. Fam. V.6.2) '(Roused by your congratulations—for you wrote to me some time ago, wishing me luck on having bought a house from Crassus—) I have now bought that very house for three thousand five hundred sestertia, a considerable time after you congratulated me on having done so' (26) ( . . . quae ille obtectus armis militum vitavit;) vulnerantur tamen complures... (Caes. Bell, civ. III. 19.7)'(... denen Vatinius, durch die Schilde seiner Soldaten gedeckt, entging); doch wurden mehrere verwundet...' (27) accessit etiam ex improviso aliud incommodum, quod... (Caes. Bell. civ. III.79.3) 'Unversehens kam noch als weiterer Nachteil hinzu, dafi...' (28) (Inopinantes nostri re nova perturbantur, ac vix primum impetum cohors in statione sustinet.) Circumfunduntur hostes ex reliquis partibus, si quern aditum reperire possint (Caes. Bell. Gall. VI.37.4) '(Our troops, not expecting them, were thrown into confusion by the surprise, and the cohort on guard scarcely stood the first attack.) The enemy poured round the other faces of the camp, to see if they could find an entry' The type descibed in this section is common to all ancient Indo-European languages (Watkins 1964).
2.3 Summary We may sum up the generalizations we arrived at in the preceding sections in the following schema: Focus [SOXV] The Focus position at the beginning of the sentence may be occupied by a constituent (section 2.2.1) or by the verb (section 2.2.2).
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2.4
A hypothesis on Latin sentence structure
As for the unmarked word order with the verb in final position, I will assume an analysis along the lines of the one developed by Kayne (1994). According to this analysis, all syntactic projections have a common structure in all languages: the Head of the projection precedes its Complement, while the Specifier precedes the constituent formed by the Head and the Complement: (29) [x/, Spec [x, X Compl]] On the basis of this hypothesis, all langages would have SVO as their deep structure word order. The surface word order we find in SOV languages, like Latin, would then be obtained with the movement of the postverbal constituents into a preverbal position.6 In this perpective, the cases of postverbal constituents, as the one we noted in (19), can be explained assuming that, differently from preverbal constituents, such constituents do not move.7 As for the marked word orders considered here, in the preceding section I equated verb preposing and constituent focalization. We can assume (following Brody (1990)) that a focalized constituent moves to the Specifier position of a functional category F(ocus) and that in Latin the Head of this category can remain empty (the information carried by this functional category is recoverable on the basis, say, of the suprasegmental features realized on the focalized constituent in Phonetic Form): (30) [p,, X [p, 0 [,„ . . . V]]]
In case focalization concerns not a single constituent, but the event as a whole (e.g., in presentational sentences), the illocutionary force (e.g., in jussive sentences), the assertive value (e.g., in sentences in which the verb is emphasized assertively or concessively), we may assume that the Specifier position of the functional projection FP is occupied by an appropriate abstract operator. So, we will have a jussive, (23), concessive, (24), assertive, (25), or contrastive operator, (26); in the case of presentational sentences, (27), I will assume, following an idea of Paola Beninca (Beninca & Salvi 1988 : 123-125), that we have an abstract locative operator; in the case of eventive sentences, (28), we may suppose we have an abstract temporal or causal operator— an analysis in accordance with traditional intuitions on this matter (cf. e.g., Schneider 1912, §§25-26) according to which verb preposing could express that the reported event was a (causal or temporal) consequence of the event described in the preceding sentence.
6
In fact, since V has to raise till the position where it incorporates the affixes of personal agreement (Agrs), all arguments, Subject included, have to move to the Specifier of functional categories higher than Agrs. When these aspects of sentence structure play no role in the discussion, I will simplify the argumentation and speak only of the respective position of verb and arguments.
7
We can think of a constituent moving to a preverbal position in order to receive its morphological Case. In that case, those constituents which need no morphological Case, do not move: this would apply, e.g., to the subordinate clause of (19).
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But in all these cases the information conveyed by this operator without phonetic realization is not recoverable unless the finite verb moves to the Head position of the functional category and thus renders the null operator visible:8
(31)
[F» 00p IF' V [IH . . . ]]]
This analysis directly accounts for the fact that verb preposing is bound to a number of rather varied semantic interpretations.
3 A HYPOTHESIS ON THE SENTENCE STRUCTURE OF THE OLD ROMANCE LANGUAGES On the basis of the discussion in section 11 will assume that in the earliest stages of the Romance languages two sentence structures were in competition: an innovative one, that we may characterize as a typical V2 system, and a conservative one, found chiefly in subordinate clauses and only sporadically in main clauses, which partially keep up the sentence structure of Latin. As was anticipated in section 1.1,1 assume that the V2 system of Early Romance is realized in the functional projection T/F" which dominates the projection I'' The Specifier of this projection has to be occupied by a constituent with the pragmatic function of Theme or Focus or by an abstract operator (e.g., an interrogative operator in the case of yes/no questions, a locative or temporal operator in the case of presentational sentences, etc.). The projection I'' in turn, presents the SVO word order:9 in the light of the theory accepted in section 2.4,1 assume that the verb moves to Agr§ and, of the arguments of the verb, only the Subject moves (to the Specifier of Agrs") in order to receive Case (Nominative case is tied to the verbal affixes for personal agreement).10 8
Verb preposing is not necessary if the content of the abstract operator is recoverable in some other way. So in the case of jussive sentences, where the verb is morphologically marked for mode (imperative or subjunctive), verb preposing is optional: (i) Nunc tu propera u t . . . (Cic. An. III.4) 'Now make haste and...'
9
Due to V2 phenomena, this can be detected only indirectly, e.g., from the fact that the Subject precedes the non-finite verb form (in the case of compound verb forms), whereas the other arguments follow the verb. More explicitly: in order to establish the basic word order inside I", the speaker disregards the finite verb and what immediately precedes it; in the case of simple verb forms, this will not give him any information about the relative position of the verb and of the other constituents, but in the case of compound verb forms the situation will be as follows (on the basis of occurring surface word orders—the part the speaker disregards is in parentheses): (Aux)SVOX (SAux)VOX (OAux)SVX (XAux)SVO
10
Cf. Vance 1997, §§3.5-6, for the discussion of several proposals about the position occupied by the Subject and the mechanisms of Case assignment. For the aims of this research, we may put aside these special problems.
The data suffice to establish that the basic word order is SVOX.
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For the subordinate clauses of the same type (section 1.2) it will suffice to assume a further projection, C", whose Head is occupied by the complementizer or, alternatively, whose Specifier is occupied by an interrogative or relative phrase. Thus we have: (32) [c» . . . [c, que [T/F» . . . [T/F, V [,„ S [r tv ... ]]]]]] The conservative type described in section 1.2 is, in its initial part, essentially identical to the Latin type (cf. section 2.4): I will therefore assume a functional projection F" for the focalized constituent in initial position (cf. (30)).n The difference in comparison with Latin consists in the respective position of the verb and of its arguments (and other constituents): whereas in Latin, in the unmarked case, all constituents move to preverbal position (in my analysis, in order to receive Case), in the Early Romance languages that still have this sentence structure only some of the constituents move to preverbal position (the Subject always, at least in non-unaccusative constructions). Since it is not possible to identify any regularity in the type of constituents that remain in postverbal position (differently from Latin), I assume that this movement was optional in Early Romance languages — in the light of my hypothesis this is because it was not imposed by the necessity, for the constituents other than the Subject, of receiving morphological Case.12 The very fact that the movement of constituents to preverbal position inside I" continues to work optionally although the original cause of this movement (the assignment of morphological Case) is no more operative, can be interpreted as the manner in which the grammar tries to smooth out a change that might be too abrubt as the result of a structural reanalysis and might jeopardize the continuity of the language spoken by successive generations: between the grammar with morphological cases and obligatory preposing of the constituents to the verb and the grammar without cases and without preposing of the constituents other than the Subject we find, as a sort of bridge, a grammar without cases and with optional preposing. If from the point of view of grammatical structure we have a break, from the point of view of the sentences produced we have a continuum (which ensures the generational cohesion in the speech community). We can represent the archaic type of sentence structure as follows: (33) [p,, X" [F, [,„ ... S . . . V . . . ] ] ] where the dots stand for for the optional position of the constituents before or after the verb. For the subordinate clauses we have only to add the functional projection C":13
1
' Notice that this type of main clause is possible only if the Focus is realized (differently from Latin): the archaic type of sentence structure survives only in a marked construction (that of focalization).
12
Early Romance languages do not actually have a system of morphological Cases. The bicasual system of French and Provengal can be analysed as Nominative case (which causes the Subject to move) vs. absence of Case.
13
Differently from main clauses, the functional projection F" is not realized obligatorily: the archaic type of subordinate clause is thus more similar to Latin — a classical example of a well-known phenomenon: the greater conservativity of subordinate clauses in comparison to main clauses.
The two sentence structures of Early Romance
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(34) [c,, . . . [c> que [F, X" [F, [,« ... S . . . V...]]]]] Notice that in the archaic type of sentence structure we actually have mixed two phenomena which have to be sharply distinguished: (i) the fact that the verb does not move out of I'' and (ii) the fact that we have free preposing of the constituents to the verb inside I'' So we could in principle expect different combinations of these two phenomena, too, i.e.,: a. the verb does not move and there is no free preposing of constituents; b. the verb moves and the constituents freely prepose; c. the verb moves without free preposing of constituents. Combination (c) is the normal V2 system of Old Romance, as discussed above in this section; it accounts for the most frequent superficial word orders: VSOX, SVOX, OVSX, XVSO and, with compound verb forms: AuxSVOX, SAuxVOX, OAuxSVX, XAuxSVO. The boldfaced elements are those which remain inside I" — the word order is SVOX/SAuxVOX, i.e., inside I" only the Subject is in preverbal position. Combination (b) is also found: according to it, inside I" we have free preposing of the constituents to the verb, then the verb moves to T/F and another constituent possibly moves to the Specifier of T/F"—in other words, the structure of I" is the archaic one, whereas the functional projection which dominates I" is the modern one. Taking for the sake of simplicity only the case of the clauses with the verb in first position, we expect the following word orders to be possible: VSOX, VOSX, VSXO, VXSO, VSXO, VOXS, VXOS and AuxSVOX, AuxSOVX, AuxOSVX, AuxSXVO, AuxXSVO, AuxSOXV, AuxSXOV, AuxOSXV, AuxOXSV, AuxXSOV, AuxXOSV. Of these word orders, some can be found (the examples in (37) are from Adams (1988, §5.2), who proposes an analysis that is similar to my own as far as these examples are concerned, although not in its general lines): (36) a. ouve el rey dom Afonso com elle sua batalha (Cronica 274.2) 'had the king D. A. with him his fight' (= VSXO) b. Tal coroa como esta [ . . . ] tynha em sua cabega aquelle glorioso barom (Padua 1960: 137) 'Such crown as this . . . wore on his head that glorious man' (= OVXS) c. Desej' eu ben aver de mia senhor (Joan Airas 208) 'Wish I good to_have from my lady' (= AuxSOVX) d. Eu [... ] queria gran sazon viver (Joan Airas 141-2) ' I . . . wouldJike long time toJive' (= SAuxXV) e. no poderiamos delles mais aver (Cronica 277.33) 'not we.could from_them more have' (We could not have more from them) (= AuxXOV) f. ouve todo esto guisado (Cronica 471.10) 'he_had all this arranged' (= AuxOV) (37) a. je vous ai m'amor donee'I to.you have my love given' b. si jeo fuse par homme vencu 'if I were by man won'
(= S AuxOV) (= SAuxXV)
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The fact that one cannot easily find examples for every possible word order may be explained both with the rarity of this type, marked and recessive, and with the intrinsic markedness of some word orders (e.g., those where the Subject is not the first of the constituents).14 Finally, combination (a) is indistinguishable from the archaic type, for in the archaic type the movement of the constituents to preverbal position is only optional. In the grammar of the Early Romance languages we have thus two parameters: • one concerns the order of constituents inside the sentence's propositional part o Romance type: [,» SVOX] o archaic type: [j» . . . S . . . V . . . ] • the other concerns verb movement o Romance type: the verb moves to T/F: [T/F« . . . [T/F/ V [,// . . . f v ...]]] o archaic type: the verb does not move out of I": [F// . . . [F/ 0 [j» . . . V ...]]] From the combination of these two parameters we obtain the three types of word orders found in Early Romance languages: — Romance type: Romance word order in I" and verb raising out of I": [T/F" • • • [T/F' v ti» S/VOX]]] — archaic type (a): archaic word order in I" without verb raising out of I": [F» . . . [F' 0 [,» . . . S . . . V ...]]] — archaic type (b): archaic word order in I" with verb raising out of I": [T/F" • • • [T/F' v h" - - -
s
• - - 'v . . . ] ] ]
TEXTS Boecis, in V. Crescini: Manuals per I'avviamento agli studi provenzali, pp. 150-158. Milano, 19263 Caes. = C. lulius Caesar: Der Burgerkrieg, ed. O. Schonberger. Mtinchen: Artemis, 1984; Caesar: The Gallic War, ed. H. J. Edwards. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press and Heinemann, 1966 (1917).
14
If in non-finite clauses the verb does not raise to a functional position external to I", the examples in which some constituents precede the non-finite verb are to be assigned to the archaic type: (i) a. pera em ella fazer as sepulturas suas (Cronica 459.6) 'in_order in it to_make his sepulchre' (= XVO) b. desta carta fazer (Doc. 25.30) 'oLthis letter writing' (= OV) (ii) a. elles em esto estando (Cronica 469.32) 'they in this being' (= SXV) b. estando elle com el rei fallando (Cronica 461.2) 'being he with the king speaking' (= SXV) (iii) dinheyros [... ] por mjm recebudos (Doc. 157.14) 'money. .. by me received' (= XV) (But in (iib) the first gerund moved out of I".)
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ChR - La Chanson de Roland, ed. C. Segre. Milano and Napoli: Ricciardi, 1971. Cic. = M. Tulli Ciceronis Epistulae. T. I: Epistulae ad familiares, ed. W. S. Watt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982 (translations from Cicero: The Letters to His Friends, ed. W. G. Williams. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press and Heinemann, 1965 (1927/29), I-III); T. II: Epistulae ad Atticum, Pars prior, libri I-VIII, ed. W. S. Watt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965 (translations from Cicero: Letters to Atticus, ed. E. O. Winstedt. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press and Heinemann, 1962 (1912/18), I-III). Cronica = Cronica Geral de Espanha de 1344, ed. L. F. Lindley Cintra. Lisboa, 1951 (Lisboa: IN-CM, 1983). D. Fernando = Fernao Lopes: Cronica de D. Fernando, ed. G. Macchi. Lisboa, IN-CM, 1975. Doc. = Documentos. In C. de Azevedo Maia: Historia do Galego-Portugues, pp. 41-295. Coimbra: INIC, 1986. Don Juan Manuel: El conde Lucanor. In Obras completas, ed. J. M. Blecua, vol. II. Madrid: Gredos. D. Pedro = Fernao Lopes: Cronica de D. Pedro, ed. G. Macchi. Roma: Ateneo, 1966. Joan Airas = J. L. Rodriguez: El cancionero de Joan Aims de Santiago. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 1980. Nov. = II Novellino, ed. G. Favati. Genova: Bozzi, 1970. Razo — razo of Bertran de Born's sirventes Puois lo gens terminis floritz. In J. Boutiere and A. H. Schutz (eds.) Biographies des Troubadours. Paris: Nizet. 19632. 107-112. Vidas = Vidas e Paixoes dos Apostolos, ed. I. Vilares Cepeda, vol. I. Lisboa: INIC, 1982.
REFERENCES Adams, Marianne. (1988). Word order and null subjects: Contributions from Old French. Ms., UCLA. Beninca, Paola. (1994). La variazione sintattica. Studi di dialettologia romanza. Bologna: il Mulino. Beninca, Paola and Giampaolo Salvi. (1988). L'ordine normale degli elementi nella frase semplice. In Lorenzo Renzi (ed.) Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione, Vol. I. Bologna: il Mulino. 119-129. Brody, Michael. (1990). Remarks on the order of elements in the Hungarian focus field. In Istvan Kenesei (ed.) Approaches to Hungarian, vol. 3. Szeged: JATE. 95-121. Kayne, Richard S. (1994). The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. de Kok, Ans C. (1985). La place du pronom personnel regime conjoint enfrancais. Une etude diachronique. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kroll, Wilhelm. (1918). Anfangsstellung des Verbums im Lateinischen. Glotta, 9, 112-123. Padua, Maria da Piedade Canaes eMarizde. (1960). A Ordem das Palavras no Portugues Arcaico (Erases de Verbo Transitivo). Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra.
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Ramsden, Herbert. (1963). Weak-Pronoun Position in the Early Romance Languages. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Riiho, Timo. (1988). La redundancia pronominal en el iberorromance medieval. Tubingen: Niemeyer. Roberts, Ian G. (1993). Verbs and Diachronic Syntax. A Comparative History of English and French. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Salvi, Giampaolo. (1991). Difesa e illustrazione della legge di Wackernagel applicata alle lingue romanze antiche: la posizione delle forme pronominali clitiche. In Laura Vanelli and Alberto Zamboni (eds.) Per Giovan Battista Pellegrini. Scritti degli allievi padovani. Padova: Unipress. 439-462. Salvi, Giampaolo. (1995). L'ordine delle parole nella frase subordinata in galego-portoghese antico. In Rakoczi Istvan (ed.) Miscellanea Rosae. Tanulmdnyok Rozsa Zoltdn 65. sziiletesnapjdra. Budapest: Mundus. 19-37. Schneider, Nicolaus. (1912). De verbi in lingua Latina collocatione. Monasterii Guestfalorum [Miinster]. Skarup, Povl. (1975). Les premieres zones de la proposition en ancien francais. K0benhavn: Akademisk Forlag. Vance, Barbara S. (1997). Syntactic Change in Medieval French. Verb-Second and Null Subjects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Watkins, Calvert. (1964). Preliminaries to the reconstruction of Indo-European sentence structure. In H. G. Lunt (ed.) Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists. The Hague: Mouton. 1035-1045.
16
EVIDENCE FOR A NULL LOCATIVE IN ITALIAN*
Christina M. Tortora
As is pointed out by Antinucci & Cinque (1977), not all monadic verbs behave identically with respect to unmarked word order. So, for example, the unmarked word order for the verbs fumare 'smoke' and dormire 'sleep' is S(ubject)-V(erb), while the verbs arrivare 'arrive' and venire 'come' use V(erb)-S(ubject) as the unmarked word order: (1) Arriva Maria. arrives Maria 'Mary is arriving.'
(2)*Dorme Maria. sleeps Maria
(3) Maria dorme. Maria sleeps 'Mary is sleeping.'
So, given a context that does not induce narrow focus on the argument DP (such as Che succede? 'What's the matter?'), the sentence in (1) with arrivare is grammatical, whereas the sentence in (2) with dormire is not. Many researchers since Antinucci & Cinque (1977) (e.g., Calabrese 1992, Delfitto & D'Hulst 1994, Delfitto & Pinto 1992, Pinto 1994, among others) have claimed that this difference in behaviour with respect to unmarked word order correlates with the unergative-unaccusative distinction. The idea is that unaccusatives allow unmarked postverbal subjects; this is in contrast with unergatives, which take S-V as the unmarked word order. However, it turns out that the word order facts and the unergative-unaccusative distinction do not line up so neatly. As was first noted explicitly by Beninca (1988) in Renzi's Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione (vol. 1), the word order V-S is not the unmarked word order for all unaccusatives in Italian. In
* Thanks to those who helped me develop the ideas in this paper (although clearly none of them should be held responsible for any problems), including Paola Beninca, Luigi Burzio, Andrea Calabrcse, Guglielmo Cinque, Miirvet En?, Cecilia Poletto, and the audiences at LSRL25 and LSRL26. Thanks also to Giuseppe Bacchetta, Mila Bacchetta, and all of their colleagues for help with the Borgomanerese data. A special thanks must be given to Lorenzo Renzi, for having conceived of the endlessly essential Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione, the grammar from which the ideas presented in this paper sprang.
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particular, she showed that given an unmarked context, the sentence in (4) with partire 'leave' is inappropriate.1 (4) *Parte Maria. leaves Maria The order V-S yields a marked interpretation for the single argument of partire. Specifically, the postverbal subject in (4) can only be interpreted as contrastively focused, similarly to what we saw above for the unergative verb dormire.2 Thus, (4) can be used felicitously only in a context which allows for a contrastive focus interpretation of the postverbal subject, such as that in (5a):3 (5) a. Chi parte? who leaves 'Who is leaving?'
b. Parte Maria. leaves Maria 'It is Maria that is leaving.'
Beninca (1988) proposes that the interpretive difference between (1) (unmarked) and (5b) (marked) is related to the presence of an "implicit locative" selected by arrivare; by hypothesis, partire does not select this locative.4 Specifically, she points out (op.cit.: 124) that "[p]artire differs from arrivare in that it does not have a subcategorized locative argument (the goal), which,
1
This is also noted for the verb andarsene 'leave' (andare 'go'+SI-NE) in Antinucci & Cinque (1977: 126f, footnote 2). Note that the '*' in (4) is intended to indicate the ungrammaticality of this string in an unmarked context, not absolute ungrammaticality.
2
Here the term "contrastive focus" is used to indicate an interpretation of the DP as an individual which necessarily belongs to a set of known individuals. In sentence (4), Maria is interpreted as belonging to a set of individuals (e.g., a set which includes Maria, Gianni, Lucia, and Giorgio) which constitutes the context in which the DP Maria can receive an interpretation in postverbal position. The term "contrastive focus" as used here thus does not entail a negation or a contradiction of a previous proposition, but rather refers to the contrast between the referent of the DP and the other members of the set to which it belongs.
-1 For many speakers, the difference between (1) and (5b) is much sharper in the non-compound tenses. The difference becomes less clear, for example, in the present perfect: (i) E arrivata Maria. is arrived Maria
(ii) ??E partita Maria, is left Maria
Since the presence of perfective aspect confounds this effect, I will only consider the simple tenses. 4
Several researchers following Beninca, including Delfitto & D'Hulst (1994), Delfitto & Pinto (1992), Pinto (1994), and Saccon (1992, 1993), have adopted the "implicit locative" analysis of arrivare in order to explain the difference in behaviour between unergatives and unaccusatives with respect to unmarked word order. The above researchers (with the exception of Saccon), however, differ from Beninca in that they extend the implicit locative analysis to all unaccusatives. This extension incorrectly predicts that all unaccusatives should allow V-S as the unmarked word order. Beninca also notes that some unergatives, such as telefonare 'telephone' and suonare 'ring (e.g., a doorbell)' allow V-S as the unmarked word order: (i) Ha telefonato Masiero. has telephoned Masiero
(ii) Ha suonato il postino. has rung the postman
She claims that such unergatives, like arrivare, have an implicit locative (with a deictic interpretation; see below). We will not consider these unergative cases here, although it is possible that they can be subsumed under the analysis provided for arrzve-type verbs.
Evidence for a null locative in Italian
315
5
if implicit, can be understood as deictic." For the purposes of exposition, let us refer to Beninca's hypothesis as the "GOAL-hypothesis." In this paper I will provide indirect evidence from both Italian and Borgomanerese (a Northern Italian dialect spoken in the Piedmont region) that the GOAL-hypothesis is correct. The paper is organized as follows: in § 11 show that the distribution of subjects with "a-telic" unaccusatives (Tortora 1997) in Italian is best understood in terms of the GOAL-hypothesis. In §2 I provide evidence from Borgomanerese for the claim that the implicit goal is syntactically projected. In §31 discuss the semantic interpretation of the implicit goal (§3.1), the incompatibility of the implicit goal with pro-drop (§3.2), and the behaviour of partire when it occurs with a second internal argument (§3.3), and show how all of the above provide further evidence in favour of the GOAL-hypothesis. In §4 I provide a conclusion.
1
a-TELIC UNACCUSATIVES IN ITALIAN
Note that the GOAL-hypothesis makes a prediction: all unaccusatives which entail a goal should pattern with arrivare in (1), while unaccusatives which do not entail a goal should pattern with partire in (5b) (with respect to the interpretation of the postverbal subject). If this prediction is borne out, then we are led to believe that the GOAL-hypothesis is correct. Tortora (1997) breaks down the class of "verbs of inherently directed motion" (terminology from Levin & Rappaport-Hovav 1994) into three types: GOAL-entailing (which includes arrivare, entrare 'enter', tornare 'return', and venire 'come'), SQURCE-entailing (which includes partire, scappare 'escape', and uscire 'exit'), and a-telic.6 The a-telic verbs of inherently directed motion (henceforth VIDMs) are ambiguous between non-GOAL-entailing (atelic) and GOAL-entailing (telic); scendere 'descend', for example, is an a-telic verb, as can be seen by (6a, b): (6) a. L'aereo e sceso per 5 minuti. the.airplane is descended for 5 minutes 'The airplane descended for 5 minutes.'
21
"Partire rappresenta un caso diverse da arrivare perche, a differenza di arrivare, non ha un argomento locative sottocategorizzato (la meta), che, se sottointeso, possa essere recuperate come deittico." Beninca suggests (op.cit.: \25) that the possibility of an unmarked postverbal subject depends on the presence of a locative argument, which can serve as the theme (or "given"—as opposed to rheme) of the sentence.
6
The latter are the verbs which Levin & Rappaport-Hovav (1994) refer to as "atelic verbs of inherently directed motion." Note that the verb andare 'go' allows a postverbal subject in an unmarked context only if the eventuality is interpreted as GOAL-entailing. Thus, there is a contrast in the interpretations of (i) and (ii): (i) E andata Maria. is gone Maria
(ii) Maria e gia andata. Maria is already gone
The sentence in (i), if used in an unmarked context, can only mean that Maria went someplace (goal), while the sentence in (ii) can either mean that Maria went someplace (goal), or that Maria left (source). These facts suggest that andare is ambiguous between GOAL-entailing and non-GOAL-entailing (cf. andarsene 'leave' (note 1 above), which is unambiguously SOURCE-entailing.
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(6) b. L'aereo e sceso (sulla pista) in 5 minuti. the.airplane is descended (on.the runway) in 5 minutes The airplane descended (onto the runway) in 5 minutes.' The GOAL-hypothesis makes a specific prediction with respect to ct-telic VIDMs like scendere. In particular, it is predicted that in an unmarked context, the word order V-S for this verb can be interpreted as grammatical only if it is interpreted as telic scendere (i.e., only if it is interpreted as an arrive-type verb, entailing a goal). To put it differently, the interpretation of this verb as non-GOAL-entailing (as atelic scendere) in an unmarked context should be impossible with the word order V-S, if it is indeed the case that non-GOAL-entailing verbs do not allow this word order in an unmarked context. Now let us see whether this prediction is borne out. Consider example (7), where the subject of scendere is postverbal. In an unmarked context (such as Che succede? 'What's happening?'), the verb in (7) can only be interpreted as entailing a goal (i.e., the Spitfire has to have landed). This is confirmed by the fact that the order V-S with scendere is incompatible with a durative phrase in an unmarked context: (7) E sceso Lo Spitfire (*per 5 minuti). is descended the Spitfire (*for 5 minutes) The Spitfire descended (*for 5 minutes).' Thus, our prediction is borne out: when the subject of scendere is postverbal, the sentence can only be interpreted as grammatical in an unmarked context if the verb is interpreted as entailing a goal (i.e., it patterns with arrivare). Note that there is another part to the prediction made by the GOAL-hypothesis. In particular, this hypothesis predicts that in a context in which the postverbal subject of scendere is interpreted as contrastively focused, this verb should be interpretable as non-GOAL-entailing (i.e., as atelic scendere). In other words, it should behave like partire. The sentence in (8) provides the context in which the postverbal subject in (9) can be interpreted as contrastively focused. The grammaticality of (9) establishes that the prediction is borne out: (8) What descended for 5 minutes? (set: a dirigible, a helicopter, the Spitfire) (9) E sceso Lo Spitfire (per 5 minuti). is descended the Spitfire (for 5 minutes) The Spitfire descended (for 5 minutes).' Thus, if the postverbal subject of scendere is contrastively focused, the verb is interpretable as non-GOAL-entailing (i.e., it behaves like partire), as is attested by its compatibility with a durative phrase. The GOAL-hypothesis thus makes correct predictions with respect to a-telic VIDMs. Note, however, that the following question arises at this point: is it simply the lexical semantic category GOAL entailed by arrive-type verbs which allows V-S as the unmarked word order, or is it the syntactic presence of a phonologically null goal which allows V-S as the unmarked word order?
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That is, do arr/ve-type verbs in Italian project a phonologically null goal argument? Nothing in the discussion thus far has required us to claim that am've-type verbs in Italian syntactically project a null goal. In what follows, I will discuss data from Borgomanerese which suggests the hypothesis that Italian arrive-type verbs do syntactically project a null goal argument.
2 THE SYNTAX OF INVERSION IN BORGOMANERESE In Borgomanerese, the semantic distinction between GOAL-entailing and SOURCE-entailing verbs correlates with a syntactic difference between these two types of verbs (Tortora 1997). As can be seen in (10), when the subject of a GOAL-entailing VIDM like rive 'arrive' is postverbal, a locative clitic, ghi, appears. This clitic is doubled by the locative subject clitic ngh in preverbal position. For the purposes of exposition, let us refer to the construction in (10) as the "g/n'-construction." (10) Ngh e riva-gghi nafjola. LOG is arrived-LOC a girl 'A girl (has) arrived.' In contrast with the above, when the subject of the SOURCE-entailing VIDM ne 'leave' is postverbal these clitics do not appear, as can be seen in (11). (12) shows that the appearance of these clitics with these verbs results in ungrammaticality (SCL = subject clitic). (11) L e naci la me amisa. SCL is gone the my friend 'It is my friend that left.' (see (19) below) (12)*Nghe naci-ghi la me amisa. LOG is gone-LOC the my friend In order to explain this correlation, let us claim that ghi is the overt, morpho-syntactic instantiation of the lexical semantic category GOAL. Note that the g/u'-construction is associated with a particular semantic interpretation not indicated in the translations provided above. The location-goal that the referent of the DP finds him/herself in as a result of the action denoted by the verb must be interpreted as a location which includes the speaker. Let us consider, for example, (10) with the verb rive 'arrive'. (10) can only describe an eventuality where the DP nafjola 'a girl' has arrived in a location shared with the speaker. Thus, it cannot be used to describe an eventuality in which a girl arrived in China, if the person who utters (10) was not in China at the time of the girl's arrival. In order to express such an eventuality in which there is no restriction on the interpretation of the location-goal, the absence of ghi is required (we will return to this fact below). The import of noting this restriction on the interpretation of the location(-goal) becomes clear when we consider a sentence which does not contain the locative ghi. Consider for example the case of the verb ne 'leave' in (11), where there is no ghi when the subject is postverbal. As
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discussed in Tortora (1997), ne does entail the existence of a location(-source). However, unlike the location(-goal) in (10), the location(-source) in (11) does not have to include the speaker. As such, (11) can be used to describe any eventuality involving a girl's departure, even if the speaker is not there at the time of departure. Thus, in the absence of ghi, there is no particular requirement on the interpretation of the location entailed by the VIDM. Now, consider the case of the GOAL-entailing verb rive when it does not occur in the ghiconstruction (i.e., when the subject is preverbal, and there is no ghi): (13) Na fjola 1 e riva. a girl SCL is arrived. 'A girl arrived.' In (13) (just as in (11) with the location(-source)), there is no restriction on interpretation of the location(-goal) at which the referent of the DP arrives. Consequently, (13) can be used to describe any eventuality, irrespective of the unity of the location of arrival and location of the speaker. Again, the presence of ghi correlates with a speaker-oriented restriction on the interpretation of the location entailed by the VIDM, while its absence correlates with the lack of such a restriction. Given these facts, it seems logical to conclude that ghi forces the speaker-oriented interpretation of the location, but before we continue, I want to consider a possible objection. A close comparison of (11) and (13) reveals that in the former, the subject is postverbal, while in the latter the subject is preverbal. A possible objection: could it be that it is the postverbal position of the subject which forces the speaker-oriented interpretation of the location(-goal)? Although (11) is V-S and still yields no speaker-oriented interpretation of the location(-source), one might appeal to the fact that (11) involves a source and not a goal to explain the difference. Is it only a goal that can be subject to such a restriction on interpretation?7 Consider, in this regard, the following. Given sentences like (13), in which ghi is not present, we must conclude that the occurrence of this clitic with GOAL-entailing verbs is not obligatory. In fact, as can be seen in (14), its presence is also optional when the subject is postverbal:8 (14) L e riva na fjola. SCL is arrived a girl 'It is a girl that arrived.'
(see (22) below)
The important difference to note between (10) and (14) is that (14) patterns with (13) with respect to the interpretation of the location(-goal) (and with (11) with respect to the location(-source)). Thus, the sentence in (14) can be used to describe an eventuality in which a girl arrives at some 7
Note that if this were the explanation, it would not be clear why only goal, and not source, could be subject to such a speaker-oriented interpretation.
8
It should be noted that (14) is a marked sentence (as opposed to (10), which is unmarked). In particular, the sentence in (10) can be used out-of-the blue (e.g., as an answer to the question "What happened?"). In sentence (14), on the other hand, narrow focus.is placed on the postverbal subject na fjola 'a girl'. Thus, (14) can be used only in answer to the question "Who arrived?" We will discuss this contrast in greater detail in the discussion of Italian in §3.
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location that does not necessarily include the speaker. Here we see, then, that it is the absence of ghi, and not the preverbal position of the subject, which correlates with the lack of a speakeroriented restriction on the interpretation of the location entailed by the verb.9
3
THE SYNTACTIC PRESENCE OF A PRO-LOC IN ITALIAN
Let us take the Borgomanerese data to suggest the hypothesis that the locative argument discussed by Beninca (1988) is syntactically projected: (15) Pro-loc Hypothesis Italian arrive-type verbs optionally select pro-loc (a phonologically null locative argument); it is the syntactic presence of this pro-loc that yields the unmarked interpretation for the V-S word order.
3.1
The interpretation of the locative
Note that the Pro-loc Hypothesis makes two specific predictions. The first prediction is that since the unmarked interpretation of the V-S word order is enabled by the syntactic presence of the pro-loc, it should correlate with a restriction on the interpretation of the location-goal such that the location-goal must include the speaker. This prediction emerges because as we saw for Borgomanerese ((10), repeated here as (16)), the presence of the pro-loc forces this speakeroriented (SO) interpretation of the location-goal: (16) Ngh e riva-gghi nafjola. LOG is arrived-LOC a girl 'A girl (has) arrived.' (GOAL is necessarily SO) If it is the presence of the pro-loc that both forces this speaker-oriented interpretation of the goal as well as allows for the unmarked interpretation of the V-S word order, then the unmarked interpretation of the V-S word order in Italian should necessarily involve a speaker-oriented interpretation of the goal. Note that this prediction is borne out. The sentence in (1), repeated here as (17), can only describe an eventuality where the referent of the DP Maria arrives in a location shared with the speaker:10
9
The reader may be wondering at this point why the presence of ghi should force this speaker-oriented interpretation of the goal. A discussion of this is given in Tortora 1997.
10
This is what Beninca (1988) refers to as the "deictic" interpretation of the implicit locative (see note 6 above).
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(17) Arriva Maria, arrives Maria 'Mary is arriving.' (GOAL is necessarily SO) The sentence in (17) cannot be used to describe an eventuality in which, for example, Maria arrives in China, if the person who utters (17) is not in China at the time of Maria's arrival. Thus, (17) corresponds to the Borgomanerese sentence in (16), which exhibits overt evidence for the presence of a pro-loc. Note that the V-S word order with partire ((5b), repeated here as (18)), which forces a contrastive focus interpretation of the postverbal subject, does not yield such a speaker-oriented interpretation of the location(-source): (18) Parte Maria, leaves Maria 'It is Maria that is leaving.' (subject gets contrastive focus; SOURCE not necessarily SO) Thus, (18) can be used to describe any eventuality, even if the speaker is not at the location(source) at the time of Maria's departure. This follows from the idea that partire does not syntactically project a pro-loc (as per the Pro-loc Hypothesis in (15)). Recall that Borgomanerese exhibits the same phenomenon ((11), repeated here as (19)). The non-GOAL-entailing verb ne 'leave' does not project a pro-loc (evidenced by the lack of the locative clitics). This correlates with the lack of a restriction on the interpretation of the location(-source). Note that the postverbal subject, like that in Italian, gets a contrastive focus interpretation: (19) L e naci nafjola. SCL is gone a girl 'It was a girl that left.' (subject gets contrastive focus; SOURCE not necessarily SO) As can be seen, then, the first prediction made by (15) is borne out. Now let us turn to the second prediction made by the Pro-loc Hypothesis: the syntactic absence of a pro-loc with arrive-typ& verbs (recall that arrive-type verbs project pro-loc optionally) should yield a contrastive focus interpretation for the postverbal subject of arrivare, exactly like with partire in (18). Furthermore, the contrastive focus interpretation should correlate with the lack of a restriction on the interpretation of the goal, since it is the presence of the pro-loc which forces the speaker-oriented interpretation. This prediction is borne out. That is, in addition to the unmarked interpretation that obtains with the V-S word order with arrive-type verbs, it turns out that the V-S word order with these verbs can also yield a contrastive focus interpretation of the postverbal subject. Thus, the sentence in (1) can also be used in the following context: (20) Chi arriva? who arrives 'Who is arriving?'
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When the order V-S is used with a contrastive focus interpretation on the postverbal subject, the goal is no longer necessarily interpreted as speaker-oriented. The following example sketches out these facts:11 (21) Arriva Maria, arrives Maria 'It is Maria that is arriving.' (subject gets contrastive focus; GOAL not necessarily SO) The above example is comparable to the Borgomanerese example ((14), repeated here as (22)) in which the lack of a ghi yields the lack of a restriction on the interpretation of the goal: (22) L e riva na fjola. SCL is arrived a girl 'It was a girl that arrived.' (subject gets contrastive focus; GOAL not necessarily SO) Recall from note 11 that (22) also yields a contrastive focus interpretation of the postverbal subject, rendering (21) and (22) completely parallel. Recall, too, that in Borgomanerese, the preverbal position of the subject of rive, which entails the lack of a pro-loc, also yields an unrestricted interpretation of the goal ((13), repeated here as (23)): (23) Na fjola 1 e riva. a girl SCL is arrived. 'A girl arrived.' (GOAL not necessarily SO) Note that Italian exhibits the same phenomenon; when the subject is preverbal, the location-goal does not have to include the speaker:12 (24) Una ragazza e arrivata. a girl is arrived. 'A girl arrived.' (GOAL not necessarily SO) The preverbal subject precludes the existence of pro-loc (which much occupy SpecIP; see Tortora 1997 and §3.2 below). As predicted by the Pro-loc Hypothesis, the location-goal is thus not necessarily interpreted as speaker-oriented. 1
' Note that both interpretations of this sentence (i.e., unmarked (as in (17)) or contrastively focused postverbal subject (as in (21)) yield the same intonation.
12
It should be noted that in both Borgomanerese and Italian, SpecIP disfavours indefinite DPs like una ragazza/ na fjola 'a girl', most probably having to do with structural locations outside of VP being associated with presupposed (in the sense of Diesing (1992)) or specific (in the sense of En? (1991)) material. The sentence in (24) would thus be more felicitous with a definite DP (idem for the Borgomanerese example).
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To summarize, there are several positive consequences to the Pro-loc Hypothesis: first, it allows us to explain why the unmarked interpretation obtained by the V-S word order yields a speaker-oriented interpretation of the goal. Second, it explains why the V-S word order can also yield a contrastive focus interpretation of the postverbal subject, as is the case with partire. Third, it explains why this latter interpretation of the postverbal subject correlates with the unrestricted interpretation of the goal. Fourth, it explains why it is only the "subject inversion" construction that potentially yields the speaker-oriented interpretation of the goal: the presence of a preverbal subject necessarily correlates with an unrestricted interpretation of the goal because SpecIP is not available for pro-loc (see §3.2 below). These facts all line up with those exhibited by Borgomanerese, where there is overt phonological evidence for a pro-loc. Given these consequences, let us adopt the Pro-loc Hypothesis. Here I give a tree for Italian arrivare; I use a Larsonian (Larson 1988) structure, since I take such GOAL-entailing verbs to optionally project the pro-loc as the indirect object argument:
In Italian, when pro-loc is projected, it obligatorily moves to SpecIP: (26) Arriva Maria, (unmarked interpretation; speaker-oriented GOAL)
n
The idea that pro-loc raises to subject position captures Beninca's intuition (note 6) that the locative serves as the "theme" of the sentence (NB: TP and Agr0P are not represented in (26) since they are not crucial for the present purposes).
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Thus, the structure in (26) corresponds to the sentence in (17), in which the postverbal subject is unmarked and the goal is necessarily interpreted as speaker-oriented. The structure which corresponds to the sentence in (21), in which the postverbal subject is interpreted as contrastively focused and there is no restriction on the interpretation of the goal, is the following (where no pro-loc is projected): (27) Arriva Maria, (marked interpretation; GOAL not necessarily speaker-oriented)
This is the same structure as that projected by partire.
3.2.
Pro-loc and pro-drop
Both pro and pro-loc cannot be projected in one and the same structure, because they would have to compete for the same syntactic position, since as "weak" pronouns ("weak" in the sense of Cardinaletti & Starke 1999), both need to move overtly to subject position.14 As such, the Proloc Hypothesis predicts that pro-loc is impossible in the context of pro-drop. In Italian, we can indirectly detect the absence of pro-loc by the interpretation of the location-goal: if the locationgoal is not obligatorily speaker-oriented, this means pro-loc is not present in the structure. Note that the above prediction is borne out: in a pro-drop construction, the goal is freely interpreted, indicating the lack of pro-loc in the presence of pro: (28) E arrivata. is arrived.FEM 'She (has) arrived.' (GOAL not necessarily SO) That is, (28) can be used in a context in which the (feminine) subject pro arrives in China, even if the speaker was not in China at the time of arrival. Note that the fact exhibited in (28) lines up with the Borgomanerese facts. In the case of a pro-drop construction like that in (29a), pro must move to SpecIP, as in (29b).15
14
Cardinaletti & Starke claim that pronouns divide into three distinct grammatical classes: "strong", "weak", and clitics. I follow Cardinaletti & Starke's proposal that pro must be taken to be a weak pronoun. They further argue that one property which distinguishes strong and weak pronouns is that the latter must obligatorily move to a Case-related position (in this case, SpecIP).
1:1
The structure in (29b), which does not involve a Larsonian shell, is essentially the one seen in (27); this is due to the fact that the second internal argument is not projected in this case.
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Given this analysis, we predict pro-drop to be impossible in the presence of ghi. That is, projecting both pro and pro-loc in one and the same structure would result in ungrammaticality, because they would have to compete for the same syntactic position, since as weak pronouns, both need to move overtly to subject position. Note that this prediction is borne out: (30) *Ngh e riva-gghi. LOG is arrived-LOC As can be seen in (30), pro-drop is impossible in the g/n'-construction.
3.3 Partire with an extra argument The GOAL-hypothesis indirectly suggests that when a second internal argument is present, an unmarked interpretation of the postverbal subject obtains (as in (26)). Note that this claim makes a prediction: projecting an additional argument with partire should yield an unmarked interpretation of the postverbal subject. Note that this prediction is borne out: (31) a. Parte un razzo per la luna. leaves a rocket for the moon 'A rocket is leaving for the moon.' b. Mi parte il treno. to.me leaves the train 'The train is leaving on me.' For the sentences in (31) (which both have a second internal argument; per la luna 'for the moon' in (31 a) and mi 'me' in (3 lb)), the postverbal subject of partire no longer gets a contrastive focus interpretation (Beninca, personal communication). As such, these sentences can be used in an unmarked context, just like the sentence in (1) with arrivare.
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4 CONCLUSION The distribution of subjects with a-telic unaccusatives in Italian is explained under Beninca's GOAL-hypothesis. The Borgomanerese data presented in §2 further suggest the hypothesis that the goal argument entailed by arrive-lype verbs in Italian is syntactically projected (the Pro-loc Hypothesis). The Pro-loc Hypothesis has allowed us to explain: (a) the restricted semantic interpretation of the locative with unmarked postverbal subjects of amve-type verbs; (b) the absence of a restricted semantic interpretation of the locative in pro-drop constructions, constructions with preverbal subjects, and constructions with contrastively focussed postverbal subjects; and finally, (c) the unmarked interpretation of postverbal subjects with leave-iype verbs when an overt second internal argument is present. I thus hope to have shown that adopting Beninca's GOAL-hypothesis and extending it to the syntactic level allows us to unify a number of apparently independent phenomena.
REFERENCES Antinucci, Francesco and Guglielmo Cinque. (1977). Sull'ordine delle parole in italiano: 1'emarginazione. Studi di Grammatica Italiana, VI, 121-146. Beninca, Paola. (1988). L'ordine degli elementi della frase e le costruzioni marcate: soggetto postverbale. In Lorenzo Renzi (ed.) Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione. Vol. 1. Bologna: il Mulino. 123-125. Calabrese, Andrea. (1992). Some remarks on focus and logical structure in Italian. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics, 1, 91-127. Cardinaletti, Anna and Michal Starke. (1999). The typology of structural deficiency. A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.) Clitics in the Languages of Europe. EALT/EUROTYP 20-5. Berlin & New York: Mouton. 145-233. Delfitto, Denis and Yves D'Hulst. (1994). Beyond the mapping hypothesis. Some hypotheses on the syntactic codification of specificity. In Gianluigi Borgato (ed.) Teoria del linguaggio e analisi linguistica. 213-235. Padova: Unipress. Delfitto, Denis and Manuela Pinto. (1992). How free is 'Free Inversion' ? Recherches de Linguistique Francaise et Romane D'Utrecht, XI, 1-7. Diesing, Molly. (1992). Indefinites. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. En9, Mlirvet. (1991). The Semantics of Specificity. Linguistic Inquiry, 22, 1-25. Larson, Richard K. (1988). On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry, 19, 335-391. Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport-Hovav. (1994). Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Pinto, Manuela. (1994). Subjects in Italian: Distribution and interpretation. In Reineke BokBennema and Crit Cremers (eds.) Linguistics in the Netherlands. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Renzi, Lorenzo, (ed.). (1988). Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione, Vol. I. Bologna: il Mulino.
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Saccon, Graziella. (1992). VP-internal arguments and locative subjects. Proceedings of the 22nd meeting of the North Eastern Linguistic Society, 383-397. Saccon, Graziella. (1993). Post-verbal subjects: A study based on Italian and its dialects. PhD dissertation, Harvard University. Tortora, Christina M. (1997). The syntax and semantics of the weak locative. PhD dissertation, University of Delaware.
