Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages (Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Languages and Cognition)

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages Ian Mackenzie

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Also by Ian Mackenzie INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY SPANISH: An Essential Grammar (with Peter T. Bradley)

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages Ian Mackenzie School of Modern Languages University of Newcastle upon Tyne

© I. E. Mackenzie 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identiﬁed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN–13: 978–1–4039–4918–9 ISBN–10: 1–4039–4918–2 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mackenzie, I. E. Unaccusative verbs in Romance languages / Ian Mackenzie. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–4918–2 (cloth) 1. Romance languages – Verb. I. Title. PC145.M33 2006 440′.0456 – dc22 2005056582 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08

2 07

1 06

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Jack, Harry and Palma

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Contents List of Tables

ix

Acknowledgement

x

Sources of Historical Examples

xi

1 The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 1.1 The Ergative Analysis 1.2 The Ergative Analysis versus the Unaccusative Hypothesis 1.3 General problems with the ‘deep-object’ hypothesis 1.4 Conclusion

1 1 5 8 15

2

Expletive Inversion 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Expletives and unergative subjects 2.3 Partitive case 2.4 A preliminary conclusion about expletive inversion 2.5 Distribution of French il 2.6 Conclusion

17 17 18 20 30 31 37

3

Partitive Cliticization 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Syntactic arguments 3.3 Partitive cliticization independent of unaccusative– unergative distinction 3.4 The distribution of partitive ne/en 3.5 Conclusion

39 39 40 55 60 67

4 Bare Subjects 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Unergatives can have bare postverbal subjects 4.3 Constraints on bare subject distribution 4.4 Aspectually stative constructions 4.5 Modiﬁed and conjoined bare subjects 4.6 Conclusion

70 70 73 78 95 99 101

5

103 103 104

Perfect Auxiliary Selection 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Burzio’s theory vii

viii

Contents

5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7

Accounts based on the nature of the auxiliaries Comparison between Italian and French Auxiliary selection is not directly semantic The historical perspective Conclusion

109 111 117 129 159

Past 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Participle Agreement The basic patterns Agreement by movement The problem of postverbal subjects Fragmentation of the system Conclusion

162 162 164 165 168 170

7 Participial Absolutes 7.1 The basic data 7.2 Structural analyses of participial absolutes 7.3 Unergative subjects in participial absolutes 7.4 Conclusion

172 172 173 178 180

8 Conclusion

182

Notes

187

References

212

Index

220

6

List of Tables 5.1 French intransitive verbs that select être 5.2 Italian intransitive verbs that select essere 5.3 French and Italian auxiliary assignment mismatches 5.4 Revised taxonomy for French and Italian auxiliary assignment mismatches

ix

104 105 113 116

Acknowledgement The preparation of this book was ﬁnanced by a grant from the Research Leave scheme of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

x

Sources of Historical Examples (Editions are speciﬁed only where necessary.) A Arr C Cal Cent Crest D Dicc F FC I L M Mal O P Po Q R S Sette T TF Tra

El libro de Alexandre (13th C.) Martial d’Auvergne: Arrêts d’amour (15th/16th C.) Poema de mio Cid (13th C.) Calila e Dymna (13th C.) [References are to Cacho Blecua and Lacarra 1984.] Antonio Pucci: Il Centiloquio (14th C.) Ernesto Monaci: Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli (13th C.) [References are to Arese 1955.] Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron (14th C.) Diccionario Ilustrado latino–español, español–latino. Barcelona: Bibliograf. 1970. [‘A’ indicates reference to appendix.] I ﬁorétti di S. Francesco (14th C.) [References are to Luca 1954.] Filippo Corsini: Istoria della conquista del Messico scritta in castigliano da Antonio de Solís, tradotta in toscano (17th C.) Dante Alighieri: Inferno (14th C.) Bianco da Siena: Laudi spirituali (14th C.) [References are to Bini 1851.] Gonzalo de Berceo: La vida de San Millan de Cogolla (13th C.) Lorenzo Lippi: Il Malmantile racquistato (17th C.) Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando furioso (16th C.) Dante Alighieri: Purgatorio (14th C.) Poeti del Duecento (13th C.) [References are to Contini 1960.] La Queste de Saint Graal (13th C.) Chanson de Roland (11th C.) Gonzalo de Berceo: Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos (13th C.) Il libro dei sette savi di Roma (14th C.) [References are to Cappelli 1865.] Omero Tórtora: Istoria di Francia (16th/17th C.) Testi ﬁorentini del Dugento e dei primi secoli del Trecento (13th/14th C.) [References are to Schiafﬁni 1926.] Dell’arte del vetro per musaico, Tre trattatelli dei secoli XIV e XV (14th/15th C.) [References are to pages in Milanesi 1864.] xi

xii

Trec U V

Sources of Historical Examples

Franco Sacchetti: Il Trecentonovelle (14th C.) La gran conquista de ultramar (13th C.) [References are to Gayangos 1951.] Matteo Villani: Cronica (14th C.)

1 The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis

1.1 The Ergative Analysis A number of intransitive verbs, particularly those indicating movement or change of state and those that have a presentational type meaning, are associated with a cluster of properties across the Romance languages, the most important of which are: 1. Selection of a ‘be’ perfect auxiliary, together with subject–participle agreement: modern Italian Sono arrivate delle lettere ‘Some letters arrived’, Old Spanish Salidos son de Valençia ‘They have left Valencia’ (Cid 1821). 2. Compatibility with absolute past participle constructions: Spanish Llegados los niños . . . ‘Once the children had arrived . . .’, Italian Ritornati i Borboni sul trono di Napoli . . . ‘With the Bourbons returned to the Naples throne . . .’ 3. Compatibility with overt expletives in subject position: French Il est paru une nouvelle edition ‘A new edition has just come out’. 4. Compatibility with partitive cliticization from the subject: Italian Ne occorreranno molti di più ‘Many more of them will be needed’, Catalan Va morir-ne un en accident ‘One of them died in an accident’. 5. Compatibility with postverbal bare subjects (in those languages that allow them): Spanish Entraban hormigas en la tienda ‘Ants were getting into the tent’, Italian Usciva fumo dal motore ‘Smoke was coming from the engine’. Not all of the relevant verbs exhibit all of the above properties (for example, Spanish does not have a partitive clitic like Italian ne and 1

2

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Catalan en), but there are enough cross-linguistic similarities to enable a group of intransitive verbs to be identiﬁed as special in some way. According to what I will call the Ergative Analysis,1 the above properties are related to the fact that the apparent subjects of the verbs in question (called unaccusatives or ergatives) 2 are ‘deep’ objects, and in some cases surface objects also. Details vary over exactly how the contrast is drawn between unaccusatives and ordinary intransitives (called unergatives) but, within syntax-based analyses at least, it has been consistently argued that unaccusative subjects have a structurally ‘lower’ initial position (or external merge site) than unergative subjects. Originally it was argued that unaccusative subjects originated in the position of complement to the verb, and then either remained in situ or moved to another position. For example, in an inﬂuential paper Belletti (1988) argued that while indeﬁnite postverbal unaccusative subjects were in their initial position of complement to the verb, their deﬁ nite counterparts and all preverbal unaccusative subjects had undergone movement: (1)

All’improvviso [VP é entrato [ NP un uomo] [ PP dalla ﬁnestra]]. (Adapted from Belletti 1988:9) ‘Suddenly a man came in through the window.’

(2)

[VP È arrivato ti ] Giannii. (Adapted from Belletti 1988:17) ‘Gianni has arrived.’

(3)

Giannii [VP è arrivato ti ]. ‘Gianni has arrived.’

Notice that in (2) and (3) the subject Gianni is analysed as having moved from its original position as the complement of arrivato, which is now occupied by a trace t (bearing the same subscript as the moved phrase). On the other hand, the indeﬁnite postverbal subject in (1) undergoes no movement and is thus structurally a direct object (albeit one that does not have accusative case).3 In contrast to the above patterns, unergative subjects were assumed to originate in the high preverbal subject position (spec-IP or spec-TP), from which they could optionally be lowered to the same structural position as that assigned in Belletti’s 1988 theory to postverbal deﬁnite unaccusative subjects (see example (2) above). In a recent updating of the above analysis, Belletti (1999, pp. 34–5) has continued to argue that indeﬁnite postverbal unaccusative subjects originate (and remain) in the base position assigned to direct objects

The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 3

(now deemed by her to be the speciﬁer of a low or inner VP), although she now analyses postverbal unergative and deﬁ nite subjects as moving to the speciﬁer of a clause-internal ‘focus phrase’ (the ﬁrst functional projection above a higher or outer VP), with the verb raising even higher to give the VS word order. In this way she preserves the core of the Ergative Analysis, viz. the assumption that ‘the surface preverbal subject of unaccusatives is in fact a deep object, and, even more importantly, the postverbal subject of unaccusatives is in fact not only a deep but also a surface object’ (Belletti 1999, p. 34).4 A link between assumptions such as those made in Belletti 1988/1999 and the properties 1 to 5 described above has then been claimed to follow from general principles of syntax. The classic instance of this is the treatment of partitive cliticization, which has been variously linked to the distinction between A-positions and A-bar positions (Belletti and Rizzi 1981), the Empty Category Principle (Contreras 1986, Cinque 1990a, 1990c, Longobardi 1991), the Condition on Extraction Domains (Belletti 1999) and the proper binding requirement on traces (Baltin 2001). Note for example the latter approach, according to which the availability of ne-extraction from a postverbal subject in Italian is determined straightforwardly by the requirement that traces have ccommanding antecedents (identiﬁed by Fiengo 1974, 1977). Thus Baltin writes (assuming the 1988 version of Belletti’s theory): The argument for ne-cliticization is that the host of ne must be, within GB/minimalism terms, the c-command domain of ne. The post-verbal indeﬁnites [i.e., those that allow ne-cliticization] are analyzed as simply being the D-structure objects of the verb that remain in their D-structure positions, claimed by Belletti (1988) to receive an inherent partitive Case. The other post-verbal subjects are analyzed as being adjoined to VP, a position from which they are not c-commanded by ne.5 (Baltin 2001, p. 241) The same ethos has characterized approaches to the other properties associated with unaccusative verbs. For example, Contreras (1986) argued that the apparent link between unaccusativity and bare subject capability followed from the Empty Category Principle (ECP), according to which empty categories were required to be properly governed. By positing that bare arguments contained an empty category (speciﬁcally an empty quantiﬁer), and by assuming a comparatively restricted deﬁnition of proper government, he derived the constraint that bare arguments had to occur in the complement position to either a preposi-

4

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

tion or a verb. Necessarily then, a bare subject had to occur as the complement of its verb, a possibility that exists in the case of unaccusatives, under the Ergative Analysis, but not in that of unergatives. With regard to overt expletives like French il (as well as English there), the assumption in Burzio’s classic study (Burzio 1986) was that such items targeted the same initial position as unergative subjects, thus ensuring that the two could not co-occur in the same clause. Alternatively, the associate (the postverbal argument) in the expletive construction has been claimed to have a case, called partitive, that can only be licensed on objects. This would exclude unergative associates but not unaccusative associates, given the assumption that the latter are objects. (For this particular approach see in particular Lasnik 1999, p. 130.) As regards participial absolute constructions, the basic approach has consisted in attributing the apparent exclusion of unergative verbs to their q -marking properties. Some authors (such as Levin and Rappaport 1986 and Cinque 1990a) have assumed that the past participle morphology generally blocks the licensing of subject q -role (or its externalization),6 which would leave an unergative subject of a participial clause without a q -role but not an unaccusative subject (assuming the latter have object q -role). Alternatively, unergative past participles have been claimed to bear accusative case, which, by reason of an assumed need for case conﬂict to be avoided, prevents them from raising to another case position; that is, one from which nominative case can be licensed on their subject. Thus the possibility of an unergative subject in a participial clause is ruled out on the grounds that such a subject would not be case-marked. (For this approach, see Belletti 1992, 1990.) The unaccusative–unergative asymmetry in terms of perfect auxiliary selection has been linked both to the theory of binding (Burzio 1986) and to the theory of auxiliaries (Kayne 1993, Cocchi 1994). Burzio famously attributed ‘be’ selection with unaccusatives to the binding relation established between the (preverbal) subject and the trace he assumed it left behind in its initial (postverbal) position. He additionally claimed that an analogous binding relation existed between an unmoved unaccusative subject (in effect an object) and a null expletive occupying the otherwise vacant preverbal subject position. Later, developing Benveniste’s (1960) thesis that ‘have’ and ‘be’ are variants of the same underlying unit, Kayne and Cocchi argued that there was no auxiliary selection as such. Instead ‘be’ was claimed to be the basic auxiliary, but it was realized as ‘have’ whenever a certain abstract preposition incorporated to it. The apparent unaccusative–

The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 5

unergative perfect auxiliary asymmetry in languages like Italian then followed from the assumption that such incorporation did not take place with unaccusatives.7 Finally, the subject–participle agreement pattern exhibited by ‘be’selecting unaccusatives in the perfect has been claimed to result from the movement of the subject from its hypothesized initial position as object to its surface preverbal position (Kayne 1989, Belletti 2001). The basic assumption is that, in so moving, the subject passes through the speciﬁer of a participle agreement projection and thus enters into an agreement relation with the participle. These and other theoretical accounts will be reviewed in the course of the present study. The point to note at this stage is that certain familiar descriptive facts of the sort enumerated earlier as 1 to 5 are now widely assumed to follow from a speciﬁc syntactic characterization. The precise details vary from author to author, but the basic assumption is so deeply entrenched that the question of whether it is correct or not is to all intents a settled issue. The object of the present study is to question this status quo by showing (i) that the foregoing syntactic account of the relevant phenomena is both theoretically unnecessary and empirically inadequate and (ii) that perfectly rational alternative explanations are readily available. Indeed, one of the implicit conclusions will be that the Ergative Analysis – insofar as it applies to Romance – is a classic instance of reconstructing essentially non-syntactic phenomena in syntactic terms.

1.2 The Ergative Analysis versus the Unaccusative Hypothesis The Ergative Analysis stems primarily from the work of Burzio (1981, 1986), although partly overlapping ideas can be found in the work of previous authors (for example, Stowell 1978, Fiengo 1974). It was originally inspired (at least in its post-1970s form) by the Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter 1978, p. 160; 1989, pp. 64–7) of Relational Grammar (RG). Within the latter framework, grammatical functions or relations are assigned numbers, with 1, for example, corresponding to the subject and 2 corresponding to the direct object. Such numbers were originally used to label arcs in diagrams that represented the relations in question, but the ‘arc’ terminology has since fallen into disuse – it will however be used here, given the need to refer to certain seminal RG papers that are couched within the older terminology.

6

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

RG also makes use of the concept of a ‘stratum’. This reconstructs the idea of a syntactic level, with the initial stratum corresponding roughly to the D-Structure formerly posited within the Generative tradition. According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, an initial stratum is unaccusative ‘if and only if it contains a 2-arc and no 1-arc’ (Perlmutter 1989, p. 65), much as under the Ergative Analysis an unaccusative verb is assigned a ‘deep’ direct object argument but no ‘deep’ subject argument.8 Given the Final 1 Law, according to which ‘clauses with ﬁnal unaccusative strata will not be well-formed in any language’ (Perlmutter 1978, p. 160), the item heading the 2-arc in an initial unaccusative stratum often ‘advances’ to head a 1-arc in the ﬁnal stratum. Thus, for example, the sentence Gorillas exist (with the unaccusative verb exist) has two strata: an initial one, in which the nominal gorillas heads a 2arc (is a 2) and a ﬁnal one in which it heads a 1-arc (is a 1). Note however that an initial 2 does not always undergo advancement in this way. In particular, Italian postverbal unaccusative subjects (at least when indeﬁnite) are assumed by Perlmutter to be chomeurs (literally, unemployed persons) rather than 1s in the ﬁnal stratum. Thus in example (4) below (from Perlmutter 1983, p. 142) dei profughi ungheresi heads an initial 2-arc but is a chomeur in the ﬁnal stratum. The overall sentence is then regarded as illustrating an impersonal construction, with a silent dummy as the ﬁnal 1: (4)

Sono rimasti dei profughi ungheresi nel paese. ‘Some Hungarian refugees remained in the country.’

Although it is sometimes suggested that the ergative analysis of unaccusatives is simply a Government-Binding or Minimalist analogue of the original RG formulation, such claims are in fact misleading. Within the GB/Minimalist programme, the analysis of unaccusative subjects as being deep objects (and in many cases surface objects also) is associated with a conﬁgurational description that in principle has empirically veriﬁable implications. In contrast, within the RG framework the analysis of unaccusative subjects as being (initial) 2s is unsupported by a conﬁgurational description. Perlmutter in fact is rather clear on this point, when he insists (1989, pp. 107–8) on the non-equivalence of RG-style 1s and 2s with GB/Minimalist-style conﬁgurational deﬁnitions of subject and direct object. However, given that the Unaccusative Hypothesis also assumes 2hood not to be necessarily associated with any surface morphosyntactic property such as case, agreement with the verb or linear position, it is hard to see what objective correlate attaches

The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 7

to the RG concept of 2hood. Indeed, RG appears to make a virtue of the fact that notions such as 1hood and 2hood are ‘theoretical primitives’, that is, undeﬁned concepts (Perlmutter 1989, pp. 64–5). Thus the 2hood analysis of unaccusative subjects is essentially a way of grouping the subjects of the verbs deemed to be unaccusative with transitive direct objects. This grouping is motivated by the fact that unaccusative subjects are claimed to pattern with transitive direct objects in terms of certain phenomena, the classic instances in Romance being partitive cliticization and absolute participial constructions (Perlmutter 1989, pp. 67–74).9 By the same token, RG-style analyses of the cluster of properties listed as 1 to 5 in 1.1 are necessarily stipulative in character, given that the crucial analytical concepts (1hood, 2hood, and so forth) admit of no appeal to more general structural principles. Consider, for example, the following generalizations from the RG literature: (5)

Condition on Italian partitive ne (Perlmutter 1983, p. 155): A nominal can be the ‘source’ of partitive NE in clause b only if it: a) heads a 2-arc with tail b,10 and b) does not head a ﬁnal 1-arc with tail b.11

(6)

Auxiliary selection rule for Italian (Perlmutter 1989, p. 82): If there is a nominal heading both a 1-arc with tail b and an Object arc12 with tail b, then clause b requires the perfect auxiliary essere. Otherwise it requires avere.

(7)

Generalization on Italian participial absolutes (Loporcaro 2003, p. 240): The verb in participial form is accompanied by a nominal which is i) its P-initial 213 ii) the ﬁnal 1 of the participial clause or its brotherin-law.14

Notice that in each case the occurrence of the relevant phenomenon is stated to result from the fulﬁ lment of an essentially arbitrary combination of conditions. Thus while the generalizations have empirical import – in that they assert various patterns of parallel distribution – there is no sense in which they are motivated in terms of general theoretical principles.

8

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Therefore, while it can be argued whether RG-style generalizations such as those shown in (5) to (7) are empirically adequate or not, the undeﬁned nature of the key analytical concepts leaves no scope for engagement at a theoretical level. Accordingly, little will be said in the theoretical sections of this book about the RG approach, although the empirical evidence adduced will implicitly challenge the empirical adequacy of the relevant RG generalizations.

1.3 General problems with the ‘deep-object’ hypothesis As was mentioned earlier, the aim of this book is to question the utility of the unaccusative–unergative distinction in terms of the analysis of properties such as those enumerated as 1 to 5 in 1.1. Obviously, this objective can only be advanced through consideration of the nature of these properties on an individual basis, and that programme forms the subject matter of the main chapters of this book. On the other hand, certain general anomalies can be identiﬁed at this stage within the basic assumption that unaccusative subjects are ‘deep’ direct objects (or initial 2s) in a syntactic sense. 1.3.1 q -marking The ﬁrst such anomaly relates to a standard subject–object asymmetry in q -marking. Since Chomsky (1986a, pp. 59–60), it has usually been assumed that subject q -role is assigned not by the verb in isolation but compositionally by the VP as a whole. For example, in (8) and (9) below it is the verb plus its complement, and not merely the verb, that determines the q -role assigned to John (agent in (8), but not in (9)): (8)

John broke the window.

(9)

John broke his arm.

This contrasts with the assignment of a q -role to the object position, which is assumed to be determined directly by the verb. Now the assumption concerning unaccusatives is that their subjects bear object q -role, given that while such verbs q -mark an object, no q role is assigned to the subject position. Thus if unaccusative subjects really are ‘deep’ objects, we would expect their q -role always to be determined exclusively by the verb and never compositionally by the verb together with a complement. In fact, however, this does not appear to be the case. This can be seen when an unaccusative verb has

The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 9

a prepositional complement, as in the pair of Spanish examples below:15 (10)

Pedro pasó por nuestra calle a propósito. ‘Pedro deliberately went through our street.’

(11)

??Pedro pasó por una mala época a propósito. ‘Pedro deliberately went though a difﬁcult period.’

Assuming, following Gruber (1976), that adverbs meaning ‘deliberately’ diagnose agentivity, Pedro has agent q -role in (10) but not in (11). But it must be the verb plus its prepositional complement that determines this pattern of q -marking and not the verb in isolation, given that pasar on its own is unspeciﬁed in respect of the distinction between agent and non-agent. This ﬁnding indicates that the q -marking of unaccusative subjects is compositional, just like that of subjects in general. Such a situation is difﬁcult to reconcile with the assumption that unaccusative subjects are q -marked in the same way as direct objects. 1.3.2 A postverbal control asymmetry An additional asymmetry in terms of which unaccusative subjects do not pattern as expected relates to the phenomenon of control. Direct objects systematically lack the ability to control PRO in an adjunct clause: (12)

*The police arrested two meni [without PROi putting up a ﬁght].

This restriction has been accounted for under the assumption that the direct object position is not sufﬁciently ‘high’ in the clause structure to c-command into the adjunct.16 In contrast, the preverbal subject in (13) below occupies a high position and thus control into the adjunct is unproblematic: (13)

The policei arrested two men [without PROi reading them their rights].

Now given that postverbal unaccusative subjects in null subject languages like Italian and Spanish are assumed to be not just deep direct objects but also surface direct objects (at least when indeﬁnite), one

10

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

would expect them not to have the ‘high’ control capability associated with preverbal subjects.17 However, as noted by Chomsky (1995b, p. 274) in connection with the Italian example below, postverbal unaccusative subjects behave like ordinary preverbal subjects in this respect:18 (14)

Sono entrati tre uominii [senza PROi indentiﬁcarsi].19 ‘Three men entered without identifying themselves.’

The above paradigm is in fact general in Romance null subject languages. Thus the Spanish counterpart to (14) is also unproblematic: (15)

Entraron tres hombresi [sin PROi identiﬁcarse]. ‘Three men entered without identifying themselves.’

In this respect, unaccusative verbs are indistinguishable from unergative verbs: (16)

Gritaron tres hombresi [sin PROi identiﬁcarse]. ‘Three men shouted without identifying themselves.’

On the face of it, the control asymmetry between postverbal unaccusative subjects and transitive direct objects is entirely unexpected. If the latter cannot control into an adjunct, one would expect the same to apply (possibly a fortiori, in the light of notes 16 and 17) to postverbal unaccusative subjects (at least when they are indeﬁnite). It might be argued that the phenomenon could receive a non-structural account, given that control can involve (in addition to structure) thematic properties. However, it is difﬁcult to see how thematic properties could be relevant in the case of adjuncts introduced by sin/senza, which do not appear to place any thematic constraints on the controller. Notice for example that the relevant control pattern is equally possible with an agent subject, as in sentence (16), and with a theme subject, as in sentence (17): (17)

Ha muerto mucha gente sin hacer un testamento. ‘Many people have died without making a will.’

The structural nature of the phenomenon in question is further conﬁrmed by the fact that the relevant control pattern is not possible in the French sentence (18) below, which is semantically equivalent to (14) and (15):

The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 11

(18)

*Il est arrivé trois hommes sans s’identiﬁer. ‘There arrived three men without identifying themselves.’

This disparity between Italian/Spanish on the one hand and French on the other is surprising if the control pattern in question is determined by semantic factors.20 Chomsky initially argued (1995b, pp. 273–4) that the Italian/Spanishstyle postverbal unaccusative control pattern resulted from covert raising of the subject’s formal features to a high preverbal position. The difference with respect to cases such as French (18) was then claimed to follow under the assumption that the features of the postverbal argument did not raise, whence the ﬁ xed singular agreement form of the verb (est as opposed to sont). However, the feature movement hypothesis has now effectively been abandoned, with postverbal arguments now being assumed to agree in situ with the verb (see Chomsky 2000, pp. 123–6). With control by raised features thus ruled out, the asymmetry between postverbal unaccusative subjects and transitive objects could plausibly be taken to indicate that the former are higher than the latter in the clause structure. Exactly where is unclear, but the parity between unaccusative and unergative postverbal subjects illustrated by (16) might be interpreted as reﬂecting a single location for both types of item. 1.3.3 Passive–unaccusative asymmetries Under both the Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis, passive subjects receive a parallel analysis to unaccusative subjects. Accordingly, it has been insisted time and again that passives pattern with unaccusatives in terms of phenomena assumed to be criterial for determining syntactic analysis (see, for example, Levin and Rappaport 1989). It will be argued in 2.5 and 3.4 that much of this parallel behaviour can be attributed to a common capability in terms of information structure, without the need to assume a common syntax. However, at this stage it should also be noted that there are two key respects in which passives diverge from unaccusatives. Firstly, there is the issue of perfect auxiliary selection. It is true that passives select essere in Italian, as shown by (19) below: (19)

Sono stati visti dai parenti per l’ultima volta il 26 e 27 febbraio. ‘They were last seen by relatives on the 26th and 27th of February.’

12

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

However in French, for example, passives select avoir in the perfect, thus patterning rather conspicuously with unergatives: (20)

Le cardinal allemand a été élu pape au quatrième tour de scrutin. ‘The German cardinal was elected Pope on the fourth ballot.’

Moreover older forms of French are identical in this respect, as the ﬁfteenth-century example below illustrates: (21)

ung chapellet d’amour dont present a esté faict par une dame a deux amoureux ‘a rosary of which a present was made by a lady to two lovers’ (Arr, 34) 21

Perfect auxiliary selection is absent in modern Spanish, but it existed in Old Spanish and there too passives selected a ‘have’ verb (Lapesa 2000, p. 784; Benzing 1931, p. 442) rather than a ‘be’ verb. It seems strange that so much signiﬁcance can be attached to the passive–unaccusative symmetry in perfect auxiliary selection in Italian and yet so little to the corresponding asymmetry in languages like French and Old Spanish.22 There is also a passive–unaccusative asymmetry in terms of bare subject capability. Consider, for example, the contrast between the two Spanish sentences below (from Contreras 1986, p. 27): (22)

Falta café. (Unaccusative) ‘Coffee is needed.’

(23)

*Fue enviado café. (Passive) ‘Coffee was sent.’

Contreras accounted for the above disparity by claiming that the postverbal passive subject occupied a position that was not properly governed, hence the empty quantiﬁer he believed to be present within the subject phrase was not properly governed either (assuming, in addition, that the empty quantiﬁer was not governed from within the subject phrase). The ungrammaticality of (23) thus resulted from a violation of the Empty Category Principle. Notice, however, that the same principle has been appealed to in order to account for the distribution of partitive clitics such as Italian

The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 13

ne (see, for example, Cinque 1990a, pp. 5–6; 1990b, p. 69), which systematically is possible with passives: (24)

Ne sono stati identiﬁcati tre. ‘Three (of them) have been identiﬁed.’

The extraction of ne from the postverbal subject is standardly assumed to leave a trace, which, as an empty category, would also require proper government under the ECP. Thus the grammaticality of (24) implies that the asymmetry illustrated by (22) versus (23) cannot be a reﬂex of the ECP, or indeed any other principle regulating the distribution of empty categories. We might then consider the possibility that case licensing is the crucial factor in the contrast between (22) and (23). Belletti (1988) and others have argued that bare nouns in Italian and Spanish have partitive (or inherent) case. Accordingly, it might be supposed that partitive case cannot be checked in the conﬁguration illustrated by (23). However this possibility is immediately ruled by the fact that, under the partitive case hypothesis, partitive case is licensed in passive constructions (see, for instance, Belletti 1988, p. 6; Lasnik 1999, pp. 85–90). For example, it is precisely this possibility that has been claimed to account for the occurrence of passives in the French expletive il construction: (25)

Il a été tué un homme. ‘A man has been killed.’

Case-licensing, then, cannot account for the contrast between (22) and (23). A ﬁnal possibility is that there is some sort of adjacency requirement (unrelated to case) on the bare subject in relation to the ﬁnite verb. Under that approach, (23) is ruled out because café is not adjacent to fue. Such an analysis, however, quite apart from the fact that it lacks any obvious independent motivation, would wrongly predict a sentence such as (26) below to be ungrammatical, given that here too the bare noun is non-adjacent to the ﬁ nite verb: 23 (26)

Son inminentes tormentas. Storms are imminent.’

Thus the contrast between (22) and (23) remains mysterious. However, under the assumption that passives and unaccusatives receive parallel syntactic analyses, there should be no contrast at all.

14

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

We ﬁnd, then, that while passives pattern with unaccusatives in terms of some of the criterial phenomena (for example, ne-cliticization and perfect auxiliary selection in Italian), in terms of others there is no parallel at all (bare subject capability, perfect auxiliary selection in French/Old Spanish). This ‘soft’ convergence pattern is suggestive of a probabilistic distributional link between passives and unaccusatives rather than a ‘hard’ causal link determined by a common syntax. 1.3.4 The COMP-trace effect Finally it can be noted that certain instances of object-like behaviour on the part of subjects involve no unaccusative–unergative asymmetry at all. The classic example relates to the apparent immunity of null subject languages to the so-called COMP-trace effect. In languages like English it is possible to wh-extract an object but not a subject across an overt complementizer: (27)

Who did you say that she saw?

(28)

Who did you say (*that) phoned?

In contrast, null subject languages typically allow the deviant (in English) subject-extraction pattern. For example, note the obligatoriness of que in the Spanish sentence below: (29)

¿Quién has dicho que ha llamado? ‘Who did you say phoned?’

It has often been assumed (following Rizzi 1982) that the COMPtrace immunity illustrated by sentences such as (29) results from the fact that the wh-extracted subject is in reality a postverbal subject, as schematized in (30): 24 (30)

¿Quiéni has dicho que ha llamado ti?

This possibility is only available, of course, in languages that routinely allow postverbal subjects, in other words null subject languages like Spanish and Italian. The interesting point from the present perspective is that the COMPtrace immunity is blind to the unaccusative–unergative distinction. Thus compare (29), involving unergative llamar, with (31) below, involving unaccusative llegar:

The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 15

(31)

¿Quién has dicho que ha llegado? ‘Who did you say has arrived?’

The comparison with English (27) indicates that the postverbal extraction position in (29) and (31) is analogous to an object position. However, both unergative and unaccusative subjects can occupy this position. This suggests that it is postverbal placement rather than an association with an unaccusative verb that enables object-like behaviour in a subject. The implication of Chapters 2, 3 and 4 will be that those object-like behaviour patterns that have been identiﬁed as unaccusative diagnostics do not in reality constitute an exception to this principle.

1.4 Conclusion Two syntactic theories, the Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis, ascribe a cluster of well-known properties of certain Romance intransitive verbs (the unaccusatives or ergatives) to the fact that the subjects of such verbs are ‘deep’ direct objects and, under the Ergative Analysis, frequently ‘surface’ direct objects also. The ﬁrst of these theories articulates this linkage in terms of various general principles that are claimed to be independently motivated. Under the second theory, the crucial direct object relation (the ‘2’ relation) is taken to be a theoretical primitive and thus the analysis of the relevant phenomena reduces ultimately to a series of empirical generalizations. A brief investigation of some of the more obvious implications resulting from the principle claim of the above theories reveals a number of discrepancies. Firstly, evidence from verb + prepositional complement sequences suggests that unaccusative subjects receive their q -role compositionally, just like unergative and transitive subjects and in contrast to transitive direct objects. The reverse pattern is expected if unaccusative subjects really are deep objects and hence receive object q -role. Secondly, control properties group postverbal unaccusative and unergative subjects together, in contradistinction to transitive objects. This again is unexpected, given that under the Ergative Analysis postverbal unaccusative subjects are assumed to occupy direct object position. Thirdly, the much cited distributional parallel between unaccusatives and passives is by no means as robust as is often assumed. In particular, perfect auxiliary selection tends to group passives with unergatives in western Romance and there is a general unaccusative–passive asym-

16

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

metry in terms of bare subject capability, for which extenuating circumstances are difﬁcult to identify. Finally, the absence of any unaccusative–unergative asymmetry in terms of the COMP-trace immunity in null subject languages suggests that postverbal position rather than verb class is the key factor in determining object-like behaviour in subjects.

2 Expletive Inversion

2.1 Introduction What is traditionally referred to as ‘free’ subject inversion is associated primarily with null-subject languages such as Italian, Spanish and Catalan. Non-null subject languages like French and English exhibit a rather more restricted form of inversion, in which the high preverbal subject position (usually identiﬁed as spec-TP or spec-IP) is occupied by an expletive element and the phrase corresponding to a Spanish/Italianstyle postverbal subject is referred to as the expletive’s ‘associate’. I will refer to this type of construction as expletive inversion. The sentences below provide illustrations from French and English: (1)

Il est arrivé quelque chose de très drôle. ‘Something very strange happened.’

(2)

Il est paru une nouvelle édition de son livre. ‘A new edition of his book has appeared.’

(3)

Il a surgi certaines difﬁcultés au dernier moment. ‘Certain problems emerged at the last minute.’

(4)

There followed a period of instability.

(5)

There appeared a squadron of riot police.

(6)

As the afternoon faded there approached a sailboat from the north.

Expletive inversion has received a considerable degree of theoretical interest, primarily because it appears to conﬁ rm one of the basic assumptions behind the Extended Projection Principle (EPP). Within 17

18

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Government Binding Theory, expletives were analysed as being inserted into the high preverbal subject position in order to satisfy the EPP as originally conceived, that is, to satisfy the requirement that every clause have a (structural) subject in spec-IP/TP at S-structure. The essentials of this analysis have been carried over into Minimalism, with expletive insertion into spec-IP/TP now analysed as providing the mechanism whereby the (uninterpretable) strong D feature on T(ense) is checked and deleted. As Lasnik (1999, p. 76) observes, this way of looking at matters ‘captures the core’ of the original EPP. Possibly because of the frequency in expletive inversion of prototypical unaccusative verbs, as well as verbs meaning ‘be’ (which also receive an unaccusative type of analysis), it has frequently been argued that there is a basic incompatibility between this construction and unergative syntax. In this way, compatibility with items such as French il and English there has often come to be seen as an unaccusative diagnostic (see, for example, Burzio 1986, Belletti 1988, Labelle 1992). While expletive inversion is not the most widely cited of the unaccusative diagnostics, it is convenient to discuss it in this initial chapter, as this provides an opportunity to introduce certain themes that will be important in later chapters, in particular the relationship between presentational information structure and unaccusativity.

2.2 Expletives and unergative subjects As was mentioned above, it has often been claimed that expletive inversion is incompatible with unergative syntax. The basic theoretical method for deriving this exclusion involves assuming that the expletive and the verb’s subject (the would-be associate) are in competition for the same structural position. In Burzio’s classic account (1986:119–77), this strategy was implemented through the claim that overt expletives were inserted into the high preverbal subject position at D-structure. This immediately excluded unergatives, given the then prevalent assumption that unergative subjects were base-generated in exactly that position. Obviously enough, however, Burzio’s account is insufﬁcient under the more recent VP-internal subject hypothesis, according to which unergative subjects are base-generated at a position that is lower than the preverbal subject position.1 Under any reasonable implementation of this hypothesis, and given the surface postverbal position of the associate, a would-be unergative associate would never need to occupy the high position assigned to the expletive. A mechanism is of course

Expletive Inversion

19

required for deriving the postverbal placement of the associate, but plausibly some form of verb raising might be hypothesized, as is routinely assumed for postverbal unergative subjects in null-subject languages.2 Indeed some such process has to be independently assumed for other cases of unergative inversion that can be found in non-null subject languages, as illustrated by the following French examples: (7)

De nouveau soufﬂait le grand vent du premier soir.3 (Fournier) ‘Again was blowing the strong wind of the ﬁ rst night.’

(8)

Devant nous marchait la colonne de soldats. ‘In front of us marched the column of soldiers.’

Thus the widespread assumption that overt expletives are base-generated, or (externally) ‘merged’, in the high preverbal subject position conventionally labelled as spec-IP or spec-TP does not in itself rule out the possibility that unergative subjects can occur as associates. More recently, Richards and Biberauer (2005) have suggested that expletives are (externally) merged in spec-vp (where vp is the outer shell of a twotiered VP) and subsequently raise to spec-TP/IP. At ﬁrst glance, this might appear to motivate an exclusion of unergative associates, given that unergative subjects are also assumed (under the vp shell analysis) to merge into spec-vp. However, Richards and Biberauer’s proposal assumes crucially that an expletive is merged into the non-thematic outer speciﬁer of vp (replacing the object agreement projection of older models) and not into the q -related inner spec-vp position. It is the latter that is normally identiﬁed as the merge site corresponding to unergative subjects. Thus the occurrence of an unergative subject would not in principle impinge upon the possibility for an expletive to be inserted. Accordingly, the merge-vp analysis of expletives does not appear to provide a basis for deriving a theoretical exclusion of unergative verbs from expletive inversion. In fact, many authors (such as Bouchard 1995, Cummins 1996, Legendre and Sorace 2003) have observed that the occurrence of unergative verbs in expletive il inversion is a routine matter. Some examples are given below: 4 (9)

Il vole des milliers de corbeaux au dessus de la ville. ‘Thousands of crows are ﬂying above the town.’

20

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(10)

Il a régné trois rois mérovingiens. ‘Three Merovingian kings have reigned.’

(11)

Il a couru beaucoup de gens dans le marathon. ‘Many people ran in the marathon.’

(12)

Il voyage un homme seul. ‘A man is travelling alone.’

(13)

Il soufﬂe un vent du nord. ‘A wind is blowing from the north.’

2.3 Partitive case Nevertheless, the data represented by (9) to (13) is at variance with another widely held assumption, viz. that expletive constructions require the associate to have so-called partitive (or inherent) case. Building on ideas ﬁrst developed by Belletti (1988), Lasnik (1999:130) has argued that the expletive checks and deletes nominative case. Consequently, the assumed nominative case of an unergative subject would be incapable of being checked (licensed) in an expletive construction and so sentences such as (9) to (13) ought not to be grammatical. On the other hand, it is argued that no such problem affects unaccusative subjects, given the further assumption (p. 85) that these have partitive case, which is checked in a low position (VP-internally according to Belletti 1999, p. 34, or in an object agreement projection according to Lasnik 1999, pp. 86–7).5 Under this type of analysis, the capability to occur in expletive inversion becomes limited to partitive case licensers, that is, unaccusatives, passives and verbs meaning ‘be’. The original evidence for the partitive case hypothesis was compiled by Belletti. Noting the so-called ‘deﬁniteness effects’ in sentences such as (14) to (17) below (from Belletti 1988, pp. 4–6), she argued that unaccusatives and passives licensed on their associates an overtly unrealized case that was incompatible with deﬁnite or universal reference: (14)

*There arose the storm here.

(15)

*Il est arrivé la ﬁlle. ‘There arrived the girl.’

(16)

*Il a été tué l’homme. ‘There has been killed the man.’

(17)

*There arises every terrible storm in that area.

Expletive Inversion

21

Belletti called the case in question ‘partitive’, by analogy with overtly manifested partitive case in languages like Finnish, which has been claimed to be associated with non-deﬁnite interpretations. It had been assumed that no deﬁniteness effects existed in nullsubject languages like Italian, because postverbal subjects in these languages did not appear to be constrained by the same restrictions as those illustrated by (14) to (17). However, Belletti argued (1988, pp. 8–10) that such effects did exist, but they were only apparent in cases in which a postverbal subject was located between the verb and a subcategorized preposition phrase (PP). Thus she highlighted grammaticality/acceptability contrasts such as the following: (18)

All’improvviso è entrato un uomo dalla ﬁnestra. ‘Suddenly a man entered from the window.’

(19)

*All’improvviso è entrato l’uomo dalla ﬁnestra. ‘Suddenly the man entered from the window.’

(20)

È stato messo un libro sul tavolo. ‘A book has been put on the table.’

(21)

*È stato messo il libro sul tavolo. ‘The book has been put on the table.’

(22)

Era ﬁnalmente arrivato qualche studente a lezione. ‘Some students had ﬁnally arrived at the lecture.’

(23)

*Era ﬁnalmente arrivato ogni studente a lezione. ‘Every student had ﬁnally arrived at the lecture.’

(24)

È stato trovato qualche articolo di Gianni nel dossier. ‘Some articles by Gianni have been found in the ﬁle.’

(25)

*È stato trovato ogni articolo di Gianni nel dossier. ‘Every article by Gianni has been found in the ﬁ le.’

The importance of the frame ‘verb . . . PP’ lay in the fact that Belletti assumed it to diagnose direct object position. Thus the apparent deﬁniteness effects illustrated by (19), (21), (23) and (25) indicated, in Belletti’s view, that while indeﬁnite unaccusative/passive postverbal subjects remained in direct object position (where they were assumed to originate), their deﬁnite and universal counterparts could not. In fact, these were analysed as having to move to a VP-adjoined position where they were said to receive nominative case.6 This implied that the

22

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

indeﬁnite postverbal subjects were case-licensed in direct object position. Under the further assumptions (i) that nominative case could not be licensed on an argument in direct object position and (ii) that neither unaccusatives nor passives license accusative case, the indeﬁnite postverbal subjects had to bear a case other than nominative or accusative. Belletti contended that the case they bore was partitive. The approach pioneered in Belletti (1988) was updated in Belletti (1999, pp. 35–6). In the newer framework, Belletti has continued to argue that indeﬁnite unaccusative postverbal subjects are licensed through partitive (or possibly just ‘inherent’) case in the initial or base position assigned to direct objects.7 However, the position in which deﬁnite and unergative postverbal subjects are licensed is now the speciﬁer of a clause-internal ‘focus phrase’ (identiﬁed as the ﬁrst functional projection above VP). In other words, deﬁ nite and unergative postverbal subjects are assumed to be focused constituents. Alleged deﬁniteness effects are then attributed (p. 35) to ‘the existence of a certain tendency whereby there is a preference in having the focussed constituent in the clause ﬁ nal position’.8 The insertion of a deﬁnite/unergative postverbal subject between the verb and a PP complement would represent a failure to observe this principle. However, as no ‘deep’ constraint is violated, the structure thus created is ‘ruled in but acquires a marginality ﬂavor’. Accordingly, the earlier outright ungrammaticality of (19) gives way to the newer marginal status of (26): (26)

?È entrato Mario dalla ﬁnestra. (Belletti 1999, p. 36) ‘Mario has come in through the window.’

Superﬁcially at least, Belletti’s partitive case hypothesis is persuasive. However, a number of considerations can be marshalled against it. Before looking at these, we can perhaps separate the strictly deﬁnite data from the data pertaining to the universal distributives such as English every and Italian ogni.9 In general, restrictions on associates or postverbal subjects involving the latter are much more robust than those that relate to deﬁnite determiners. For example, while Spanish fails to reveal any systematic deﬁniteness effect (in the strict sense), as is illustrated by the complete acceptability of examples such as (27) and (28) below, which replicate the structure of Italian (19) and (21), it nevertheless exhibits a strong tendency for universal distributives not to occur in postverbal position (with or without a following PP), as is shown in (29) and (30):

Expletive Inversion

(27)

Por ﬁn llegó María a casa. ‘Finally María got home.’

(28)

Fue arrojada la basura por un barranco. ‘The rubbish was thrown down a gulley.’

(29)

Ha llegado un alumno/??cada alumno. ‘A student/Every student has arrived.’

(30)

Ha sido escondido un libro/??cada libro. ‘A book/Every book has been hidden.’

23

However, the problem attaching to the cada phrases in (29) and (30) can be reproduced when the verb is unergative, where partitive case is ruled out on a priori grounds: (31)

Ha llamado un alumno/??cada alumno.10 ‘A student/Every student has phoned.’

(32)

En el jardín jugaba un niño/??cada niño. ‘In the garden a boy/every boy played.’

We ﬁnd the same pattern with French and English unergatives in expletive inversion. For example, voler ‘ﬂy’ and voyager ‘travel’ are compatible in principle with indeﬁnite associates, as is shown by the earlier examples (9) and (12), repeated below: (9)

Il vole des milliers de corbeaux au dessus de la ville. ‘Thousands of crows are ﬂying above the town.’

(12)

Il voyage un homme seul. ‘A man is travelling alone.’

However, they cannot occur with universal distributives: (33)

*Il vole chaque corbeau au dessus de la ville. ‘Every crow ﬂies/is ﬂying above the town.’

(34)

*Il voyage chaque homme seul. ‘Every man travels/is travelling alone.’

Similarly, English vote is possible in cases such as (35), but not in cases such as (36):

24

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(35)

There voted more women than men in the last election.

(36)

*There voted every man in the last election.

In general, then, restrictions on universal distributives do not discriminate between passives/unaccusatives and unergatives. Therefore, given that, by hypothesis, unergatives cannot license partitive case, such data cannot be relevant in terms of establishing whether partitive case (in Belletti’s sense) exists. Presumably, in fact, the restrictions in question result from the circumstance that the use of a universal distributive in Romance typically implies a topic– comment segmentation of the information structure associated with the containing clause. As will be discussed in more detail in 2.5, both expletive inversion and the type of inversion illustrated by examples such as (29) to (32) are incompatible with that type of information structure. Turning now to the strictly deﬁnite effects, note ﬁrst of all that, contrary to Belletti’s assumptions, the French il construction routinely allows deﬁnite associates, provided these obey the usual pragmatic constraint on deﬁnite descriptions to the effect that their referent must be capable of being identiﬁed (either on the basis of the description itself or on the basis of collateral information stemming from the context of utterance): Proper name: (37)

À ce moment-là il est apparu Jésus. ‘At that moment Jesus appeared.’

Deﬁnite description: (38)

En 1782, il a été construit le nouveau fort aﬁn de garder l’entrée du ﬂeuve contre les invasions. ‘In 1782 the new fort was built, in order to protect the entrance to the river from invasion.’

(39)

Il se joue le cricket en Afrique du Sud. ‘Cricket is played in South Africa.’

(40)

Un sénateur et un député se disputaient le siège de président regional. Il a été élu le sénateur. ‘A senator and a member of the Assembly were ﬁghting for the job of Regional President. The senator was elected.’

Expletive Inversion

25

Demonstrative phrase: (41)

Il est déjà paru cette édition aux Etats Unis. ‘This edition has already appeared in the USA.’

(42)

Il a été construit cette maison en 1890. ‘This house was built in 1890.’

The English there construction also allows deﬁ nite associates, although slightly less freely than the French il construction: (43)

And when she was gone there appeared Apollo himself. (Alfred Church)

(44)

At that moment there arrived the ofﬁcer of the guard carrying his parcel. (Andrew Lang)

(45)

Twenty-eight years later there occurred the Cape Ann earthquake.

Analogous examples to French (40) are not forthcoming, which indicates that the there construction does not readily allow associates that depend on recent prior mention in order to determine their reference.11 Thus it does not appear to be true that the il and there constructions are incompatible in principle with deﬁnite associates.12 The crucial constraint appears to be that a deﬁnite associate must be capable of having its referent identiﬁed. A deﬁciency in this regard can then be regarded as the source of the deviancy of sentences such as (14) to (16), repeated below: (14)

*There arose the storm here.

(15)

*Il est arrivé la ﬁlle. ‘There arrived the girl.’

(16)

*Il a été tué l’homme. ‘There has been killed the man.’

If this deﬁciency is remedied, for example by modifying the associates, the sentences become fully acceptable:

26

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(46)

At this point there arose the long-dreaded storm.13

(47)

Il est arrivé la ﬁlle du roi. ‘The king’s daughter arrived.’

(48)

Il a été tué l’homme le plus faible. ‘The weakest man was killed.’

It might still be argued that the deﬁnite associates illustrated above could in principle occupy the position assigned by Belletti to deﬁnite/ unergative postverbal subjects in Italian, that is, a position in which licensing is assumed not to be effected through partitive/inherent case. However, such an analysis is problematic in view of the fact that a deﬁnite associate can be inserted between the verb and a subcategorized PP, that is, in the very frame that Belletti originally took to diagnose partitive case position: (49)

Il a été expulsé Lénine du parti. ‘Lenin was expelled from the party.’

(50)

Il a été posé le modèle sur la table.14 ‘The model was placed on the table.’

(51)

Just then there emerged the commanding ofﬁcer from his tent.

Under the original theory, conﬁgurations such as the above would be predicted to be ungrammatical, because they would necessarily involve deﬁnite associates in partitive case position. Under the updated version (Belletti 1999), the situation is less clearcut. Given the possibility of verb movement, the frame ‘verb . . . subcategorized PP’ can no longer be regarded as directly diagnosing partitive case position. However, as mentioned earlier, the ‘marginality’ in Italian of conﬁgurations comparable to (49) to (51) is derived by assuming that they conﬂict with the principle that focused items should occur clause-ﬁnally. Thus if (49) to (51) receive the analysis proposed for Italian, they ought to have a ‘marginality ﬂavour’, which in fact they do not. On the other hand, if the focus-related considerations identiﬁed in Belletti (1999) only apply to Italian, this leaves us with no diagnostic, as far as French and English are concerned, for identifying different structural positions for deﬁnite and indeﬁnite associates. Either way, the behaviour of French and English deﬁnite descriptions in expletive inversion ceases to motivate a partitive case hypothesis.

Expletive Inversion

27

Thus the data from English and French provide no obvious grounds for positing the existence of partitive case (in Belletti’s sense). Moreover, in the light of (27) and (28), reproduced below, the data from Spanish point in the same direction: (27)

Por ﬁn llegó María a casa. ‘Finally María got home.’

(28)

Fue arrojada la basura por un barranco. ‘The rubbish was thrown down a gulley.’

From this perspective, the Italian data adduced by Belletti now look somewhat isolated. The question that arises at this point is whether the behaviour of deﬁnite postverbal subjects in Italian might be interpreted in a way other than that indicated by Belletti. With this question in mind, it is signiﬁcant that Pinto (1997:49) has attributed the deviancy of example (19), reproduced below, to the fact that the deﬁnite description is insufﬁciently speciﬁc to secure uniqueness of reference:15 (19)

*All’improvviso è entrato l’uomo dalla ﬁnestra.. ‘Suddenly the man entered from the window.’

According to Pinto, if the phrase l’uomo is replaced by il cane, which in her view ‘identiﬁes a unique object in the world, i.e. the salient dog in that speciﬁc context of interpretation’, the sentence becomes acceptable: (52)

All’improvviso è entrato il cane dalla ﬁnestra.16 ‘Suddenly the dog came in through the window.’

If Pinto is correct, the deviancy of (19) is not due to a case licensing, as claimed in Belletti 1988, or to the deﬁnite postverbal subjects are always focused, as claimed 1999. Pinto does not appear to comment on the passive frame by (21), which is reproduced below: (21)

*È stato messo il libro sul tavolo. ‘The book has been put on the table.’

failure of fact that in Belletti illustrated

28

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Notice, however, that an account of (21) that is analogous to the one suggested by Pinto for sentence (19) is potentially available, given that in each of the sentences below (all from authentic sources), a deﬁnite postverbal subject with a determinate referent has a felicitous occurrence in precisely the type of context illustrated by (21), that is, between a passive verb and a following PP complement: (53)

La Polizia è intervenuta nel momento in cui è stata consegnata la busta al X, in presenza del ricorrente. (Rome court report) ‘The police intervened at the moment when the envelope was handed to X, in the presence of the appellant.’

(54)

Nel 1767 . . . furono espulsi i Gesuiti dal Regno di Napoli afﬁdando a dei laici l’istruzione pubblica. (Document on the history of Naples) ‘In 1767 the Jesuits were expelled from the kingdom of Naples and public instruction was entrusted to lay persons.’

(55)

Sarà concesso il diritto di prelazione agli inquilini. (Letting agency publicity) ‘The right of pre-emption will be granted to the tenants.’

Belletti (1988, p. 16) in fact recognized that there was no deﬁniteness effect when the reference was to types of object that were clearly unique, as in the example below, where there is a background assumption that people usually have one and only one wallet: (56)

È stato rubato il portafoglio a Maria. ‘Maria’s wallet has been stolen.’

Belletti claimed that, despite its normal indeﬁnite import, partitive case was licensed on the deﬁnite postverbal subject in the above type of context, precisely because of the overtly unique reference (which she termed the ‘uniqueness interpretation’). However, given that, as Russell (1905) famously showed, the whole point of a singular deﬁnite description is that it has (or purports to have) unique reference, it is hard to see on what grounds Belletti can allow that partitive case can be licensed on uniquely referring deﬁnites and yet claim that it cannot be licensed on deﬁnites in general.17 All felicitous singular deﬁnites are uniquely referring and thus all such deﬁnites in principle fall under some form of uniqueness interpretation.

Expletive Inversion

29

Belletti’s more recent assumption that deﬁnite postverbal subjects move to the speciﬁer of a focus phrase also looks suspect, given that it implies that all such subjects are in focus and, as a matter of fact, this does not appear to be the case. Thus in the examples below (from Pinto 1997, p. 20), the legitimacy of the question Che cosa è successo? ‘What’s happened’ indicates the answer has wide focus, excluding the possibility that the deﬁnite postverbal subject is in focus: (57)

– Che cosa è successo? – È entrata Beatrice. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘Beatrice has come in.’

(58)

– Che cosa è successo? – È affondata la Attilio Regolo. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘The Attilio Regolo has sunk.’

(59)

– Che cosa è successo? – È morto Fellini. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘Fellini has died.’

(60)

– Che cosa è successo? – Si è sciolta la neve. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘The snow has melted.’

The above data indicate that focus does not systematically identify deﬁnite postverbal subjects. Therefore there is no principled motivation for assuming that deﬁnite postverbal subjects in Italian occupy the speciﬁer of a focus phrase. By the same token the Italian data, like the English, French and Spanish data, do not appear to provide a principled basis for assuming that indeﬁnite and deﬁnite postverbal subjects occupy distinct structural positions. We are thus left without a principled reason for assuming that the indeﬁnites are licensed in a different fashion from the deﬁnites. This ﬁnding in itself appears to deprive the partitive case hypothesis of independent motivation. However, as just noted, that hypothesis is additionally challenged by the felicitous occurrence of deﬁnite postverbal subjects in syntactic contexts or frames in which they are predicted to be infelicitous (or even ungrammatical under the original theory) and also by the availability of Pinto’s alternative explanation for the deviancies highlighted by Belletti.18 Given all of this, it does not seem unwarranted to conclude that Belletti’s partitive case hypothesis is not motivated by the available evidence.

30

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

2.4 A preliminary conclusion about expletive inversion With this conceptual obstacle removed, we are free to suppose that the licensing mechanism (whatever this may be) that sufﬁces for the unergative associates in sentences such as (9) to (13), reproduced below, represents the general case, that is, that it sufﬁces also for unaccusative and passive associates, deﬁnite or indeﬁnite: (9)

Il vole des milliers de corbeaux au dessus de la ville. ‘Thousands of crows are ﬂying above the town.’

(10)

Il a régné trois rois mérovingiens. ‘Three Merovingian kings have reigned.’

(11)

Il a couru beaucoup de gens dans le marathon. ‘Many people ran in the marathon.’

(12)

Il voyage un homme seul. ‘A man is travelling alone.’

(13)

Il soufﬂe un vent du nord. ‘A wind is blowing from the north.’

As regards the il construction, this ﬁnding essentially conﬁrms what was already implied by the very existence of these and comparable examples, viz. that there is no direct link between expletive inversion and unaccusativity. Moreover, there is every likelihood that this conclusion applies generally. For example, English there parallels il in the relevant respects. As we have seen, there is no compelling a priori argument requiring it to be incompatible with unergative syntax. In addition, it too exhibits a de facto compatibility with unergative verbs: (61)

Over by the hemlock tree there buzzed a swarm of angry hornets.

(62)

One autumn day there ﬂuttered onto the Cathedral roof a slender, sweet-voiced bird. (Saki)

(63)

On a vote being taken, there voted for the Amendment three, and for the Motion four. (Minutes of the Lochaber Area Committee)

(64)

There dined with us Lord Rochester, and his ﬁne daughter. (Swift)

(65)

And next there spoke a tribal elder.

Expletive Inversion

31

Mention could also be made of certain Italo-Romance locative clitics that have similar functions to expletives. One such is Sardinian bi, discussed at length by Bentley (2004b). She in fact argues that the clitic is not an expletive, although on the face of it there appear to be important similarities with Piedmontese ye, which Burzio (1986) assumed to be an expletive. I leave open what the exact classiﬁcation of bi is, but if it is in any way on a par with English there and French il, then its behaviour reinforces the general conclusion drawn here, given that it is compatible both with unergative verbs and with deﬁnite associates (examples from Bentley 2004b, p. 63): (66)

B’at balladu medas piseddas. ‘There have danced many girls.’

(67)

B’ana balladu (solu) sas piseddas. ‘There have danced (only) the girls.’

With regard to Piedmontese ye, this also appears to be routinely compatible with deﬁnite associates: (68)

A y riva i client. (Burzio 1986, p. 122) ‘The clients arrive.’

2.5 Distribution of french il 2.5.1 Unfocusable verbs As Burzio (1986:143) noted, the French il construction is highly productive with passives and with the se-moyen construction (the counterpart to Italian/Spanish impersonal si/se): (69)

Il a été construit beaucoup d’immeubles dans cette ville. ‘Many buildings have been built in this town.’

(70)

Il se construit beaucoup d’immeubles dans cette ville. ‘Many buildings are built in this town.’

This pattern of distribution, combined with the undeniable frequency of the construction with a subset of the unaccusative verbs (notably verbs like apparaître ‘appear’ and arriver ‘arrive’) requires an explanation. In 2.2 we rejected any direct link between expletive constructions and the syntax assigned to unaccusatives. The same applies in the case

32

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

of passives and se-moyen, which typically are assigned a parallel analysis to unaccusatives. Accordingly, the distribution of French il (and by implication that of other comparable expletives) must be determined by some other factor. As a ﬁrst step towards an explanation, it can be noted that the postverbal placement of the subject prevents the verb from being accented (under normal conditions). In null-subject languages, as is well known, such a strategy is compatible both with narrowly focused postverbal subjects and with ‘presented’ postverbal subjects (which in the literature are typically associated with so-called wide focus). The ﬁ rst possibility is illustrated by the reply in (71) below, where the phrase el Real Madrid supplies the identity of the winning team, while the second possibility is illustrated by (72): (71)

– ¿Quién ha ganado entre el Real Madrid y el Milán? – Ha ganado el Real Madrid. ‘Who won between Real Madrid and Milan.’ ‘Real Madrid won.’

(72)

Se me acercó un niño. (Assuming no constituent to be contextually salient) ‘A boy came up to me.’

From the pragmatic point of view, narrowly-focused postverbal subjects and presented postverbal subjects have different functions. However, in certain respects they are very similar. As just noted they are both prosodically prominent under a neutral, non-interrupted intonation. More signiﬁcantly for present purposes, they occur in contexts in which the syntactic predicate (or more precisely, the verb) is not the main locus of new or important information, either because its content is part of the ‘given’, as in (71), or because it has a presentational type of meaning, as in (72). Therefore, abstracting away from pragmatic differences, sentence (72) and the reply in (71) can both be seen as instantiating an information structure in which the verb is incapable of being focused (assuming a neutral intonation). The contention here is that the distribution of the French il construction is simply a reﬂex of the ‘unfocusable verb’ pattern, with the associate typically having a presented function – as in (9) to (13) as well as (37) and (38) – or, less commonly, narrow focus as in (40).19

Expletive Inversion

33

2.5.2 Presented associates The presented function is clearly the more basic of these possibilities and this may or may not reﬂect a more widespread situation in which the imperative for inversion is greater in the presentational case than in the case of narrow focus. Certainly, there are some instances in which verbs with presentational capability cease to be presentational when inversion does not occur, as is illustrated by the Spanish pair of examples below: (73a)

Llegaron unos amigos. (Presentational) ‘Some friends showed up.’

(73b)

Unos amigos llegaron. (Topic-comment) ‘Some friends managed to get there.’

In the basic case, then, expletive inversion as found in French and English can be regarded as replicating the pattern illustrated by (73a), albeit at a much lower level of general productivity than is associated with presentational inversion in null-subject languages, on account of the stylistically marked nature of the overt expletive construction. By far the most common presentational verbs are those that indicate appearance, arrival, occurrence, presence, absence and so forth, and typically these are classiﬁed as unaccusative.20 The afﬁnity of the il construction for certain unaccusatives can thus be more accurately described as an afﬁnity for presentational unaccusatives. Presumably the deep-seated feeling that expletive inversion diagnoses unaccusativity in general stems from the prominence of such cases. But it is clearly the striking presentational capability of these verbs, rather than their syntax, that explains their frequency in the expletive construction.21 In fact, presentational unergatives exhibit a similar afﬁnity: (74)

Il soufﬂe un vent chaud. ‘There blows a hot wind.’

(75)

Il brillait un soleil impitoyable. ‘The sun blazed mercilessly.’

(76)

Il a régné un silence de mort. ‘There was a deathly silence.’

34

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Turning now to passives and se-moyen, a comparison with null subject-type inversion is again instructive (the sentences below are from Spanish): (77)

Ha sido descubierto un nuevo planeta. ‘A new planet has been discovered.’

(78)

Se ha descubierto un nuevo planeta. ‘A new planet has been discovered.’

(79)

En los últimos años han sido construidas muchas casas. ‘In the last few years many houses have been built.’

(80)

En los últimos años se han construido muchas casas. ‘In the last few years many houses have been built.’

In these and numerous comparable examples, postverbal placement of an indeﬁnite subject is clearly the unmarked option, with preverbal placement liable to give rise to at the very least a light infelicity. What this suggests is that, when the subject is indeﬁnite, both true passives and reﬂexive-type passives are frequently presentational in terms of their information structure. This circumstance presumably results from the fact that such constructions suppress the subject q -role, upon which the topic–comment informational articulation is frequently reliant. In principle, a topic–comment articulation can be established between a preverbal passive subject (bearing object q role) and its predicate. However, as is well established in the logical tradition, there is a basic asymmetry between subjects and objects, one manifestation of which is the fact that object q -role (particularly when assigned to an indeﬁnite phrase) is typically consonant with presentational import. This latter circumstance naturally impinges on information structure, rendering certain possibilities less preferred than others.22 Note, for example, how the phrase un presunto terrorista is naturally presentational as a direct object in the Spanish sentence (81) and is then appreciably more felicitous as a (‘presented’) postverbal subject, as in (82), than as a preverbal subject (a would-be topic), as in (83): (81)

Han detenido a un presunto terrorista. ‘They have arrested a suspected terrorist.’

(82)

Ha sido detenido un presunto terrorista. ‘A suspected terrorist has been arrested.’

Expletive Inversion

(83)

35

Un presunto terrorista ha sido detenido. ‘A suspected terrorist has been arrested.’

In general, in fact, a topic–comment type of structure in passives (true or reﬂexive) is associated primarily with deﬁnite or ‘strong’ quantiﬁcational subjects: (84)

Esos platos se ponen allí. ‘Those plates go there.’

(85)

Los negocios no se hacen así. ‘Business is not done like that.’

(86)

Cada propuesta fue rechazada. ‘Every proposal was rejected.’

French il with passives or se-moyen can then be regarded as essentially reproducing the presentational information structure illustrated by (77) to (80) and by (82). Assuming that French is like the nullsubject languages in terms of the relative frequency of presentational information structure with passives/se-moyen, the productivity of these constructions with il is thus immediately accounted for. 2.5.3 Narrowly-focused associates It was noted earlier that French il was also compatible with narrow focus on the associate, as in example (40), reproduced below: (40)

Un sénateur et un député se disputaient le siège de président regional. Il a été élu le sénateur. ‘A senator and a member of the Assembly were ﬁghting for the job of Regional President. The senator was elected.’

Here, the associate has the same pragmatic function as the postverbal subject Miguel in the reply in the Spanish example below: (87)

– ¿Quién ha sido nombrado? – Ha sido nombrado Miguel. (Narrow focus.) ‘Who was nominated?’ ‘Miguel was nominated.’

The availability of the possibility illustrated by (40) presumably follows from the fact that the relevant narrow focus pattern is simply one more

36

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

instantiation of the basic ‘unfocusable verb’ paradigm outlined earlier. Narrow focus under expletive inversion is rather less productive than wide focus (sentence focus), an imbalance that can be attributed to the fact that expletive inversion is mainly a presentational resource. Now this latter point is signiﬁcant, because while an example such as the second sentence in (40) is not presentational itself (given that it involves narrow focus), the passive construction it contains has presentational capability. This can be seen by considering that construction outside of the context of expletive inversion, as in (88) below: (88)

Beaucoup de femmes ont été élues. ‘Many women were elected.’

The above sentence can, and indeed is likely to, have the same (presentational) information structure as the equivalent sentence involving expletive il: (89)

Il a été élu beaucoup de femmes. ‘Many women were elected.’

Thus what examples such as (40) appear to show is that expletive inversion will tolerate narrow focus on the associate, but only if the relevant verb or verbal construction has presentational capability to begin with. From this perspective, the fact that narrow focus under expletive inversion is attested primarily with passives (in French at least) results from the coincidence of two circumstances, viz. (i) that expletive il + passive has become an established presentational collocation and (ii) that, notwithstanding this, postverbal passive subjects need not be presentational. 2.5.4 Narrow focus on locatives and time phrases Turning ﬁnally to the issue raised in note 19, we have to consider examples such as the earlier sentences (41) and (42), which are reproduced below: (41)

Il est déjà paru cette édition aux Etats Unis. ‘This edition has already appeared in the USA.’

(42)

Il a été construit cette maison en 1890. ‘This house was built in 1890.’

Expletive Inversion

37

In these cases, the associate is neither presented nor in narrow focus. Rather, the verb and its associate are subsumed within the same informational unit, and it is the clause-ﬁnal adjunct (aux Etats Unis or en 1890) that is then in narrow focus. Accordingly, the discourse function of the containing sentences is essentially one of event-locating, whereby the event designated by the verb–associate complex is assigned a space or time coordinate. In this respect, the sentences in question contrast sharply with the corresponding subject-ﬁrst structures shown below: (90)

Cette édition est déjà parue aux Etats Unis. ‘Thus edition has already appeared in the USA.’

(91)

Cette maison a été construite en 1890. ‘This house was built in 1890.’

Here, the verb naturally forms an informational unit with the clauseﬁnal adjunct. Speciﬁcally, the verb and the adjunct are subsumed within the comment component of a topic–comment structure. Given that this possibility is systematically unavailable in the inverted counterparts (41) and (42), it can be surmised that the principal effect of expletive inversion (in this type of case) is to force an informational division that segregates the verb and the associate from the clause-ﬁnal adjunct. Now although this result is not achieved through the associate acquiring prosodic prominence itself, there is nevertheless a similarity with the presentational and narrow-focus (on the associate) structures, because in all three cases prominence is withheld from the verb. In other words, assuming focus to be essentially a reﬂex of accentuation, the paradigm illustrated by (41) and (42) is simply a third instantiation of the ‘unfocusable verb’ information structure identiﬁed at the beginning of this section.

2.6 Conclusion In this chapter we have considered expletive constructions, relatively insigniﬁcant for null-subject languages such as Spanish and Italian but of fundamental importance in French and English. As discussed in 2.2. and 2.3, essentially two methods exist for establishing a link between the relevant empirical data and the ‘deep-object’ analysis of unaccusative subjects. Either it can be assumed that the expletive originates in

38

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

the position in which unergative subjects originate, thus precluding the occurrence of unergative subjects as expletive associates, or it can be argued that expletive constructions call for partitive/inherent case on the associate, a possibility that by hypothesis does not exist with unergatives. The ﬁrst of these methods is unlikely to be feasible under current assumptions, and in any case is somewhat difﬁcult to motivate on a general basis, given that the mere occurrence of unergative associates (which is well attested in French and English) immediately demonstrates that expletives are not in complementary distribution with unergative subjects. The second method relies on the so-called deﬁniteness effect, observable principally in non-null subject languages like French and English but claimed by Belletti to exist also in languages like Italian. The ﬁnding in this chapter has been that the deﬁniteness effect is largely a mirage, created primarily by an undue concentration on examples in which the associate is pragmatically indeterminate. By thus dissolving the ﬁction of the deﬁniteness effect, I demonstrated that the partitive case hypothesis is theoretically unnecessary and thus does not motivate the thesis that unergative subjects are barred from occurring as expletive associates. In the light of these considerations, and given the de facto occurrence of unergatives in expletive constructions, it is reasonable to conclude that the unergative–unaccusative distinction is not directly a factor in this area of syntax. The shared predisposition of passives, reﬂexive passives and unaccusatives to occur in the French il construction can then be attributed to a common informational capability, given that the function of the il construction is to prevent the verb from being accented and hence focused. Many of the unaccusatives are prototypical presentational verbs, and so occur readily in the ‘unfocusable verb’ pattern, while passives and reﬂexive passives have a natural presentational capability, due to their suppression of subject q -role. However, presentational unergatives are also forthcoming and these also occur routinely in the il construction. The issue of which verbs can occur in il/there-type expletive constructions can thus be seen as pertaining primarily to information structure. From this perspective, the approach adopted in the bulk of the unaccusative literature can be regarded as an attempt to reconstruct an essentially pragmatic phenomenon in syntactic terms.

3 Partitive Cliticization

3.1 Introduction Many of the Romance languages exhibit a clitic reﬂex of Latin inde ‘whence’ that functions in a broadly pronominal capacity, with the meaning ‘of it’, ‘of them’ etc. Typically the inde reﬂex has several distinct uses, the commonest of which are illustrated below using Italian ne and Catalan en: Cliticization of the prepositional complement of a verb: (1)

Ne parlammo per due ore. ‘We spoke about it for two hours.’

(2)

Què en pensen els nens? ‘What do the children think of it?’

Cliticization of an adnominal complement: (3)

Ne è uscita una nuova edizione nel 1988. ‘A new edition (of it) came out in 1988.’

(4)

Més tard, les excavacions en van descobrir els fonaments. ‘Later, the excavations revealed the foundations (of it).’

Cliticization of a quantiﬁed noun: (5)

Se ne sono perduti sette. ‘Seven (of them) were lost.’

(6)

Jo l’altre dia en vaig veure un a la Rambla. ‘The other day I saw one (of them) on the Rambla.’ 39

40

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

It has been claimed in numerous places (particularly in respect of Italian) that the possibility of being an extraction site for an inde reﬂex discriminates between unaccusative and unergative postverbal subjects, with the former but not the latter being proper extraction sites.1 This claim has been buttressed by example pairs such as the two Italian sentences below cited by Belletti (1999, pp. 36–7): (7)

??Ne ha telefonato uno al giornale.2 ‘One (of them) has phoned the newspaper.’

(8)

Ne è arrivato uno al giornale. ‘One (of them) has arrived at the newspaper.’

Much of the unaccusative-related discussion has focused on the cliticization of quantiﬁed nouns, although in principle the adnominal pattern of extraction has a similar distribution – this seems to be the assumption in, for example, Longobardi (1991, pp. 80–9), Longobardi (2000, pp. 699–700) and Burzio (1986, pp. 74–5). For simplicity, the discussion here will be concentrated primarily on the quantiﬁed noun pattern of extraction, henceforth referred to as ‘partitive cliticization’. The ﬁndings can be expected to be capable of being carried over to the adnominal pattern also, although no attempt will be made to demonstrate this point.

3.2 Syntactic arguments As will be pointed out later, there is ample evidence that partitive cliticization does not systematically distinguish between unaccusative and unergative subjects. However, before proceeding to an empirical discussion, it is worth considering whether there is any a priori motivation for the assumption that postverbal unergative subject position will not be a proper extraction site. Accordingly, I will review the various theoretical arguments that have attempted to link partitive cliticization to the ‘deep-object’ analysis of unaccusative subjects. The arguments discussed below were all framed in regard to Italian ne, although it seems that the assumption has generally been that analogous considerations apply to Catalan en (see, for example, Picallo 1984, pp. 98–101). 3.2.1 Belletti and Rizzi (1981) Within the Generative tradition at least, Belletti and Rizzi’s (1981) analysis represents the seminal theoretical linkage between partitive

Partitive Cliticization

41

cliticization and unaccusativity. They noted ﬁ rst of all that this operation was not possible in respect of ‘adverbial’ noun phrases, as is shown by the ungrammaticality of the (b) examples below (from Belletti and Rizzi 1981, pp. 126, 128): (9a)

Gianni é rimasto tre settimane a Milano. ‘Gianni stayed for three weeks in Milan.’

(9b)

*Gianni ne é rimasto tre a Milano. ‘Gianni stayed for three in Milano.’

(10a)

Ha studiato due ore. ‘He studied for two hours.’

(10b)

*Ne ha studiato due. ‘He studied for two.’

On this basis, they contended that ne-extraction was possible only from an argument position, that is, ‘major base generated NP or S-bar position, bearing a grammatical function, available for subcategorization and assignment of thematic role’ (Belleti and Rizzi 1981, p. 128).3 They also argued (pp. 135–8) that unergative postverbal subjects were right-adjoined to VP, a position that they assumed was not an argument position. It then followed that ne-extraction from unergative postverbal subjects would never be possible. Clearly, however, the above argument is rendered unstable by the now widely accepted VP-internal subject hypothesis. In accordance with that hypothesis, an unergative postverbal subject is generated in spec-VP, with the verb subsequently raising and ‘crossing over’ the subject. Now spec-VP can plausibly be regarded as an argument position, given that that is where the subject is commonly assumed to be q -marked. Therefore if the unergative postverbal subject is analysed as remaining in its base-generated position, it can be deemed to occupy an argument position and, accordingly, the theory proposed in Belletti and Rizzi 1981 would cease to motivate the claim that unergative subject position is not a proper site for ne-extraction. 3.2.2 Belletti (1999) More recently, Belletti (1999, pp. 15–16) has argued that unergative postverbal subjects in Italian move from spec-VP to the speciﬁer position in a clause-internal focus phrase (identiﬁed as the ﬁrst functional projection above VP), with the verb raising higher still to give the subject order

42

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

VS. Within this newer model, Belletti assimilates (p. 37, n. 52) the apparent failure of partitive cliticization from unergative postverbal subject position to the class of effects that fall under the Condition on Extraction Domains (CED).4 The latter is a general condition restricting the class of constituents from which elements may be extracted. It subsumes more speciﬁc constraints such as the Adjunct Condition, which prohibits extraction from adjuncts, as illustrated below: (11)

*Whoi did John go home [because he saw ti ]?

According to Belletti (p. 37, n. 52), the position to which unergative postverbal subjects move (spec-FP) is a ‘derived not L-marked’ position,5 hence an impossible extraction site. The relevance here of L-marking is that, in the Barriers framework of Chomsky 1986b as well as much subsequent work, positions that are not L-marked are not transparent to extraction. However, this analysis immediately appears inconsistent with Belletti’s assumption (p. 36) that all deﬁnite postverbal subjects are in spec-FP.6 For, as observed in 2.3 (note 18), ne-extraction is routinely possible from deﬁnite postverbal subjects (of certain verbs at least): (12)

Ne è arrivata la conferma ufﬁciale. ‘The ofﬁcial conﬁrmation has arrived.’

(13)

Ne è uscita la seconda edizione. ‘The second edition has come out.’

(14)

Ne è affondata la chiglia. (Cinque 1990a, p. 6) ‘Its keel sank.’

(15)

Vediamo come ne funziona la gestione. ‘Let’s see how well they are managed.’ (Literally: ‘Let’s see how the management of them works.’)

Examples such as those above show that the position occupied by (at least some) deﬁnite postverbal subjects is a proper extraction site. Presumably, then, such subjects cannot be in spec-FP. But if that is the case, there seems to be no principled reason why unergative subjects must be in spec-FP, given that in Belletti’s framework unergative postverbal subjects in effect fall together with deﬁ nite postverbal subjects (in that neither can be licensed by partitive/inherent case – see 2.3 in this book).

Partitive Cliticization

43

Belletti’s empirical motivation for the spec-FP analysis of unergative postverbal subjects stems from the fact that such subjects frequently are in focus. This is illustrated by examples involving identiﬁcational questions as a diagnostic for focus on the postverbal subject (Belletti 1999, p. 13): (16)

–Pronto, chi parla? –Parla Gianni. ‘Hello, who’s speaking?’ ‘Gianni’s speaking.’

However, Belletti enshrines the tendency reﬂected in examples like (16) in a syntactic principle according to which postverbal unergative subjects (in Italian at least) are actually licensed in a focus phrase. Obviously enough, this assumption requires that all such subjects are in focus. But a generalization to this effect does not appear to be sustainable, as is demonstrated rather conclusively by Pinto (1997). Thus in the examples below (from Pinto 1997, pp. 26, 204), the legitimacy of the question Che cosa è successo? ‘What/What’s happened’ indicates that the corresponding answers have wide focus, excluding the possibility that the (unergative) postverbal subjects are in focus: (17)

–Che cosa è successo? –Ha telefonato Beatrice da Milano. ‘What happened?’ ‘Beatrice called from Milan.’

(18)

–Che cosa è successo? –Ha pianto un bambino. ‘What happened?’ ‘A child cried.’

Given the existence of these and numerous other counterexamples to Belletti’s claim, it seems to be impossible to derive a structural distinction between unergative and unaccusative postverbal subjects from the distribution of focus. At most, we can speak of an approximate correlation, with postverbal unergative subjects being more likely to be in focus than their unaccusative counterparts, but this clearly lacks the predictability of a genuinely syntactic phenomenon. Thus Belletti’s spec-FP analysis of postverbal unergative subjects appears to be untenable, both on empirical grounds, as just observed, and because it creates an internal inconsistency with another leading assumption in her overall theory. In the light of this ﬁnding, there is no reason in principle why postverbal subjects of unergatives cannot

44

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

be analysed as remaining in their VP-internal (or vp-internal, if vp shells are assumed) original position, as assumed, for instance, in Cardinaletti (2001). According to some authors at least (for example, Koopman and Sportiche 1988), that position is L-marked, hence transparent to extraction. There would thus be no a priori reason for assuming postverbal unergative subject position to be an impossible site for ne-extraction. Note also that if the alleged impossibility of ne-cliticization from postverbal unergative subject position does indeed indicate a CED type of effect, one would expect other phenomena known to be subject to CED effects to exhibit a similar unaccusative–unergative asymmetry. In particular, one would expect wh-extraction to exhibit such an asymmetry. However, the evidence here is rather inconclusive. Longobardi (1991, p. 80) and Cinque (1990a, p. 8) insist that the wh-extraction data from Italian do exhibit the asymmetry in question. For example, Longobardi (1991, p. 81) cites the following contrast (between unergative telefonare ‘phone’ and unaccusative scomparire ‘disappear’), evaluating (19) as ‘?*’ and (20) as fully grammatical: (19)

Di quale assessino ha telefonato un complice? ‘Of which murderer has an accomplice phoned?’

(20)

Di quale assessino è scomparso un complice? ‘Of which murderer has an accomplice disappeared?’

In fact, native speakers other than linguistics experts are somewhat less categorical in terms of distinguishing between sentences such as (19) and (20). But even if we accept Longobardi’s evaluation, the contrast in question appears not to be capable of being generalized to all verbs in the unaccusative class. Thus the acceptability differential between (19) and (20) appears to decrease if other unaccusatives such as sbagliarsi ‘be mistaken’, cadere ‘fall’, arrivare ‘arrive’, lamentarsi ‘complain’ and so on, are substituted for scomparire in (20). Moreover, the alleged sensitivity of postverbal wh-extraction to the unaccusative–unergative distinction would be a peculiarly Italian phenomenon. Spanish, for example, exhibits no comparable sensitivity, and indeed cases exist in which, if anything, the data point in the opposite direction from that claimed for Italian. For example, in the pair of Spanish sentences below, wh-extraction from the postverbal subject of unaccusative llegar ‘arrive’ is marginally less acceptable than

Partitive Cliticization

45

extraction from the postverbal subject of unergative llamar ‘call/ phone’: (21)

?¿De qué paciente ha llegado una hija? ‘Of which patient has a daughter arrived.’

(22)

(?)¿De qué paciente ha llamado una hija? ‘Of which patient has a daughter phoned.’

In French, too, it is difﬁcult to reproduce the relevant asymmetry. Thus in the sentences below, extraction of combien from a postverbal associate (examples (23) and (24)) or from a stylistically inverted subject (examples (25) and (26), from Kayne and Pollock 2001) is unaffected by whether the verb is unergative (voler ‘ﬂy’, téléphoner ‘phone’) or unaccusative (arriver ‘arrive’, partir ‘leave’): (23)

Combien vole-t-il d’avions au dessus de la ville? ‘How many planes ﬂy over the city?’

(24)

Combien arrive-t-il de cars par semaine? How many coaches arrive per week?

(25)

Combien ont téléphoné de linguistes? (Kayne and Pollock 2001, (29a)) ‘How many linguists have phoned?’

(26)

Combien sont partis de linguistes? (Kayne and Pollock 2001, (29b)) ‘How many linguists have left?’

It turns out, then, that if we abstract away from the Italian data, which themselves are not particularly conclusive, it is difﬁcult to ﬁnd evidence consistently indicating that the unaccusative–unergative distinction plays a role in CED effects. To sum up: several problems can be pointed to within Belletti’s updated thoery. First, there is the possibility of extracting ne from precisely the structural position that Belletti claims is not a possible extraction site. Secondly, the basis proposed by Belletti for assigning distinct structural positions to unaccusative and unergative postverbal subjects is empirically problematic, given that the criterion of narrow focus on the postverbal subject does not systematically distinguish between unaccusatives and unergatives. Finally, the evidence that other forms

46

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

of extraction, in particular wh-extraction, systematically discriminate between unaccusative and unergative postverbal subjects is rather inconclusive. This latter circumstance is unexpected if the apparent unaccusative–unergative asymmetry in terms of ne-extraction really reﬂects a CED effect. 3.2.3 Government into the subject’s speciﬁer Both Belletti and Rizzi’s original (1981) account of partitive cliticization as well as that advanced in Belletti (1999) suffer from the difﬁculty inherent in the task of deriving a relevant syntactic distinction between unergative and unaccusative postverbal subject positions, that is, one that provides the basis for a principled explanation for the apparent ne-extraction asymmetry. An interesting account that potentially obviates this problem was advanced by Longobardi (1991). Longobardi put forward the empirical generalization that only ‘possessive’ arguments of nouns could be extracted from an NP. Consider, for example, the sentence below, in which the PP di Gianni is ambiguous between an interpretation in which Gianni is the object of the desire and one in which he is the experiencer of it: (27)

Abbiamo ricordato il desiderio di Gianni. (Longobardi 1991, p. 59) ‘We remembered the desire of Gianni.’

However, if di Gianni is replaced by a possessive, only the experiencer reading is available: (28)

Abbiamo ricordato il suo desiderio. (Longobardi 1991, p. 59) ‘We remembered his desire.’

Longobardi observed that both wh-extraction and ne-extraction preserved only the above ‘possessive’ reading: (29)

Gianni, di cui abbiamo ricordato il desiderio. ‘Gianni, of whom we remembered the desire.’

(30)

Ne abbiamo ricordato il desiderio. ‘We remembered his desire.’

On the basis of this apparent parallel between possessivization and extraction from NP, and assuming the speciﬁer of NP to be the locus

Partitive Cliticization

47

of possessives, Longobardi argued that extraction from NP (in Romance) must proceed in successive cyclic fashion, via the speciﬁer position, with the extracted item leaving an intermediate trace in that position. The basic analytical paradigm for sentences with extractions from NP in Romance was then as follows (Longobardi 1991, p. 65): (31)

il soldato di cui ho visto la t cattura t ‘the soldier of whom I saw the capture’

(32)

Ne ho visto la t cattura t. ‘I saw his capture.’

Longobardi then argued (pp. 73–80) that unergative verbs did not govern into the speciﬁer of a postverbal subject, while unaccusatives did. Accordingly, and given the further assumption (p. 73) that a trace in the speciﬁer of an NP required proper government by an external head, ne-extraction (as well as wh-extraction) from a postverbal unergative subject NP was predicted to be ungrammatical, while such extraction from a postverbal unaccusative subject NP was predicted to be grammatical. Notice, however, that Longobardi’s theory requires acceptance of the claim that an unaccusative–unergative asymmetry exists in terms of the possibility of governing into the speciﬁer of a postverbal subject. In support of this position Longobardi adduced evidence relating to wh-extraction and ne-extraction from NP subjects, as well as evidence relating to successive cyclic extraction from inﬁnitival clauses embedded within sentential arguments. Now from the present perspective, that is, in terms of determining whether Longobardi’s theory provides a priori motivation for assuming postverbal unergative subject position to be an impossible site for ne-extraction, the ne-extraction data themselves cannot be adduced without an obvious circularity. Moreover, as noted in 3.2.2, the data pertaining to wh-extraction from NP/DP subjects are somewhat inconclusive, and even conﬂ icting if other Romance languages are considered. This leaves us with just the evidence pertaining to successive cyclic extraction from sentential arguments, discussed by Longobardi in section 5 of his paper. There he considered cases such as (33) below, in which a wh-phrase (a cui) is extracted from a preverbal (inﬁnitival) subject but the resultant CED effect is much weaker than might be expected, with the consequence that (33) was evaluated by Longobardi as being merely ‘?’, as opposed to fully ungrammatical:

48

(33)

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Gianni, a cui temo che parlare sarà difﬁcile (Longobardi 1991, p. 74) ‘Gianni, to whom I fear that talking will be difﬁcult’

Longobardi attributed (p. 75) the above type of CED amelioration to what he assumed was the successive cyclic nature of the extraction, with a cui passing through the speciﬁer of the higher sentential argument che parlare sarà difﬁcile and leaving a trace in that position. The presence of this trace, he contended, enabled the complementizer che to govern into the speciﬁer of the inﬁnitival clause, thus licensing a trace in that position and hence movement of a cui out of the inﬁnitival clause (under the further assumption that external government of an empty category could override barrierhood). Essentially, then, a trace in the speciﬁer of a sentential argument could license an otherwise prohibited extraction from the preverbal subject of this sentential argument, albeit with a degree of attendant marginality. Longobardi then argued (pp. 76–9) that only certain types of sentential argument could accommodate a trace in their speciﬁer, and so the kind of CED amelioration just illustrated was limited to a subset of sentential arguments. In particular, he claimed that ‘internal’ sentential arguments, such as those that were postverbal unaccusative subjects, allowed traces in their speciﬁer, but ‘external’ sentential arguments, such as transitive subjects, did not. Thus he contended that (34) below exhibited the relevant CED amelioration, and hence was marginally grammatical, while (35) did not and so was fully ungrammatical: (34)

Gianni, con cui le è dispiaciuto che parlare non fosse facile ‘Gianni, with whom it displeased her that talking was not easy’

(35)

Gianni, con cui l’ha impressionata che parlare non fosse possibile ‘Gianni, with whom it impressed her that talking was not possible’

According to Longobardi, the apparent impossibility for a trace to occur in the speciﬁer of a sentential argument that was a postverbal transitive subject resulted from the general failure of a transitive verb to govern into the speciﬁer of its subject. By assuming that the relation between a transitive verb and its subject was analogous to the relation between

Partitive Cliticization

49

an unergative verb and its subject, Longobardi then extrapolated (p. 78) the conclusion that unergative verbs could not govern into the speciﬁer of their postverbal subject. The argument just summarized is clearly a masterpiece of ingenuity. However, the motivation for the ﬁnal conclusion is narrow in the extreme. In the ﬁrst place, very few, if any, genuinely unergative verbs can actually take sentential subjects. It is presumably for this reason that Longobardi does not adduce a single example involving an unergative verb in the strict sense, relying instead, as just observed, on an extrapolation from the case of sentential subjects of transitive verbs. Given this very narrow corpus, there is a signiﬁcant risk of a destructive bias being introduced by extraneous lexical or semantic factors. Such a risk is all the greater given that acceptability judgments elicited for Longobardi’s examples do not appear to give an unambiguous indication as to their underlying grammaticality or ungrammaticality. For instance, some native speakers see no grammar-based distinction between (34) and (35), attributing any acceptability differential instead to pragmatics, with a marginally greater degree of likelihood attaching to the situation described by (34) than to that described by (35). Secondly, as Longobardi recognized (p. 76), at least some sentential objects of transitives behave like sentential subjects of transitives, in that in their case there appears to be no amelioration of the relevant CED effect. Thus Longobardi classiﬁed (36) below, with matrix rimpiangere ‘regret’, as fully ungrammatical: (36)

Gianni, a cui rimpiango che parlare sia così difﬁcile ‘Gianni, to whom I regret that talking is so difﬁcult’

The ungrammaticality of (36) implies, under Longobardi’s analysis, that the extracted item a cui cannot leave a trace in the speciﬁer of the object clause che parlare sia così difﬁcile, which in turn implies that rimpiangere does not govern into that position. This is unexpected if, as Longobardi proposed (p. 78), the possibility for a trace to be licensed in the speciﬁer of a sentential argument correlates with the distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ arguments. In fact, Longobardi appears to have assumed that cases such as (36) did not tell against his proposed correlation, because of the existence of a general constraint preventing factive verbs – that is, verbs that presuppose the truth of their sentential argument – from governing into the speciﬁer of their sentential argument. On the face of it, this is a rather curious position, given that the very assumption that factivity

50

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

is relevant appears to constitute a recognition that the basic phenomenon in question may have a semantic rather than a syntactic basis, a circumstance that would then call into question the relevance to this issue of the (syntactic) distinction between external and internal arguments. In any case, however, factivity per se does not appear to be relevant, given, for example, that è dispiaciuto in (34) is factive but is nevertheless able, under Longobardi’s analysis, to govern into the speciﬁer of its sentential subject, whence the marginal grammaticality of the containing sentence. Thus there seems to be no principled reason why cases such as (36) should not be deemed to tell against Longobardi’s proposed correlation, and with it the claim that the unaccusative– unergative distinction is relevant to the acceptability differential in question (given that the unaccusative–unergative distinction is standardly treated as a reﬂex of the internal–external dichotomy.) Finally, the evidence from successive cyclic adjunct extraction out of sentential arguments does not indicate a systematic capability among unaccusatives to govern into the speciﬁer of a (postverbal) sentential subject. Under assumptions prevalent in the 1980s and early 1990s, such extraction leaves a trace in the speciﬁer of the sentential argument. If Longobardi’s analysis as outlined above is correct, it would be expected that matrix unaccusatives should be able to license such a trace in a postverbal subject, through head government. However, in the majority of cases no such capability is apparent, with adjunct extraction from a postverbal sentential subject being impossible for most unaccusative verbs. This is illustrated by (37) and (38) below, involving unaccusative piacere ‘please’ and importare ‘matter’. Both sentences appear to be ungrammatical under the reading indicated: (37)

Perchèi ti piacerebbe [ti che lo licenziassero ti ]? ‘Why would it please you that they sacked him?’

(38)

Perchèi importerebbe [ti che lo licenziassero ti ]? ‘Why would it matter that they sacked him?’

Extraction failures such as those illustrated above suggest that unaccusativity per se does not privilege a verb in terms of enabling successive cyclic extraction from inside its postverbal sentential subject. By the same token, it does not appear to be the case that unaccusativity per se secures government into the speciﬁer of such a subject. There are, then, a number of considerations that call into question the reliability of the evidence pertaining to sentential arguments

Partitive Cliticization

51

brought to bear by Longobardi in support of his basic contention, viz. that the capability to govern into the speciﬁer of a postverbal subject exhibits an unaccusative–unergative asymmetry. Firstly, we can point to the narrowness of the corpus of data adduced, which surely is insufﬁcient to eliminate the possibility that lexical or semantic factors rather than syntax are the crucial determinants. Secondly, we have the nonamelioration of the relevant CED effect in object clauses of certain transitive verbs, suggesting that the relevant distinction is not that which exists between internal and external arguments. Finally, there is the non-transparency to adjunct extraction of postverbal sentential subjects of most unaccusative verbs, a phenomenon that indicates that unaccusative verbs are not in general privileged in terms of the capability to govern into the speciﬁer of a postverbal sentential subject. Accordingly, Longobardi’s evidence from sentential arguments cannot be regarded as compelling. We thus ﬁnd there to be no reason that is both convincing and independent of the ne-extraction data for accepting the claim that an unaccusative–unergative asymmetry exists in terms of the possibility of governing into the speciﬁer of a postverbal subject. By the same token, Longobardi’s account turns out not to offer any compelling motivation for an a priori supposition that ne-extraction from a postverbal unergative subject will be impossible. 3.2.4 Burzio (1986) Burzio’s account relied on the Projection Principle in conjunction with the assumptions (i) that ne was base-generated in its clitic position and (ii) that it was an object clitic, receiving its q -role from an empty category in object position (1986, pp. 33–4). The Projection Principle was a Government Binding Theory construct, requiring syntactic structures to observe the lexical properties of the items they contained at all levels in the derivation. Given Burzio’s assumptions (i) and (ii) just mentioned, this predicts grammaticality for (39) below and ungrammaticality for (40), given that in the former the proper relation obtains between the clitic and the empty category at all levels in the derivation (assuming an ergative analysis of arrivare) while in the latter it does not obtain at D-structure (under the further assumption that molti ei originates to the left of ne telefoneranno and subsequently moves rightwards). (39)

Nei arriveranno molti ei. ‘Many will arrive.’

52

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(40)

*Nei telefoneranno molti ei. ‘Many will telephone.’

Notice that this account is crucially dependent on the assumption that ne is an object clitic only. Whether this assumption is correct is an empirical matter, in that this can only be determined by examining the distribution of ne. Accordingly, Burzio’s account does not provide any a priori reason for supposing that unergative postverbal subjects do not allow partitive cliticization. In fact, as will be observed below, partitive cliticization from an unergative postverbal subject is possible (and maybe even routine) in certain circumstances. Therefore the assumption that ne is exclusively an object clitic appears to be incorrect. 3.2.5 Perlmutter (1983/1989) Perlmutter (1983, pp. 152) stated the following condition on partitive cliticization in Italian: A nominal can be the ‘source’ of partitive NE in clause b only if it: (i) heads a 2-arc with tail b, and (ii) does not head a 1-arc with tail b Clause (ii) of the above condition relates to the fact that the source of ne must be postverbal. Clause (i) is the key clause for present purposes, as it is this clause that alludes to the concept of ‘2hood’ (that is, direct objecthood), by means of which Perlmutter distinguished between unaccusatives and unergatives, with the former but not the latter heading a 2-arc in the initial stratum (see the brief overview of Perlmutter’s Unaccuative Hypothesis in 1.2 of this book). Given this distinction, the above condition on partitive cliticization predicts that it can occur with unaccusative postverbal subjects but not with unergative postverbal subjects. However, it is far from clear that the concept of 2hood has any real content. Consider ﬁrst of all Perlmutter’s argument for assuming that unaccusative subjects were 2s (that is, headed a 2-arc in some stratum), which can be summarized as follows (based on Perlmutter 1989, pp. 67–83): 1. The Italian intransitive verbs can be split into two classes depending on whether they select auxiliary essere or avere in the perfect. 2. The subjects of verbs in the essere-selecting class pattern with transitive direct objects in terms of (a) partitive cliticization and (b)

Partitive Cliticization

53

participial constructions (Uscite le donne . . . ‘The women having left . . .’, Perduti i soldi . . . ‘With the money lost . . .’ and so on.). 3. The subjects of verbs in the avere-selecting class do not pattern with transitive direct objects in terms of (a) partitive cliticization and (b) participial constructions. 4. Therefore the subjects of verbs in the essere-selecting group (but not those in the avere-selecting group) must share a property with transitive direct objects. Transitive direct objects are 2s (by deﬁnition). Therefore the subjects of verbs in the essere-selecting group must also be 2s in some stratum (speciﬁcally, the initial stratum). By the same token they are unaccusative. As can be seen, the entire argument is based on parallel behaviour, with auxiliary selection identifying the class of intransitives that enter into the parallel. Being a 2 has no correlate per se, either in terms of a structural description (as in Government Binding/Minimalism) or in terms of surface morphosyntactic properties (as identiﬁed in traditional grammar).7 Thus the 2hood analysis is merely a way of grouping the subjects of the essere-selecting verbs (the unaccusatives) with the transitive direct objects. As such it is entirely dependent on the parallel in question being (i) perfect and (ii) incapable of receiving an alternative explanation. In fact, as will be demonstrated later, the parallel is far from being perfect. Moreover, alternative explanations are readily available. As far as ne is concerned, it will be argued in 3.4 that the parallel between unaccusative postverbal subjects and direct objects is due to a common information structure.8 As regards participial absolutes, it will be argued in 7.3 that the relatively high frequency of unaccusatives is the consequence of a resultant-state requirement, which naturally favours achievement and accomplishment terms, the bulk of which, if they are intransitive, select essere in the perfect and hence are classiﬁed as unaccusatives. 3.2.6 C-command As mentioned in 1.1, Baltin (2001, p. 241) has argued that the distribution of partitive ne results from the need for it to c-command the trace it leaves behind at the extraction site. He states that ‘the requirement that ne c-command the nominal which it modiﬁes is simply Fiengo’s (1974, 1977) proper binding requirement on traces, assuming that ne has moved out of the nominal.’ However, most modern theories assume that the verb in null-subject languages like Italian raises to a very high

54

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

position in the sentence (T, for instance), and certainly one from which a moved clitic could c-command its own trace in a postverbal unergative subject. Thus an analysis in terms of c-command would not, in the present theoretical climate, secure the desired exclusion of neextraction from postverbal unergative subject position. In any case, Belletti and Rizzi (1981, p. 127) originally entertained an explanation in terms of c-command (albeit under the looser ‘maximal projection’ deﬁnition) and concluded that it accounted only for the data relating to preverbal position. In the example below (from Belletti and Rizzi 1981, p. 126), the phrase tre settimane is in VP, hence an extracted clitic would c-command its own trace, but nevertheless the corresponding sentence with ne is ungrammatical: (41)

Gianni è rimasto tre settimane a Milano. ‘Gianni remained three weeks in Milan.’

(42)

*Gianni ne è rimasto tre a Milano. ‘Gianni remained three in Milan.’

Thus an account in terms of c-command is immediately problematic, from a number of perspectives. 3.2.7 No compelling theoretical argument The foregoing review of the syntactic arguments concerning partitive cliticization indicates that there is no compelling a priori reason to expect that the operation will be impossible from unergative postverbal subjects. The original assumption that Italian ne must be extracted from an argument position is rendered unstable by the advent of the VP-internal subject hypothesis. Belletti’s more recent account in terms of a CED-type effect attaching to the spec-FP position hypothesized for unergative postverbal subjects is questionable on a number of grounds. Longobardi’s theory according to which partitive cliticization presupposes external government of the subject/object’s speciﬁer requires acceptance of the imperfectly motivated premise that unergative verbs cannot govern into the speciﬁer of their postverbal subject. Burzio’s and Perlmutter’s accounts rely on certain assumptions of a factual nature concerning the distribution of partitive cliticization and so cannot determine any a priori expectation concerning that distribution. Finally, the account in terms of Fiengo’s proper binding requirement on traces is unstable under now widely accepted assumptions.

Partitive Cliticization

55

3.3 Partitive cliticization independent of unaccusative–unergative distinction It turns out that, under certain circumstances, postverbal subjects of at least some unergative verbs routinely allow partitive cliticization. This point was ﬁrst made for Italian by Lonzi (1986),9 but the situation seems to be general in Romance. I give a selection of examples below (from Catalan and Italian):10 (43)

Som en plantilla 50 persones, però en treballen moltes més cobrint baixes i vacances. ‘We are a basic team of 50 people, but many more work to cover absences and holidays.’

(44)

Es poden inscriure 12 jugadors per equip i al ser de futbol 7, en juguen 7. ‘Twelve players can register per team and, as it is seven-a-side football, seven of them play.’

(45)

No hi havia cap practicant i ara als campionats escolars en participen uns 40. ‘There were no players and now about 40 participate in the school championship.’

(46)

Sobre un cens de 10.622 persones, en voten 6.001. ‘Out of an electorate of 10,622 people, 6001 vote.

(47)

Tot i que . . . només es van inscriure 27, en van correr més de 40. ‘Despite the fact that . . . only 27 put their names down, more than 40 ran.’

(48)

Al CNR lavorano 7.500 persone, mentre al CNRS ne lavorano 26.000.11 ‘7,500 people work at the CNR, while 26,000 work at the CNRS.’

(49)

Come già comunicato in precedenza su 721 elettori ne hanno votato 635. ‘As previously indicated, out of 721 voters 635 voted.’

(50)

In Italia (il campionato più difﬁcile del mondo) ne giocano pochi. ‘In Italy (the most difﬁcult championship in the world) few [foreigners] play.

56

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(51)

Su un totale di 268 famiglie nel 1720, nel Paese Alto ne abitavano 120. ‘Out of a total of 268 families in 1720, 120 of them lived in the Paese Alto.’

(52)

Nel 1996, negli USA ne vivevano in povertà 5 milioni e mezzo. ‘In 1996, in the USA ﬁve and a half million [children] were living in poverty.’

(53)

Su 13 mezzi acquistati ne camminano solo 6. ‘Out of 13 trams only 6 work.’

Conversely, according to Lonzi (1986, p. 114) certain unaccusatives with animate subjects are incompatible with partitive cliticization. She thus contrasts the deviant (a) sentences below with the corresponding unproblematic (b) sentences: (54a)

*Se ne sono evoluti molti d’insegnanti. ‘Many teachers have developed.’

(54b)

Molti insegnanti si sono evoluti. ‘Many teachers have developed.’

(55a)

*Ne sono cambiati tanti di genitori. ‘So many parents have changed.’

(55b)

Tanti genitori sono cambiati. ‘So many parents have changed.’

Therefore, from the empirical point of view, it is incorrect to claim that partitive cliticization capability among intransitives is directly determined by whether a verb is unaccusative or unergative. Recently, Bentley (2004a, pp. 237–8) has argued that partitive cliticization in Italian does distinguish between unergatives and unaccusatives, but not in the way previously supposed. She contends that partitive cliticization from unaccusative subjects is compatible with two types of information structure, viz. wide focus and narrow focus (on the quantiﬁer element), whereas partitive cliticization from unergative subjects is compatible with only one, viz. wide focus. As evidence for this, she observes that while partitive cliticization from unaccusative subjects is possible in interrogative structures such as that shown in (56) below,

Partitive Cliticization

57

it is not analogously possible from unergative subjects, as illustrated by the apparent unacceptability or infelicity of (57): (56)

Quanti ne muoiono/nascono/arrivano? ‘How many (of them) die/are born/arrive?’

(57)

??Quanti ne camminano? ‘How many (of them) walk?’

Similarly, she argues that partitive cliticization with unaccusatives is possible in replies to questions like (56), and that no corresponding possibility exists for unergatives. As a ﬁrst step towards considering Bentley’s claim, notice that an asymmetry of the sort she identiﬁes would not be general in Romance. For example, partitive cliticization from expletive associates in French is compatible with narrow focus (on the quantiﬁer) regardless of whether the verb is unaccusative, passive or unergative: (58)

–Combien en est-il resté en France? –Il en est resté moins de quatre mille. ‘How many remained in France?’ ‘Less than four thousand remained.’

(59)

–Combien en a-t-il été produit? –Il en a été produit des centaines. ‘How many were produced?’ ‘Hundreds were produced.’

(60)

–Combien en vole-t-il au dessus de la ville? –Il en vole trois par jour. ‘How many ﬂy over the town?’ ‘Three ﬂy over per day.’

Even within Italian, however, the pattern adduced by Bentley does not appear to be general. Acceptable unergative examples reproducing the structure of (57) are forthcoming, provided that either the interrogative clause is embedded in a suitable context or the verb is not an agentive activity term: (61)

Quanti animatori di villaggi sono stati formati e quanti ne lavorano nelle nostre strutture e quanti, invece, ne importiamo da altre regioni?12 ‘How many holiday camp workers have been trained and how many work in our facilities and how many, on the other hand, do we import from other regions?

58

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(62)

Defence lawyer X: Quanti aerei partecipavano a quella . . . Witness Y: Eh, non mi ricordo. Defence lawyer X: Generalmente quanti ne partecipano?13 ‘How many aircraft were participating in that . . .’ ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘Generally how many participate?’

(63)

Quanti ne funzioneranno?14 ‘How many of them will be working?’

In addition, it is difﬁcult to interpret cases such as the italicized sequence in the earlier example (48), reproduced below, as involving anything other than narrow focus on the quantiﬁer element, in view of the fact that the verbal component lavorano is rather clearly part of the ‘given’: (48)

Al CNR lavorano 7.500 persone, mentre al CNRS ne lavorano 26.000. ‘7,500 people work at the CNR, while 26,000 work at the CNRS.’

Finally, Catalan (43) and (44), reproduced below, can plausibly receive a similar analysis to (48), given the implicit comparison in these two cases between the quantity speciﬁed in the sequence in italics and a quantity speciﬁed previously: (43)

Som en plantilla 50 persones, però en treballen moltes més cobrint baixes i vacances. ‘We are a basic team of 50 people, but many more work to cover absences and holidays.’

(44)

Es poden inscriure 12 jugadors per equip i al ser de futbol 7, en juguen 7. ‘Twelve players can register per team and, as it is seven-a-side football, seven of them play.’

What then is the reason for the apparent unacceptability of examples such as Bentley’s (57), repeated below, together with its answer? (57)

??Quanti ne camminano? ‘How many (of them) walk?’

Partitive Cliticization

59

The fact that camminare (in the favoured sense) is an agentive activity verb appears to be relevant, as does the absence of a context. As will be argued in 3.4 below, partitive cliticization from a subject requires the associated verb to have a presentational type of occurrence. Moreover, of all the semantic classes of verb, agentive activity terms are the most difﬁcult to reconcile with this type of use. Speciﬁcally, it seems to be the case that presentational occurrences of agentive activity verbs systematically involve a linguistic context that creates a weak existential interpretation of the verb–subject complex, and in so doing backgrounds the verb’s usual agentive meaning, as in the examples below: (64)

Qui abitualmente durante il giorno giocano molti bambini. ‘Here normally during the day many children play.’

(65)

Nell’amministrazione lavorano numerose donne, generalmente mal retribuite. ‘In public administration many women work, generally poorly paid.’

(66)

Nella piazza cantano e ballano molti bufﬁ personaggi. ‘In the square many amusing characters sing and dance.’

The above presentational use of agentive activity verbs together with postverbal subjects can be contrasted with the ‘identiﬁcational’ information structure that attaches when such sequences are deprived of collateral linguistic material. For example, according to Pinto (1997: 21–2), the sentence below must be identiﬁcational and cannot be presentational: (67)

Hanno urlato due terroristi. ‘Two terrorists have shouted.’

The deviancy of example (57) can then plausibly be attributed to the absence of a suitable linguistic context. In other words, the verb camminano as presented in (57) appears to have an agentive activity type of occurrence which is at variance with the use of partitive ne to cliticize from the subject. From this perspective, the interrogative nature of the sentence and the associated narrow focus (on the quantiﬁer) are not strictly speaking relevant. This latter point is conﬁrmed by the evidence of examples such as (61), reproduced below, which indicate that the presence of a support-

60

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

ing context is sufﬁcient to ameliorate deviancies of the type in question: (61)

Quanti animatori di villaggi sono stati formati e quanti ne lavorano nelle nostre strutture e quanti, invece, ne importiamo da altre regioni? ‘How many holiday camp workers have been trained and how many work in our facilities and how many, on the other hand, do we import from other regions?’

Moreover, examples such as (63), reproduced below, indicate that when an unergative verb is not an agentive activity term, explicit linguistic contextualization may not even be required: (63)

Quanti ne funzioneranno? ‘How many of them will be working?’

I assume, then, that even Bentley’s data do not indicate a systematic unaccusative–unergative asymmetry as regards partitive cliticization. The general absence of such an asymmetry, as argued for in this section, allied to the ﬁndings in 3.2 concerning the theoretical analyses of Italian ne, indicates that the syntax assigned to unaccusatives but withheld from unergatives is unlikely to be a factor in the distribution of partitive reﬂexes of Latin inde.

3.4 The distribution of partitive ne/en Despite the foregoing remarks it is undeniable that, overall, unaccusative subjects exhibit a greater compatibility than unergative subjects with partitive cliticization. This circumstance requires an explanation, as does the fact that passive subjects and transitive direct objects are generally compatible also.15 As a ﬁrst step towards tying these various elements together, it is instructive to consider the situation in French, in which partitive cliticization is allowed from non-objects but is then largely restricted to contexts of expletive inversion, where the item from which the partitive clitic is extracted will be an expletive associate. Now, as discussed in 2.5.1, the basic function of expletive inversion is to withhold focus from the verb and the construction is thus naturally compatible with canonical presentational verbs,16 given that these usually eschew focus. Accordingly, the phenomenon of partitive cliticization from non-

Partitive Cliticization

61

objects in French is primarily associated with canonical presentationals (including passives): (68)

Il en arrive plus de mille par an. ‘More than a thousand come each year.’

(69)

Il en est apparu deux ou trois chez les marchands. ‘Two or three have turned up among the dealers.’

(70)

Il en a fallu vingt-sept pour régler le problème. ‘Twenty-seven were needed to solve the problem.’

(71)

Il en a été construit un très grand nombre entre le VIIe et le XIVe siècles. ‘A very large number were built between the seventh and fourteenth centuries.’

In addition, however, expletive inversion may be compatible with verbs that are not readily classiﬁable as canonical presentationals provided they are used presentationally, and a corresponding possibility exists for partitive cliticization from the associates of such verbs: (72)

Il en soufﬂe assez pour couvrir deux fois la demande mondiale d’électricité prévue pour 2020. ‘Enough of it blows to meet twice over the world demand for electricity forecast for 2020.’

(73)

Il en a démissionné plusieurs. ‘Several of them resigned.’

(74)

Quand il en sonne un, tous se mettent à chercher le leur. ‘When one rings, everyone starts looking for their own.’

(75)

Pourtant il en volait encore en 1978. ‘However some were still ﬂying in 1978.’

Thus the evidence from French indicates that the possibility for partitive cliticization from non-objects is a function of the presentational capability of the relevant verb. An analysis of null subject languages such as Italian and Catalan that assumes a parallel state of affairs to the French situation (but with partitive cliticization from intransitive subjects having a higher frequency in these languages due to the greater productivity of null subject-style inversion in comparison to

62

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

expletive inversion) would readily account for the distributional patterns noted at the beginning of this section. In support of a parallel between French and the null subject languages, we can point ﬁrst of all to the tell-tale inability of the Italian and Catalan verb to be focused when partitive cliticization from the subject has occurred. Thus, assuming a normal intonation without artiﬁcial breaks, only the (a) members of the example pairs below are compatible with readings in which uccisi or perdut are accented: (76a)

Tre di loro sono stati uccisi. ‘Three of them have been killed.’

(76b)

Ne sono stati uccisi tre. ‘Three of them have been killed.’

(77a)

Malauradament algunes s’han perdut. ‘Unfortunately some of them have been lost.’

(77b)

Se n’han perdut algunes. Les que s’han conservat són les següents . . .’ ‘Some have been lost. Those that remain are the following . . .’

Secondly, the relevant distributional patterns in Italian and Catalan are remarkably similar to those found in French, albeit at higher general levels of frequency. Thus in addition to passives/reﬂexive passives, the most frequently cited (intransitive) verbs that occur with ne/en are prototypical presentational verbs such as arrivare/arribar ‘arrive’, mancare/faltar ‘be missing’ and so on, and verbs with an obvious presentational capability such as morire/morir. The examples below are from Catalan: (78)

Només entre l’abril . . . i el setembre, n’han arribat 22.511. ‘Just between April . . . and September, 22,511 have arrived.’

(79)

Ha estat el primer pas en aquest camp, però encara en falten molts. ‘This has been the ﬁrst step in this area, but still many more are needed.’

(80)

D’una població de 12.000 habitants en van morir 1.100. ‘Out of a population of 12,000 inhabitants 1,100 died.’

Partitive Cliticization

63

Moreover, as in French, verbs that are not canonical presentationals are also possible, provided they are used with presentational import. The earlier examples (43) to (53) illustrate this point. Given the rather obvious parallels between French on the one hand and Catalan/Italian on the other, it is entirely plausible to suppose that partitive cliticization from intransitive subjects is conditioned by the same factor in both types of language. In French, the phenomenon is overtly restricted to expletive inversion, clearly a presentational-type construction. The obvious inference is that the same restriction applies in Catalan and Italian, but that this is not so overtly apparent given the absence of an overt ‘presentational’ expletive corresponding to il. If this is the case, then the apparent link between unaccusatives/ passives and partitive cliticization simply reﬂects the natural presentational capability of an important subset of unaccusatives and of passives in general. The viability of such a hypothesis would in fact be independently supported by certain data pertaining to adjectives. Following Carlson (1977) and Milsark (1974), predicative elements are divided into two types, viz. individual-level predicates and stage-level predicates. Roughly speaking, the former ascribe properties to individuals whereas the latter ascribe states (or, alternatively, they ascribe properties to spatiotemporal slices or ‘stages’ of individuals). Individual-level predicates necessarily impose a topic–comment division that matches the grammatical subject–predicate division, whereas stage-level predicates may also be used in so-called ‘thetic judgments’ (see Kuroda 1972), in which topic–comment and subject–predicate are dissociated. Compare, for example, sentences (81) and (82) below, the former containing an individual-level predicate, ‘is dangerous’, and the latter a stage-level predicate, ‘were scattered about the room’: (81)

Mountaineering is dangerous.

(82)

Papers were scattered about the room.

Sentence (81) can plausibly be analysed as making a statement about mountaineering, viz. that it is dangerous, but (82) can hardly be said to be ‘about papers’. If anything, (82) makes a statement about the room in question, viz. that papers were scattered about it. On this basis, we can say that the subject noun mountaineering in (81) is a topic, and that the subject noun papers in (82) is not. Accordingly, in sentence (81) there is a topic–comment division that matches the grammatical

64

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

subject–predicate division, whereas in (82) this is not the case. Sentence (82) can thus be classiﬁed as illustrating a thetic judgment. Now as Cinque (1990a) has shown, some adjectives admit partitive cliticization from their subject. However it appears to be the case that this capability is limited to adjectives that are stage-level predicates (although this is not to say that every such adjective allows partitive cliticization). For example, the individual-level predicates sono buoni ‘are good’ in (83) and sono pericolosi ‘are dangerous’ in (84) disallow partitive cliticization, whereas the stage-level predicates erano previsti ‘were expected’ in (85) and sono visibili ‘are visible’ in (86) allow it: (83)

*Ne sono buoni pocchi. (Cinque 1990a, p. 7) ‘Few (of them) are good.’

(84)

*Ne sono pericolosi molti. (Cinque 1990a, p. 7) ‘Many (of them) are dangerous.’

(85)

Quanti ne erano previsti? ‘How many (of them) were expected?’

(86)

Ne sono visibili quattro. ‘Four (of them) are visible.’

The above pattern of data suggests that partitive cliticization from a subject is not possible when the predicate is of a type that is incompatible with thetic judgments. Now most authors (for example, Lambrecht 1994, Suñer 1982) assume some sort of identiﬁcation between thetic judgments and the presentational type of information structure. Given this identiﬁcation, and given that individual-level predicates can never be involved in thetic judgments, the pattern of the data represented by (83) to (86) is entirely consistent with the general hypothesis that the possibility for partitive cliticization from a subject is a reﬂex of presentational capability. It might be suggested that the argument advanced here, relying as it does on the presentational capability of the verbs that are compatible with partitive cliticization from their subjects, does not in fact eliminate the link usually posited between the latter phenomenon and the ‘deep-object’ analysis assigned to unaccusative subjects. This would follow from the assumption that presentational information structure is simply a reﬂex of the syntax implied by that analysis, as Lonzi (1986) in effect appears to have assumed (see note 9 above). However, there are two reasons for rejecting this assumption. First, as established in

Partitive Cliticization

65

Chapter 2, expletive presentational inversion does not in principle require the associate to be a deep object, and the same applies, a fortiori, to presentational inversion in null subject languages such as Italian and Catalan. Secondly, given that unergative verbs as a matter of fact can have presentational capability, the only way that presentational information structure can be treated as a reﬂex of the syntax assigned to unaccusatives is by assuming that unergatives become unaccusatives when used presentationally. However, as observed in note 9 above, the practice of positing switches merely to accommodate adverse data is somewhat lacking in methodological rigour and should generally be avoided if at all possible. It seems reasonable to assume, then, that the partitive cliticization diagnostic highlights information structure rather than syntactic structure, with a bias towards unaccusatives/passives but not a complete exclusion of unergatives. Now this still leaves unexplained the fact that partitive cliticization is also widely available in the case of (indeﬁnite) direct objects. However, here again we can develop one of the themes alluded to in Chapter 2 (section 2.5.2). There it was observed that object q -role is generally consonant with ‘presented’ discourse function. This circumstance is presumably related to the fact that, in null subject languages at least, the bearer of object q -role typically surfaces in postverbal position when indeﬁnite (compare the Spanish examples (81) to (83) in Chapter 2). When such a conﬁguration arises, it is in effect impossible to focus the verb without resorting to a marked intonation pattern. This point is illustrated by the Spanish examples just mentioned and also by the Italian example below, where the main accent within the verb phrase falls naturally on the direct object tre sospetti terroristi (assuming a neutral and continuous intonation contour): (87)

La polizia ha arrestato tre sospetti terroristi. ‘The police have arrested three suspected terrorists.’

What this suggests is that transitive direct objects are in essentially the same situation, from the point of view of information structure, as expletive associates, given that the effect of expletive inversion is to withhold focus from the verb. If this is correct, the general transparency of (indeﬁnite) direct objects to partitive cliticization falls under the same generalization as that put forward in connection with intransitive subjects, viz. that partitive cliticization diagnoses presentational capability. In this way, the parallel between unaccusatives, passives and

66

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

presentational unergatives on the one hand, and transitives on the other, can be reduced to a common capacity regarding information structure, without the need to assume a parallel syntax.17 A ﬁnal problem that needs addressing relates to the fact that many (but, as Lonzi observes (1986, pp. 114, 116), not all) of the Italian verbs that select perfect auxiliary essere are compatible with partitive cliticization from their subjects. A solution to this ﬁnal piece of the puzzle can be derived from the link noted in a number of places (see 5.5.1) between essere-selection and aspectual class. As was mentioned earlier (end of 3.3), agentive activity verbs are the most difﬁcult to reconcile with presentational information structure. Given the view adopted here, this state of affairs accounts readily for the infrequency of partitive cliticization from the subjects of such verbs. In contrast, the members of the remainder of the verb classes are not similarly resistant to presentational information structure, in that they routinely have presentational occurrences: Achievement/accomplishment terms: (88)

Nel frattempo sono falliti molti programmi di cooperazione allo sviluppo. ‘In the meantime many development aid programmes have failed.’

(89)

Alle 11.00 si sono schiantati due treni merci incanalati sullo stesso binario. ‘At 11 a.m. two freight trains on the same line collided.’

(90)

Sono passati molti giorni. ‘Many days have passed.’

Non-agentive activity terms: (91)

All’epoca gli abitanti erano 600 e funzionavano due mulini di proprietà del Comune.18 ‘At the time there were six hundred inhabitants and two publicly owned mills were working.’

State terms: (92)

Esistono pochi casi documentati. ‘There exist few documented cases.’

Partitive Cliticization

(93)

67

A questo elenco mancano molti paesi. ‘Many countries are missing from this list.’

In general, then, intransitive verbs other than agentive activity terms are likely to have a natural presentational capability, with the possibility of partitive cliticization from the subject arising as a corollary of this property (notice that all of the above verbs are compatible with partitive cliticization from the subject,19 as are the bulk of the other verbs in these classes). Thus it seems to be the case that there is an indirect (and somewhat uneven) relationship between partitive cliticization and aspectual class.20 Given the broad pattern of perfect auxiliary assignment across the various aspectual classes, this relationship favours partitive cliticization (from the subject) with essere-selecting verbs, although it does not exclude it in the case of avere-selecting verbs. As regards the last point, note in particular that non-agentive activity terms such as funzionare have quite a high degree of presentational capability and yet are likely to select perfect auxiliary avere. Thus among this group of verbs the correlation between essere-selection and partitive cliticization is likely to be at its weakest.

3.5 Conclusion A surprising number of attempts have been made to derive a principled theoretical basis for the alleged exclusion of unergative subjects from the partitive cliticization construction. 21 The most important of these theories were reviewed in this chapter and it emerged that no general syntactic principle appears to exist that can be made to provide the required discrimination between postverbal unaccusative and unergative subjects. Formerly, it could be argued that postverbal unergative subject position (assumed to be VP-adjoined to the right) was a non-argument position and thus the apparent unaccusative–unergative asymmetry in respect of partitive cliticization could be attributed to the requirement that the partitive clitic had to be extracted from an argument position. With the advent of the VP-internal subject hypothesis, however, that argument is invalidated, unless it can be shown that the unergative subject necessarily moves out of its initial position. Belletti (1999) argues that this is indeed the case, in that unergative subjects move to the speciﬁer of a focus phrase projected above the outer VP. This she takes to be a non L-marked position, hence not a legitimate extraction site. However, the focus-phrase analysis is defective in several respects,

68

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

not least because not all postverbal unergative subjects are in fact focused. Longobardi argued that partitive cliticization involved successive cyclic movement and that such movement was not possible in the case of unergative subjects because unergative verbs did not govern into the speciﬁer of their subject. While this proposal obviates several of the problems inherent in other theories, it has a major weakness, viz. that it is difﬁcult, if not impossible, to provide compelling independent motivation for the assumption of an unergative–unaccusative asymmetry in terms of the capability to govern into the speciﬁer of a (postverbal) subject. Of the remaining accounts, Burzio’s and Perlmutter’s theories are ultimately stipulative and are thus immediately vulnerable to adverse empirical data, while any attempt to explain the distribution of partitive cliticization in terms of Fiengo’s proper binding requirement on traces, as suggested by Baltin, requires the adoption of an outmoded theoretical framework. These ﬁndings, together with the fact that postverbal subjects of certain unergative verbs routinely allow partitive cliticization, indicate that the distribution of the latter phenomenon is unlikely to be syntactically conditioned. In fact, it has been argued in this chapter that the distributional patterns are determined by tendencies pertaining to information structure. This is suggested initially by the fact that partitive cliticization from non-objects in French is largely restricted to expletive inversion, which is available only to verbs or constructions that are capable of being used presentationally. On the basis of important similarities between the French and Italian/Catalan situation, it was argued in the text that partitive cliticization from the argument of an intransitive verb is subject in all three languages to essentially the same restriction in terms of information structure, the only signiﬁcant cross-linguistic disparity being that presentational inversion in the null subject languages is signiﬁcantly more productive than expletive inversion in French. Building on some of the ideas introduced in Chapter 2, it has also been argued that there is a consonance between object q -role and the capability for an argument to have a ‘presented’ function. This accounts for the way in which both passive subjects and transitive direct objects pattern with subjects of presentational unaccusatives (and also with subjects of presentational unergatives). Finally, it was observed that all intransitives other than agentive activity terms are likely to have a natural presentational capability and

Partitive Cliticization

69

thus are likely to be compatible with partitive cliticization from the subject/associate. Most of these verbs (that is, verbs other than agentive activity terms) are assigned perfect auxiliary essere in Italian, given the partly aspectual basis for auxiliary assignment (to be discussed in Chapter 5), and this circumstance accounts for the rough correlation between essere selection and the possibility of partitive cliticization from the subject. However, some groups of intransitives, a case in point being the non-agentive activity terms, have a fairly strong presentational capability but nevertheless are often associated with auxiliary avere. The existence of such groups of verbs causes the classes deﬁned by the auxiliary-selection and partitive-cliticization diagnostics to be signiﬁcantly non-isomorphic.

4 Bare Subjects

4.1 Introduction It is commonly (though not universally) assumed that the distribution of bare subjects in Romance null subject languages correlates with the unaccusative–unergative distinction. In Spanish, which lacks the ‘be’ perfect auxiliary as well as an equivalent to the Italian/Catalan-style partitive clitic, bare subject compatibility is in fact taken to be one of the primary unaccusative diagnostics (see, for example, Aranovich 2003, Mendikoetxea 1999).1 For this reason, the discussion here focuses primarily on Spanish, but the main conclusions would in broad terms be applicable to Catalan, Portuguese and Italian. Except in what might be termed stylistically marked contexts,2 Spanish bare subjects appear only in immediately postverbal position, as in examples (1) to (3), in the left periphery, as in examples (4) and (5), or after a focusing item, as in example (6): (1)

Dimitían ministros con una frecuencia impresionante. ‘Ministers resigned with an amazing frequency.’

(2)

Está claro que han muerto turistas. ‘It is clear that tourists have died.’

(3)

Entra frío. ‘The cold is coming in.’

(4)

Terremotos, no ocurren nunca. ‘Earthquakes, they never happen.’

(5)

MEJILLONES faltan. (With emphatic stress on mejillones.) ‘It’s mussels that are needed.’ 70

Bare Subjects

(6)

71

Participaron hasta soldados. ‘Even soldiers participated.’

The above distribution has been claimed to result from the existence of a proper or lexical government requirement on bare arguments, under the assumption that they contain an empty determiner or quantiﬁer.3 The general principle from which this requirement is assumed to derive is some form of the Empty Category Principle (ECP), a Government Binding construct requiring empty categories to have proper governors.4 The original articulation of this view is due to Contreras (1986), although Longobardi’s (1994) restatement within the framework of the DP (determiner phrase) hypothesis has been highly inﬂuential. We can note in particular the conditions Longobardi assumed (pp. 617–18) empty determiners to be subject to: (a) They are restricted to plural or mass head nouns like several other determiners. (b) They are subject to a lexical government requirement like other empty heads. (c) They receive an indeﬁnite interpretation corresponding to an existential quantiﬁer unspeciﬁed for number and taking the narrowest possible scope (default existential). A variant on the empty category approach is provided by Lois (1996). She contends (p. 230) that Longobardi’s lexical government requirement can be reconstructed in terms of conﬁgurations that will enable the licensing of a ‘hidden’ event argument of the sort posited by Kratzer (1995).5 The relevant assumptions are (i) that only stage-level predicates are associated with the Kratzer-style event argument and (ii) that, as noted by Carlson (1977), bare subjects of stage-level predicates must be ‘existential’, in precisely the sense required under condition (c) of Longobardi’s theory (see above). In essence, then, Lois’s account of bare subjects (in Romance) can be characterized as stating that they will be possible with stage-level predicates but impossible with individual-level predicates. It has also been suggested that bare arguments manifest partitive (or inherent) case in the sense of Belletti (1988). For example, Masullo (1992, p. 263) treated them as nominal projections that did not attain their maximal level of expansion. They thus required a ‘stronger’ means of identiﬁcation – speciﬁcally, they had to receive partitive case and they had to incorporate into another head. Under the assumption that

72

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

partitive case is reserved for direct objects (for example, as in Lasnik (1999, pp. 86–7), this would implicitly rule out the possibility that unergative subjects could be bare. Belletti (1988) highlighted two facts that indicated in her view that bare arguments had partitive case. Firstly, she pointed out (p. 29) that bare direct objects in Italian are cliticized by partitive ne and not by an accusative clitic, as illustrated in the example below: (7)

Lettere, oggi non ne/*le ho scritte. ‘Letters, I haven’t written any today.’

In addition, she noted that bare nouns could not appear as the small clause subject in an ECM (Exceptional Case Marking) construction: (8)

*Consideravo [ SC studenti intelligenti]. (Belletti 1988, p. 29) ‘I considered students intelligent.’

(9)

*Consideraba [ SC estudiantes inteligentes]. (Spanish equivalent of (8)) ‘I considered students intelligent.’

Given that it is the small clause predicate and not the matrix verb that is responsible for q -marking the small clause subject, the ungrammaticality of (8) and (9) would follow, under Belletti’s analysis, from the assumption that partitive case licensing requires a q -relation between licenser and licensee (and indeed, this requirement is implicit in the characterization of partitive case as ‘inherent’). The ﬁnal component of the jigsaw relates to the so-called ‘unergative–unaccusative alternations’ (Torrego 1989), as in (10) and (11) below: (10)

?Trabajaban presos. ‘Prisoners worked.’

(11)

En aquella fábrica trabajaban presos. ‘Prisoners worked in that factory.’

The verb trabajar is deemed to be unergative, whence the apparently problematic status of the bare subject in (10). However, sentence (11) is entirely unproblematic, despite the fact that trabajar again has a bare subject. This is accounted for in Torrego’s analysis under the assump-

Bare Subjects

73

tion that unergatives switch to the unaccusative class when used with a preverbal locative argument. Torrego did not explicitly motivate, in syntactic terms, the possibility of unergative-to-unaccusative switches. Conceivably, she may have reasoned that the locative argument (which she analysed as a ‘locative subject’) was q -marked in the high preverbal subject position (spec-IP or spec-TP) and thus could not co-occur with an unergative subject, given that the latter, under 1980s assumptions, was presumed to be q marked in that very position.

4.2 Unergatives can have bare postverbal subjects In some ways the claims discussed above according to which a bare nominal may contain an empty determiner or quantiﬁer are fairly traditional. For example in the structuralist tradition it was frequently observed that the plural morpheme was paradigmatically analogous to an overt determiner. And indeed, Longobardi (1994) makes use of a familiar distributional argument, observing (p. 619) that bare singular count nouns (which by hypothesis do not have an empty determiner) cannot be modiﬁed by a relative clause: (12)

*Gianni è medico che si cura davvero dei suoi pazienti. ‘Gianni is doctor who really cares for his patients.’

The fact that relativization is possible with plural and mass bare nouns, as well as with nouns that have an overt determiner, provides an empirical link between each of these types of item. Longobardi’s observation in fact underlies one of the main empirical arguments in favour of the so-called DP hypothesis (see Bernstein 2001, p. 543). On the other hand, there is no compelling reason to assume that some form of lexical government requirement would necessarily exclude bare nouns from (postverbal) unergative subject position. Indeed the usual assumption, pace Contreras (1986), has been that postverbal unergative subjects are governed by the verb, and hence are lexically governed. This follows from certain considerations pertaining to the so-called COMP-trace effect, that is, a prohibition on wh-extraction of the subject across an overt complementizer, as illustrated by (13): (13)

Who do you think will win/*that will win?

74

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Romance null subject languages are systematically different in this respect, as is shown by the Spanish example below: (14)

¿Quién crees que ganará? ‘Who do you think will win?’ (Literally: ‘Who do you think that will win?’)

Within the Government Binding framework, the COMP-trace effect was explained in terms of the ECP, with the preverbal subject position assumed not to be properly governed, hence not capable of being occupied by a wh-trace (an empty category). Rizzi’s (1982) explanation of the apparent immunity of null subject languages in this regard consisted in assuming that the wh-extracted subject in these languages was a postverbal subject, assumed to be governed by the verb (hence properly governed). Under that analysis there was no violation of the ECP and so the immunity in question was only apparent. The important point from the present perspective is that the ap parent COMP-trace immunity in null subject languages is blind to the unaccusative–unergative distinction. Thus if Rizzi’s explanation is adopted, all postverbal subjects are governed by the verb.6 A lexical or proper government requirement of the sort proposed by Longobardi would thus not rule out bare postverbal unergative subjects. Nor do such subjects appear to be excluded under Lois’s (1996) reconstruction of the lexical government requirement in terms of conﬁgurations in which an eventive q -role can be licensed. This follows from the fact that the unaccusative–unergative distinction clearly is not isomorphic with the distinction between stage-level predicates and individual-level predicates (on this point see Kratzer, 1995, p. 136). Accordingly, the ‘existential’ meaning that Lois (following Longobardi) takes to be intrinsic to bare subjects in Romance is not in itself incompatible with unergative verbs. As regards the claim that bare arguments have partitive case, it is not clear whether much signiﬁcance can be attached to this view, given the adverse ﬁndings in 2.3 concerning the motivation for the partitive case hypothesis in general. Moreover, Belletti’s use of necliticization as a diagnostic for partitive case (see example (7) above) is challenged by the fact that partitive clitics can realize unergative subjects, which by hypothesis never have partitive case (for example, see French (75) in 3.4). Finally, as regards the speciﬁc paradigm illustrated by example (7), note that Spanish can have an accusative clitic where Italian has ne:

Bare Subjects

(15)

75

Macarrones, los he comido hoy. (Garrido 1996, p. 315) ‘Macaroni, I’ve eaten some today.’

In fact, according to the example below from López Díaz (1996, p. 131), an accusative clitic is possible also in Italian (pace Belletti): (16)

–Ho trovato noccioline. (‘I have found peanuts.’) –Noccioline, le ho trovate anche io. (‘Peanuts, I too have found some.’)

Thus there are good reasons for rejecting the alleged link between bare nouns and partitive case. From that perspective, we can regard clitics like ne as being unspeciﬁed in terms of case, and the prohibition on bare nouns occurring as ECM subjects, illustrated by examples (8) and (9), can be attributed to the fact that the relevant ECM verbs are individual-level predicates in Carlson’s (1977) sense. Bare arguments of such predicates must have universal reference, which in principle is not possible with (unmodiﬁed) bare nouns in Romance (see 4.4 below). We ﬁnd, then, that there is no compelling a priori motivation for the assumption that postverbal unergative subjects cannot be bare. In addition it is quite clear, once all the descriptive facts are in, that unergative verbs do admit bare postverbal subjects. I give a selection of examples below. The unergative status of the verbs in question is indicated by a number of facts: (i) their translation equivalents in Italian and French are not assigned the ‘be’ perfect auxiliary (at least not in the senses illustrated below), (ii) their meanings fall within the unergative spectrum on Sorace’s Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (Sorace 2000), and (iii) they cannot appear in participial absolutes. (17)

Volarán ejecutivos al 50% de descuento. ‘Executives will ﬂy at a 50% discount.’

(18)

Han votado extranjeros por primera vez. ‘Foreigners have voted for the ﬁrst time.’

(19)

Han contribuido accionistas. ‘Shareholders contributed.’

(20)

A menudo juegan niños aquí. ‘Children frequently play here.’

(21)

Participaron alumnos. ‘Students participated.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(22)

Si trabajan niños, no deberán ejecutar tareas peligrosas. ‘If children work they must not carry out dangerous tasks.’

(23)

Correteaban niños sin parar. ‘Children ran around ceaselessly.’

(24)

Saltaban peces. ‘Fish were jumping.’

(25)

Soplaba viento. ‘Wind blew.’

(26)

Sonaban campanas. ‘Bells rang.’

(27)

Zumbaban abejas. ‘Bees buzzed.’

In fact not just unergatives can appear with bare subjects but also transitives: (28)

A veces me ayudan amigos. ‘Friends help me sometimes.’

We can also reject Torrego’s doctrine of unergative–unaccusative alternations. As observed in 4.1, there is no clear theoretical motivation for inferring that unergatives systematically switch to the unaccusative class in the way suggested by Torrego. As mentioned at that point, it is conceivable that Torrego assumed preverbal locative ‘subjects’ and unergative subjects to be in competition for the same q -position. However, even an argument based on that assumption would lose its force under the now widely accepted VP-internal subject analysis. Under the newer assumptions, an unergative subject is q -marked below the high position assigned to the preverbal locative, and so there would be no reason to suppose that the two competed for the same q -position. More important, perhaps, is the fact that, while it appears to be crucial to Torrego’s theory that the item that legitimizes an unergative–unaccusative switch is (i) a locative, (ii) preverbal and (iii) overt (see Torrego 1989, pp. 262–4), the item in question may in reality be a non-locative, or postverbal or non-overt (within the relevant clause):

Bare Subjects

(29)

A veces llaman alumnos. ‘Sometime students call.’

(30)

Escriben amigos de vez en cuando. ‘Friends write from time to time.’

(31)

Colaboraron expertos en la búsqueda de una solución. ‘Experts collaborated in the search for a solution.’

(32)

Trabajan niños en todas sus fábricas. ‘Children work in all their factories.’

(33)

Este parque me gusta: juegan niños. (Garrido 1996, p. 305) ‘I like this park. Children play (here).’

77

In other words, there is nothing particularly special about overt preverbal locatives. In fact, Torrego’s preverbal locatives are simply one instance of a general phenomenon, affecting unergatives and unaccusatives alike, whereby a complex consisting of a verb plus a bare subject always requires some form of contextualization, which may or may not be supplied by an item that is overt within the clause containing the complex. This contextualization requirement is discussed in more detail in 4.3.3.5 below. For the moment, it sufﬁces to note that, in the absence of any compelling theoretical argument supporting the doctrine of unergative–unaccusative switches, there seems no obvious reason why examples such as those below (all from Torrego 1989) should not be treated as yet more illustrations of the fact that bare subject capability does not diagnose unaccusativity: (34)

Aquí han dormido animales. ‘Animals have slept here.’

(35)

En esta pista aterrizan helicópteros. ‘Helicopters land on this runway.’

(36)

En este árbol anidan cigueñas. ‘Storks nest in this tree.’

Thus the occurrence of bare subjects with unergatives, with or without overt preverbal locatives, is a routine matter. It is simply at variance with the facts to claim otherwise. Some suggestions are given in 4.3.3.5 and note 18 below as to why a correlation should have

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

been so readily supposed between bare subject capability and unaccusativity.

4.3 Constraints on bare subject distribution The rest of this chapter will be primarily concerned with accounting in semantico-pragmatic terms for the types of context in which bare subjects occur. This analysis is based primarily on an examination of the contrast between complexes consisting of a verb plus a bare noun and complexes consisting of a verb plus an overtly quantiﬁed noun. It will be shown that this contrast provides the key to the contextual distribution of the former. The issue of why bare subjects are normally required to be postverbal is then addressed in 4.5. 4.3.1 The dispositional exemplar The starting point for the analysis is supplied by the contrast between disposition sentences such as (37) below, understood as meaning that apple-eating is one of the things Jorge does as part of his disposition, and event-describing sentences such as (38): (37)

Jorge come manzanas. ‘Jorge eats apples.’

(38)

Jorge comió unas manzanas. ‘Jorge ate some apples.’

The point here is that manzanas in (37) cannot be viewed as determining individual apples in the way that unas manzanas does in (38), because come in (37) is habitual, that is, the action denoted by the verb occurs habitually. The distinction in question becomes obvious if the two sentences are analysed in terms of their quantiﬁcational structure. Note ﬁrst of all that the meaning of (38) can be expressed in terms of the quantiﬁcational schema shown below, where the letter ‘F’ means manzana, ‘G’ means comió and a = Jorge: (39)

∃x(Fx & Gax)7

However, if we attempt an analogous treatment of (37), this time interpreting ‘G’ in (39) as habitual come, the resulting analysis presents Jorge as habitually eating the same apple or apples, which quite clearly is not what (37) does.

Bare Subjects

79

Signiﬁcantly, from the present perspective, the dispositional type of meaning illustrated by (37) is available only with a bare noun. Thus (40) below, with unas manzanas, cannot be used to say what (37) says. In fact, if (40) has any viability, it would be in a ‘historic present’ type of context, for example, in a running commentary on a series of actions carried out by Jorge, or as a caption to a photograph of Jorge eating some apples: 8 (40)

Jorge come unas manzanas. ‘Jorge eats some apples.’

In the foregoing examples, the bare noun in question functioned as a direct object. However, the facts are wholly analogous if the bare noun is a subject. Thus consider the paradigm represented by (41) to (43) below, where I assume that the locative aquí ‘here’ has an equivalent logical role to the proper name Jorge in the previous examples: (41)

Por aquí pasan ciclistas. ‘Cyclists come through here.’

(42)

Por aquí pasaron unos ciclistas. ‘Some cyclists came through here.’

(43)

Por aquí pasan unos ciclistas. ‘Some cyclists come through here.’

Sentence (42) corresponds to quantiﬁcational schema (39), reproduced below, with Fs this time understood as being cyclists, a as the place designated by aquí, and Gs as ordered pairs consisting of a place and an individual that passed through it: (39)

∃x(Fx & Gax)

On the other hand, sentence (41) cannot receive an analogous analysis, given that pasan is habitual and so, were (41) to be analysed as in schema (39), each of the ordered pairs in the extension of the ‘G’ predicate would consist in a place and an individual that habitually passes through it. Analysed in that way, sentence (41) would say that determinate cyclists habitually pass through the place designated by aquí, whereas what it really says is simply that the place in question is frequented by cyclists.

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Notice also that this ‘frequented by cyclists’ meaning is available only with a bare noun as the subject of pasar. Thus (43), with unos ciclistas, is deviant if it is understood as an attempt to say what (41) says. Alternatively, it might be interpreted as making reference to determinate cyclists, in which case it would correspond to schema (39) under the interpretation speciﬁed in the preceding paragraph for the erroneous analysis of (41). We see, then, that the kind of quantiﬁcational reading represented by schema (39) is systematically unavailable with bare objects or subjects. Conversely, the non-quantiﬁcational reading illustrated by (37) and (41) is only available with bare objects or subjects, in Spanish at least. One way of dealing with the ﬁrst point is to assume that sequences consisting in a verb plus a bare object or subject can be logically unstructured. Quine (1960, pp. 134, 175), for example, adopted that approach, referring to sequences such as eats mice in Tabby eats mice as ‘dispositional combinations’ and stating that ‘the internal structure of these recalcitrant compounds is, relative to canonical notation, just not structure’. In other words, eats mice was to be analysed as corresponding to a single schematic letter (representing a simple monadic term or ‘predicate’) and the logical structure of the containing sentence Tabby eats mice then reduced to the basic predicational schema ‘Fa’, where the letter ‘F’ means eats mice and a = Tabby. Under this analysis, the mice position is sealed within a logically simple monadic term and is thus rendered inaccessible to quantiﬁcation from outside. Possibly, the need for the ‘unstructured’ approach favoured by Quine might be obviated by treating verbs as generally having a tacit time argument.9 However, for present purposes Quine’s basic insight can be adopted unamended. The important point is that complexes consisting of a verb plus a (non-generic) bare object or subject are not analysable in terms of the simple schema illustrated by (39). In this respect they differ from otherwise similar complexes involving overtly quantiﬁed nouns. In Spanish at least, these systematically are analysable in terms of such schemata.10 4.3.2 Apparently referential bare nouns Before looking at the relevance of the foregoing distinction in terms of determining the distribution of bare nouns, it is important to rule out a number of considerations that at ﬁrst glance appear to blur this distinction. First of all, we have the apparent possibility of pronominal crossreference into a verb + bare noun sequence, as in (44) below:

Bare Subjects

(44)

81

Jorge repara coches y Pedro los vende. ‘Jorge repairs cars and Pedro sells them.’

If, in line with the view taken in 4.3.1, the position occupied by the bare noun coches in the above sentence is inaccessible to quantiﬁcation (at least in the manner envisaged in schema (39)), it might seem surprising that coches can serve as the antecedent for clitic los. This would follow from the assumption that los in (44) is analogous to los in (45) below: (45)

Jorge reparó unos coches y Pedro los vendió. ‘Jorge repaired some cars and Pedro sold them.’

Here the clitic los serves merely to introduce an additional occurrence of a bound variable. This can be seen from consideration of the corresponding quantiﬁcational schema, which is as in (46) below, assuming that a = Jorge, b = Pedro and that ‘F’ means coche, ‘G’ means reparó and ‘H’ means vendió: (46)

∃x(Fx & Gax & Hbx)

Thus if clitic los in (44) is to be analysed in a parallel fashion to los in (45), it cannot be that the ﬁrst conjunct in (44) is not a quantiﬁcation, as claimed here. However, a moment’s reﬂection sufﬁces to reveal that the two occurrences of los are rather different. As just noted, in sentence (45) there is an irreducible link between the phrase unos coches and the clitic los, whereby the latter is in effect an extension of the referential apparatus of the former. Sentence (44), on the other hand, essentially makes two unrelated assertions, viz. that Jorge repairs cars and that Pedro sells cars. Accordingly, no cross-referential relation arises that would be comparable to that which exists between los and unos coches in (45), and the bound variable type of analysis enshrined in schema (46) simply does not apply. Rather, the sequence los vende in (44) is simply the pronominal counterpart to the logically unstructured complex vende coches ‘sells cars’ and receives an identical analysis. Matters are complicated, however, if some connecting word such as luego ‘then’ is introduced into (44), because in that case the los of the second conjunct ceases to be a mere proxy:

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(47)

Jorge repara coches y luego Pedro los vende. ‘Jorge repairs cars and then Pedro sells them.’

Here the second conjunct amounts in effect to Pedro vende los coches que Jorge repara ‘Pedro sells the cars that Jorge repairs’. Nevertheless, as with (44), no genuine cross-reference into repara coches need be assumed. The ﬁrst conjunct pragmatically implicates the existence of certain cars, and it is to these cars that los in the second conjunct refers. Roughly speaking, then, sentence (47) has the logical structure shown below, where the letter ‘p’ stands for the disposition sentence Jorge repara coches, Fs are cars repaired by Jorge and Gs are cars sold by Pedro: (48)

p & ∀x(Fx → Gx)

Notice that the proposed analysis does not require any of the terms within the ﬁrst conjunct of sentence (47) to be exposed for crossreferential purposes, whence the possibility of representing that ﬁrst conjunct by the unanalysed sentence letter ‘p’ in schema (48). In other words, as a consequence of the part played by pragmatics in determining the overall meaning of sentence (47), we can simultaneously treat the second conjunct as a universal quantiﬁcation about cars repaired by Jorge and maintain that no direct referential connection exists between that second conjunct and the bare noun coches in the ﬁrst conjunct.11 Therefore, scrutiny of the apparently adverse cases (44) and (47) indicates that the possibility of a pronoun cross-referring into a verb + bare noun complex is apparent rather than real. The Quinean analysis adopted in 4.3.1 is thus undamaged by such cases. An additional apparently adverse case is represented by eventdescribing sentences that involve bare nouns. In his famous paper on bare plurals, Carlson raises precisely this issue (1977, p. 429), in connection with the two English sentences shown below: (49)

Arlene found squirrels in her attic.

(50)

Arlene found some squirrels in her attic.

According to Carlson, in sentences like (49) ‘it seems that a group really is, in some sense, being set up and referred to. Otherwise, we would simply have no understanding of why [(50)] gives us such a nice para-

Bare Subjects

83

phrase.’ From the present perspective, this observation might be viewed as implying that both cases correspond to the type of schema shown in (39), reproduced below, assuming a = Arlene, Fs are squirrels and Gs are ordered pairs consisting of a person and a thing found by that person in Arlene’s attic: (39)

∃x(Fx & Gax)

However, if both sentences (49) and (50) do correspond to schema (39), then (non-generic) bare nouns are ambiguous, as between a reading that resists an analysis of the kind implied in (39) and an analysis that does not. Such a state of affairs is perfectly possible, but other data suggest that there is no such ambiguity. To see this, consider what happens when we extract the ‘sentence radical’ (that is, the untensed verb together with its arguments) from each of (49) and (50), and then embed it as the complement of a verb that is capable of creating a referentially opaque context, such as want: (51)

Arlene wanted to ﬁnd squirrels in her attic.

(52)

Arlene wanted to ﬁnd some squirrels in her attic.

Following the embedding operation, the radicals Arlene ﬁnd squirrels in her attic and Arlene ﬁnd some squirrels in her attic can be seen to diverge rather sharply. Thus while (52) can be read in such a way that schema (39) is still applicable, with Gs now interpreted as ordered pairs consisting of a person and a thing sought by that person in Arlene’s attic, no equivalent reading is available for (51), given that the formulation wanted to ﬁnd squirrels can never be understood as entailing that the subject was after determinate squirrels (although it does not actually rule out such a state of affairs). Accordingly, under the Quinean type of analysis, the wanted to ﬁnd squirrels part of (51) has no quantiﬁcational structure at all.12 Thus the differing results obtained by embedding the radicals Arlene ﬁnd squirrels in her attic and Arlene ﬁnd some squirrels in her attic in a potentially opaque construction indicate that only the second of these radicals is associated with the type of quantiﬁcational structure represented by schema (39). The apparent possibility of analysing sentences such as (49) in terms of that structure must therefore be attributed to pragmatic inference. Presumably, we read the kind of quantiﬁcational structure represented by schema (39) into sentence (49) because it is

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

not in fact possible for (49) to be true without a corresponding sentence instantiating (39) also being true.13 I therefore conclude this section by re-afﬁrming the general logical dichotomy drawn here between complexes consisting of a verb plus a bare noun and those consisting of a verb plus an overtly quantiﬁed noun. Apparently adverse cases purporting to show that (non-generic) bare nouns have quantiﬁcational import turn out not to tell against the Quinean type of analysis adopted here.14 4.3.3 Bare subjects and the importance of context We can now posit (for Spanish) the general principle that bare nouns will be preferred to overtly quantiﬁed nouns in all and only those contexts in which the quantiﬁcational meaning associated with the latter would create a pragmatic anomaly or would otherwise be at variance with the intended assertion.15 The principle applies to bare nouns in general but, given the focus in this chapter on bare subjects, only its application to the latter is considered here. 4.3.3.1 Time phrases One type of context in which the operation of the foregoing principle has rather clearcut effects is that in which the verb–subject complex co-occurs with a time phrase implying quantiﬁcation, as in the two sentences below: (53)

De ese agujero estuvieron saliendo hormigas durante tres horas. ‘Ants were coming out of that hole for three hours.’

(54)

??De ese agujero estuvieron saliendo unas hormigas durante tres horas. ‘Some ants were coming out of that hole for three hours.’

If we make the simplifying assumption that durante tres horas expresses universal quantiﬁcation, the basic quantiﬁcational structure of (53) can be represented as in schema (55) below, where a is the hole in question, Fs are times within a certain three-hour period, and Gs are ordered pairs consisting of a location and a time at which ants were exiting it: (55)

∀x(Fx → Gax)

Bare Subjects

85

The deviancy of sentence (54) can then be traced to the fact that unos/ unas represents the overt expression of a quantiﬁer that calls for the widest possible scope. Accordingly, were unas hormigas to receive its customary analysis, the quantiﬁcational structure of sentence (54) would be as in schema (56) below, where a is the hole in question, Fs are ants, Gs are times within a certain three-hour period and Hs are ordered triples consisting of a location, an individual that exited it and the time at which that exit was made: (56)

∃x∀y[Fx & (Gy → Haxy)]

Under the interpretation just speciﬁed, schema (56) describes a pragmatically anomalous situation, in which individual ants were perpetually coming out of the hole. In other words, it is not possible for unas hormigas to occur with its customary quantiﬁcational force in the ‘. . .’ position within De ese agujero estuvieron saliendo . . . durante tres horas without a pragmatic anomaly arising. To this circumstance can be attributed the deviancy of (54), and hence the requirement for a bare subject, as in (53).16 Notice that there is no general prohibition against indeﬁnitely determined subjects appearing in the type of frame just illustrated. For example, (57) below is analogous to (54) and yet no deviancy arises: (57)

En esta casa estuvieron viviendo unos terroristas durante más de un año. ‘In this house some terrorists were living for more than a year.’

Here, given the nature of the situation described, the quantiﬁcational structure can plausibly be as in schema (56), with a understood as the house in question, Fs as terrorists, Gs as times within a certain period that exceeds one year and Hs as ordered triples consisting of a dwelling, a dweller and a time at which the latter occupied the former.17 Under this analysis, sentence (57) asserts that one or more individual terrorists occupied the house throughout the relevant time period, which is a perfectly plausible state of affairs. Thus the deviancy of a case such as (54) – and with it the appropriateness of (53) – does appear to follow from circumstances that are speciﬁc to the particular type of situation described. A large number of comparable cases can then receive analogous explanations, modulo

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

certain details pertaining to the associated quantiﬁcational schemata. A few examples are given below:18 (58a)

Surgieron problemas desde el primer momento. ‘Problems arose from the very beginning.’

(58b)

??Surgieron unos problemas desde el primer momento. ‘Some problems arose from the very beginning.’

(59a)

Dimitían ministros todas las semanas. ‘Ministers were resigning every week.’

(59b)

??Dimitían unos ministros todas las semanas. ‘Some ministers were resigning every week.’

(60a)

Llegan paquetes continuamente. ‘Parcels arrive continually.’

(60b)

??Llegan unos paquetes continuamente. ‘Some parcels arrive continually.’

4.3.3.2 Locatives An analogous situation exists in respect of sentences involving locative phrases, as is illustrated by the paradigm below: (61)

Viven lobos en todas las provincias del norte. ‘Wolves live in all of the northern provinces.’

(62)

??Viven unos lobos en todas las provincias del norte. ‘Some wolves live in all of the northern provinces.’

From the logical point of view, sentence (61) has the structure of a standard Aristotelian universal afﬁrmative (‘All Fs are Gs’), and so can be represented by the schema below, with Fs understood as northern provinces and Gs as places inhabited by wolves: (63)

∀x(Fx → Gx)

Sentence (62), on the other hand, involves an additional quantiﬁer, because of the natural quantiﬁcational import of unos lobos. Moreover, as noted earlier in connection with example (54), this quantiﬁer appears to require the maximum possible scope. Accordingly, the schema corresponding to (62) is as in (64) below, with Fs understood as wolves,

Bare Subjects

87

Gs as northern provinces and Hs as ordered pairs of places and individuals that inhabit them: (64)

∃x∀y[Fx & (Gy → Hyx)]

Under the interpretations just speciﬁed, schema (63) represents a perfectly plausible assertion, which may or may not be true, whereas (64) describes a pragmatically anomalous situation, viz. one in which one or more individual wolves live in all of the northern provinces. From this contrast arise the divergent acceptability statuses of the corresponding sentences (61) and (62), and by extension the necessity for the subject to be bare in (61). Notice that sentences that are syntactically analogous to (62) will not be similarly deviant if the type of pragmatic anomaly just described does not arise. For example, sentence (65) is syntactically identical to (62) in the relevant respects, and yet it is entirely acceptable: (65)

Viven unos lobos en aquel bosque.19 ‘Some wolves live in that forest.’

The reason for the unproblematic status of (65) is that unos lobos can receive its customary quantiﬁcational analysis without the containing sentence thereby coming to have a meaning that is pragmatically deviant. Thus sentence (65) is unproblematically assigned the earlier schema (39), reproduced below, with a understood as the forest in question, Fs as wolves, and Gs as ordered pairs of places and individuals that live in them: (39)

∃x(Fx & Gax)

4.3.3.3 Other quantiﬁcational contexts The type of contrast illustrated in 4.3.3.1 and 4.3.3.2 can essentially be reproduced whenever a phrase implying quantiﬁcation is present in addition to the verb–subject complex. For example, the en-phrase in the two sentences below is neither a locative nor a time phrase, and yet the now familiar acceptability contrast is still apparent: (66)

Participan niños en muchas guerras africanas. ‘Children participate in many African wars.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(67)

??Participan unos niños en muchas guerras africanas. ‘Some children participate in many African wars.’

Sentence (66) makes a statement about many African wars, viz. that they involve children, whereas (67) says something about one or more individual children, viz. that they are involved in many African wars. The latter assertion is pragmatically deviant, whence the acceptability differential between (66) and (67). 4.3.3.4 Redundant quantiﬁcation A slightly more complex train of argumentation is required to explain contrasts such as the following: (68)

Trabajaron esclavos en la construcción del viaducto. ‘Slaves worked on the construction of the viaduct.’

(69)

?Trabajaron unos esclavos en la construcción del viaducto.20 ‘Some slaves worked on the construction of the viaduct.’

The problem here is that the fundamental dichotomy identiﬁed so far, viz. between Quine-style unstructured complexes and complexes that are transparent to quantiﬁcation, provides no obvious basis for an acceptability contrast between (68) and (69). To see this, consider the logical schemata that can be assigned to the two sentences. If we assume, as before, that a complex consisting of a verb plus a bare subject has no quantiﬁcational structure, then (68) can be analysed as corresponding to the simple predicational schema ‘Fa’, where a is the viaduct and Fs are items on the construction of which slaves worked. Sentence (69), on the other hand, assuming that unos introduces a quantiﬁcational dimension, is an instance of the earlier schema (39), reproduced below, with Fs now understood as slaves and Gs as ordered pairs consisting in a built item and an individual that worked on its construction: (39)

∃x(Fx & Gax)

Now it is immediately apparent that, under the analyses just sketched, both (68) and (69) describe situations that are pragmatically plausible and that do justice to the meaning the speaking can be assumed to be intending to convey. Accordingly, both should be equally acceptable.

Bare Subjects

89

The solution to the apparent paradox appears be related to the purpose to which a sentence with the lexical content exhibited by (68) and (69) would be put. Presumably, this content is most naturally used in a descriptive historical assertion about the viaduct in question, with no suggestion of any reference to speciﬁc slaves. Analysed as having the structure ‘Fa’, with the interpretation speciﬁed above, (68) is ideally suited to this task. In theory, sentence (69), analysed as in schema (39), should also be suited to this task. However, for some reason, (69) carries the pragmatic implicature that certain slaves (perhaps some that the speaker has in mind) worked on the viaduct’s construction, and it is this implicature that appears to be the source of the associated deviancy.21 The question, then, is why this ‘speciﬁcity’ implicature arises in the case of (69), or, more generally, in the case where the verb– subject complex has quantiﬁcational structure. Plausibly, this implicature is analogous to the implicature that gives rise to Donnellan’s (1966) ‘referential’ use of a description. Donnellan argued that a sentence such as Smith’s murderer is insane could either be used to say something about ‘whoever or whatever is the so-and-so’ (p. 285), in this case the murderer of Smith (whoever that may be), or to say something about some determinate individual, for example, the particular individual who has been found guilty of Smith’s murder. In the ﬁrst case, the deﬁnite description (that is, Smith’s murderer) was said to be ‘attributive’ and in the second ‘referential’ (in specialized senses of these terms). Kripke (1977) later argued that the same distinction – understood as a pragmatic ambiguity – applied to uniquely quantiﬁed indeﬁnite descriptions used as paraphrases for deﬁ nite descriptions, as implied in Russell’s (1905) theory of deﬁnite descriptions. In fact, if Kripke is correct, there is no obvious reason why his conclusion should not be generalized to all indeﬁ nite descriptions, so that overtly quantiﬁed noun phrases in general will be expected to exhibit Donnellan’s ambiguity (understood as a pragmatic ambiguity). From that perspective, unos esclavos in (69) is capable of being interpreted in a wholly general fashion (‘attributively’) or as involving reference to certain slaves (‘referentially’). These remarks explain why the ‘speciﬁcity’ implicature alluded to earlier is possible with (69), but they do not identify what actually causes this implicature to be triggered in this particular case. In fact, the causality is likely to reﬂect the operation of some principle such as Grice’s maxim of Quantity, which enjoins speakers not to say more than is necessary (see Grice 1975). Given the availability of the logically

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

simpler type of construction illustrated by (68), the use of the construction illustrated by (69) to achieve essentially the same effect can be seen as involving an element of redundancy, that is, as saying more than is strictly necessary. This redundancy, given the way in which conversational implicatures feed off violations of the Gricean maxims, presumably triggers an implicature to the effect that the speaker in (69) intends unos esclavos to have more than a purely general import. Now, if we extrapolate from Donnellan’s and Kripke’s discussions of the attributive–referential distinction, the purely general reading of unos esclavos would in fact correspond to the attributive use. Accordingly, an implicature to the effect that unos esclavos is intended to have more than a purely general import is likely to trigger the referential reading (implying some degree of speciﬁcity). We see, then, that there is indeed a basis for the acceptability contrast between (68) and (69). However, because the contrast is essentially of a pragmatic nature, it is immune to any characterization articulated purely in terms of the unstructured–quantiﬁcational dichotomy identiﬁed earlier. Without going into the precise details of the associated analyses, contrasts such as the following appear to be analogous to that identiﬁed here between (68) and (69): 22 (70a)

Participaron policías en la huelga. ‘Policemen participated in the strike.’

(70b)

?Participaron unos policías en la huelga. ‘Some policemen participated in the strike.’

(71a)

Votaron extranjeros en la elección de 1824. ‘Foreigners voted in the 1824 election.’

(71b)

?Votaron unos extranjeros en la elección de 1824. ‘Some foreigners voted in the 1824 election.’

4.3.3.5 The need for an argument As has become apparent from the basic analytical paradigm proposed here, a complex consisting in a verb and a (non-generic) bare noun corresponds to a monadic predicate, represented in a logical schema by a single capital letter. Now in order to be a component of a complete assertion, a predicate must have an argument, which may be an item with independent reference (such as a proper name or a deﬁnite description) or a bound variable. In other words, put schematically, ‘F’ is not

Bare Subjects

91

a complete assertion, whereas ‘Fa’ and ‘ϕx(Fx)’ (where ϕ is any quantiﬁer) are. This requirement for an argument presumably stems from the basic principle that all assertion is ultimately categorical in the Aristotelian sense (pace Brentano 1973) and thus requires a minimum of two terms from the logical point of view. In the case in which the bare noun is the verb’s object, the argument requirement is naturally satisﬁed by the subject, as in the earlier example (37), reproduced below, or in the universal quantiﬁcation (72): (37)

Jorge come manzanas. ‘Jorge eats apples.’

(72)

Todos los niños comen manzanas. ‘All the children eat apples.’

Here we have the monadic predicate come(n) manzanas, which takes as its argument the proper name Jorge in (37) and a variable bound by the quantiﬁcational apparatus associated with todos los niños in (72). In both cases, the grammatical subject is the locus of the predicate’s argument. The above strategy is obviously not available, however, when the subject itself is the bare noun that forms a single predicate with its verb. In this case, the argument of the predicate must be supplied by some item other than the grammatical subject.23 Sections 4.3.3.1 to 4.3.3.4 above abound with examples in which the argument is supplied by phrases that refer to times, places or events. 24 An additional possibility is illustrated by (73) below, where the indirect object (a) Pedro provides the required argument: (73)

A Pedro le falta conﬁanza. ‘Pedro lacks conﬁdence.’

Finally, there is the case in which the argument is not mentioned at all in the clause that contains the bare noun, but either is supplied by the previous discourse or else must be inferred from the extra-linguistic context. The earlier example (33), reproduced below, illustrates the ﬁrst possibility, while (74) to (76) exemplify the second: (33)

Este parque me gusta: juegan niños. (Garrido 1996, p. 305) ‘I like this park. Children play (here).’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(74)

Están entrando hormigas. ‘Ants are coming in.’

(75)

Sale agua. ‘Water is leaking out.’

(76)

Faltan cuchillos. ‘There aren’t enough knives.’

We can now identify a second principle governing the distribution of bare subjects, namely that the verb–subject complexes that contain them must occur in contexts in which an appropriate argument is forthcoming. From this principle results the deviancy of uncontextualized verb + bare subject complexes, highlighted by Torrego (1989) for unergative verbs but in reality apparent also with unaccusatives. Notice, then, that the verb + bare subject complexes in the (a) sentences below are rendered deviant when deprived, in the associated (b) sentences, of a context that determines a suitable argument: (77a)

Por aquí pasan trenes. ‘Trains pass through here.’

(77b)

?Pasan trenes. ‘Trains pass through.’

(78a)

A veces intervienen profesores. ‘Sometimes teachers intervene.’

(78b)

?Intervienen profesores. ‘Teachers intervene.’25

(79a)

Ha desconectado su teléfono. Llamaban alumnos. ‘He’s disconnected his phone. Students were calling.’

(79b)

?Llamaban alumnos. ‘Students were calling.’

The deviancy of the above (b) sentences parallels that which would attach to a null subject sentence such as Está roto ‘(It) is broken’ if it were uttered in a context in which the identity of the subject could not be determined. In both types of case we have a predicate but no identiﬁable argument, hence no assertion is made to which a truth value could be assigned. Now while the need for verb + bare subject complexes to be contextualized applies regardless of whether the verb is unaccusative or uner-

Bare Subjects

93

gative, it may sometimes seem to apply less in the former case than in the latter, and this circumstance may explain why a correlation has so often been assumed to exist between bare subject compatibility and unaccusativity (see also note 18 for an additional contributory factor). As a ﬁrst step towards seeing how this appearance of an asymmetry can arise, a contrast can be drawn between the argument structure associated with agentive activity terms (prototypical unergative verbs) and that associated with verbs of directed motion (prototypical unaccusatives). Outside of the marked case in which the subject is bare, the use of an agentive activity term does not generally require the determination of any argument other than the subject and so we are not in any particular way attuned to such a possibility. In contrast, verbs of directed motion always involve a locative argument, which may be explicit or implicit. In the latter case, we tacitly assume that the argument can be recovered from the context. For example, if we hear Pedro entró ‘Pedro entered’, we are immediately attuned to the need for there to be a place that Pedro entered, whereas if we hear Pedro cantó ‘Pedro sang’ we are not immediately attuned to the need for there to be a place that Pedro sang in. This in effect means that we envisage an appropriate non-subject argument more readily for directed motion verbs than we do for agentive activity verbs. This latter circumstance, in the context of verb + bare subject complexes, can result in an uneven appreciation of the deviancies resulting from the non-satisfaction of the argument requirement alluded to at the beginning of this section. For example, while both (80) and (81) below are deviant if uttered completely out of context, the natural assumption that a verb like ir ‘go’ must have a locative argument is likely to ensure that (80) will elicit a more favourable acceptability judgment than (81) if the two sentences are put to a linguistic informant: (80)

(?)Iban jóvenes. ‘Young people used to go.’

(81)

?Trabajaron esclavos. ‘Slaves worked.’

However, if the argument requirement is explicitly satisﬁed, as in (82) and the earlier example (68), reproduced below, the deviancy in both cases disappears completely:

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(82)

A aquel bar iban jóvenes. ‘Young people used to go to that bar.’

(68)

Trabajaron esclavos en la construcción del viaducto. ‘Slaves worked on the construction of the viaduct.’

The ameliorating factor attaching to verbs of directed motion has a ‘built-in’ character in sentences in which the locative argument is deictically determined, as in the earlier sentences (74) and (75), reproduced below: (74)

Están entrando hormigas. ‘Ants are coming in.’

(75)

Sale agua. ‘Water is leaking out.’

Here it is immediately assumed that the context of the speech event determines an appropriate argument, and sentences (74) and (75) thus escape deviancy completely. Other prominent unaccusatives are similar to the directed motion verbs, in that they too are readily associated with non-subject arguments. For example, the easy availability of a contextually-determined argument for faltar ‘lack’ was already hinted at in connection with sentence (76), reproduced below: (76)

Faltan cuchillos. (Implictly: en la mesa, en esta casa, etc.) 26 ‘There aren’t enough knives.’ (‘on the table’, ‘in this house’ etc.)

And morir ‘die’ is similar, although in the example below the implicit argument is not determined deictically, and so (83) has the attenuated deviancy that characterizes sentences such as (80): (83)

(?)Murieron turistas. (Implicitly: en la explosión, en el terremoto etc.) ‘Tourists died.’ (‘in the explosion’, ‘in the earthquake’, etc.)

What the foregoing remarks demonstrate is that certain types of unaccusatives ﬂaunt a non-subject argument in ways that unergatives typically do not. However, while this is liable in many cases to secure better acceptability judgments for unaccusatives than for unergatives

Bare Subjects

95

when they occur in uncontextualized verb + bare subject complexes, it would be wrong to infer that bare subject capability systematically discriminates between unaccusatives and unergatives. For there are plenty of unaccusative verbs whose use with a bare subject out of context is not ‘rescued’ in this way. Such is the case, for example, of crecer ‘grow’ and nacer ‘be born’: (84)

?Crecen/Crecían ﬂores. ‘Flowers grow/were growing.’

(85)

?Nacen/Nacieron niños. ‘Children are/were born.’

Conversely, certain unergatives that implicitly involve reference to an event, a place or some other type of abstract object may elicit positive acceptability assessments even when presented out of context: (86)

(?)Participaron alumnos. ‘Students took part.’

(87)

(?)Contribuyeron políticos. ‘Politicians contributed.’

4.4 Aspectually stative constructions An important contrast arises in connection with aspectually stative predicates. This is instantiated by experiencer–stimulus verbs (examples (88) and (89) below) and by copula–adjective constructions (examples (90) and (91) ): (88)

Me gustan las ostras. (But not *Me gustan ostras.) ‘I like oysters.’

(89)

Me apetecen ostras. ‘I fancy oysters.’

(90)

Son peligrosas las tormentas. (But not *Son peligrosas tormentas.) ‘Storms are dangerous.’

(91)

Son inminentes tormentas. ‘Storms are imminent.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

As regards the experiencer–stimulus case, it is interesting to note that Contreras (1986) claimed that gustar was not unaccusative and that this was why it could not take a bare subject. Quite apart from any other considerations, this would be a classic instance of an ‘unaccusative mismatch’, given that the corresponding verb in Italian, viz. piacere, selects perfect auxiliary essere (and so is assumed to be unaccusative). Moreover, Perlmutter (1989) devoted several pages to showing how the unaccusative hypothesis accounts for the behaviour of the type of construction exempliﬁed by piacere and gustar (which he termed ‘inversion’). In fact, the real reason for the contrast between (88) and (89), as well as for the contrast between (90) and (91), is connected to the old philosophical distinction between properties and states. Following Carlson (1977, p. 448), this distinction is characterized in the linguistic literature in terms of a contrast between predicates that apply to individuals and predicates that apply to ‘stages’ or ‘realizations’ of individuals. Now, as noted by Carlson, what have come to be known as ‘individual-level’ predicates select a universal or kind-designating interpretation of a bare subject, whereas ‘stage-level’ predicates select a nonuniversal interpretation: (92)

Ravens are black. (Individual-level predicate.)

(93)

Gold is yellow. (Individual-level predicate.)

(94)

Men are shouting. (Stage-level predicate.)

(95)

Water is leaking from the cistern. (Stage-level predicate.)

The universal meaning attaching to the bare subjects ravens and gold in (92) and (93) is demonstrated by the fact that they do not support substitutions by hyperonyms (that is, nouns of which they are hyponyms) and so are analogous to the corresponding universally quantiﬁed subjects all ravens and all gold. For example, bird is a hyperonym of raven and (92) does not logically imply Birds are black (just as All ravens are black does not logically imply All birds are black). Similarly, metal is a hyperonym of gold and (93) does not logically imply Metal is yellow (just as All gold is yellow does not logically imply All metal is yellow). In contrast, the non-universal bare subjects in (94) and (95) do support substitutions of this kind. Thus (94) logically implies People are shouting, for example, and (95) implies for example, Liquid is leaking from the cistern.

Bare Subjects

97

Now, as noted in many places, there are no universal bare nouns in Romance (at least not when the noun is unmodiﬁed).27 Instead the deﬁnite article is used, with contextually-independent reference: (96)

Los cuervos son negros. (But not *Cuervos son negros.) ‘Ravens are black.’

(97)

El oro es amarillo. (But not *Oro es amarillo.) ‘Gold is yellow.’

We can now account for the contrasts between (88) and (89) and between (90) and (91), all of which are reproduced below: (88)

Me gustan las ostras. ‘I like oysters.’

(89)

Me apetecen ostras. ‘I fancy oysters.’

(90)

Son peligrosas las tormentas. ‘Storms are dangerous.’

(91)

Son inminentes tormentas. ‘Storms are imminent.’

The sequences me gustan in (88) and son peligrosas in (90) are individual-level predicates whereas me apetecen in (89) and son inminentes in (91) are stage-level predicates. In principle, this is shown by the impossibility or possibility of substitutions by hyperonyms, although in fact the test is not applicable to the ostras position in (89), because this position must be non-extensional if occupied by a bare noun (given the meaning of apetecer) and the hyperonym-substitution test is only suitable for extensional contexts. Nevertheless, the test is applicable to the remaining bare subjects in the (88) to (91) paradigm. Accordingly, it can be observed, for example, that (88) does not logically imply (98) below and that (90) does not logically imply (99), while (91) does logically imply (100): (98)

Me gustan los mariscos. ‘I like seafood.’

(99)

Son peligrosos los fenómenos meteorológicos. ‘Meteorological phenomena are dangerous.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(100)

Son inminentes fenómenos meteorológicos. ‘Meteorological phenomena are imminent.’

As regards non-extensional (89), no formal test demonstrating a nonuniversal reading of ostras is available, but intuitively it seems clear that the noun is not universal in any meaningful sense. Thus neither me gustan nor son peligrosas could take a bare (unmodiﬁed) subject,28 given that such a phrase would have to be universal and, as just noted, bare (unmodiﬁed) universals are not an option in Romance. This leaves just two possibilities, viz. a universal deﬁnite subject, as in fact is illustrated in (88) and (90), or an overtly quantiﬁed non-universal subject, as in (101) and (102) below: 29 (101)

Me gustan algunos deportes. ‘I like some sports.’

(102)

Son peligrosas algunas tormentas. ‘Some storms are dangerous.’

No such problem arises in connection with me apetecen and son inminentes, however. Accordingly, these are compatible with the full semantic paradigm of subject phrases: 30 (103)

Me apetecen ostras/unas ostras/las ostras. ‘I fancy oysters/some oysters/the oysters.’

(104)

Son inminentes tormentas/unas tormentas/las tormentas. ‘Storms/some storms/the storms are imminent.’

The original examples (89) and (91) simply represent the bare subject option. Notice that, under this latter option, an argument must be determined for the logically unstructured verb–subject complex, in accordance with the view outlined in 4.3.3.5. With some stative predicates, it may be common for the argument to be determined by an implicit reference to the here and now. Such was the case of faltar in example (76), reproduced below: (76)

Faltan cuchillos. ‘There aren’t enough knives.’

Sentence (91) appears to be analogous in this respect, given that, as Garrido (1996, p. 331) observes in respect of a similar example, the

Bare Subjects

99

sentence has the effect of associating a particular situation with the time of speech. On the other hand, in (89) the required argument is overtly supplied by the clitic me, which identiﬁes an individual of whom apetecen ostras is predicated.31

4.5 Modiﬁed and conjoined bare subjects As was mentioned earlier (see note 2), it is widely recognized that modifying or conjoining a bare subject can override the usual restriction against bare subjects occurring in preverbal position (both examples from Lois 1996, p. 229): (105)

Serios problemas/*Problemas surgieron en la reunión. ‘Serious problems emerged during the meeting.’

(106)

Hombres y mujeres/*Hombres corrían por la calle. ‘Men and women ran through the street.’

Longobardi (2000, p. 693) assumes that the modiﬁcation of a bare preverbal subject somehow remedies the need for lexical government (see 4.1 above). However, he concedes that the phenomenon is ‘still unexplained’. The contention in the present work is that this apparently irresolvable mysteriousness results from an attempt to explain in syntactic terms a phenomenon that essentially pertains to informational content. Once this is recognized, not only does the mysteriousness of the modiﬁcation effect dissolve, but also we are free to assume a parallel explanation for modiﬁcation and conjoining. As a ﬁrst step towards understanding the role played by informational content, we can consider the type of contrast illustrated below: (107a)

En todas sus fábricas trabajan niños. ‘Children work in all of their factories.’

(107b)

?En todas sus fábricas trabajan hombres. ‘Men work in all of their factories.’

(108a)

Por aquí entran ladrones. ‘Burglars get in through here.’

(108b) ?Por aquí entran espectadores. ‘Spectators come in through here.’ The deviancy of the (b) sentences appears to stem from the fact that the nouns hombres and espectadores are insufﬁciently informative or

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

insufﬁciently ‘new’. As regards (107b), the assertion that men work in all the relevant factories is unsurprising. As regards (108b), if it is assumed that the speaker is talking about some building that is designed to receive spectators (for example, a stadium), the possibility of spectators entering is presupposed and, accordingly, the proper means of mentioning spectators would involve the use of the deﬁnite article, as in (109) below: (109)

Por aquí entran los espectadores./Los espectadores entran por aquí. ‘[The] Spectators come in through here.’

What the (107)/(108) paradigm suggests, then, is that bare subjects must be informationally rich. 32 We might then conjecture that a more exacting form of this requirement holds in the marked case in which the bare subject precedes the verb and also that modiﬁcation and conjoining represent alternative strategies for satisfying this requirement. Such a hypothesis is supported by two types of data. Firstly, the licensing effect of modiﬁcation and conjoining can actually be achieved by using a sufﬁciently surprising or informative unmodiﬁed noun. For example, while hombres in (110) requires a determiner, extraterrestres and terroristas in (111) do not: (110)

*Hombres/Unos hombres han secuestrado al presidente. ‘Men/Some men have kidnapped the president.’

(111)

Extraterrestres/Terroristas han secuestrado al presidente. ‘Aliens/Terrorists have kidnapped the president.’

Secondly, the strategy of modifying or conjoining can also be employed to render a postverbal bare subject acceptable in contexts in which the unmodiﬁed noun would be infelicitous: (112)

?Hablaron expertos. ‘Experts spoke.’

(113)

Hablaron expertos internacionales. ‘International experts spoke.’

(114)

Hablaron expertos y profesionales. ‘Experts and professionals spoke.’

Bare Subjects

101

What the above acceptability patterns suggest is that the modiﬁcation and conjoining data pertaining to preverbal subjects are part of a more general phenomenon, whereby bare subjects in general are more felicitous if they are informationally rich. As mentioned in note 32, the latter tendency appears to result from the way in which the accent is assigned, with bare subjects naturally being accented unless an item such as a clause-ﬁnal locative or time phrase is present to attract the accent away from the bare subject. The default accentuation of bare subjects presumably accounts for their strong tendency to occur in postverbal position, given that accented constituents in Romance naturally come after the verb. Preverbal bare subjects must also be accented, but this calls for a rather marked intonation contour, with an emphatic type of stress being placed on the bare subject. The more exacting form of the informational richness requirement that attaches to preverbal bare subjects can then be attributed to their rather extreme prosodic prominence.

4.6 Conclusion The bare subject diagnostic for unaccusativity has turned out to be somewhat wide of the mark, in that unergative examples are immediately forthcoming and, in addition, the relevant theoretical argument is easily rebutted. The basic principle invoked in this respect is the lexical/proper government requirement. Proper government, however, partly as a consequence of its success in motivating a principled account of the COMP-trace immunity in null-subject languages, is unable to separate unaccusative postverbal subjects from unergative postverbal subjects. This leaves us, assuming that partitive case is ruled out for the reasons given in 2.3, with no plausible means of deriving a theoretical linkage between bare subject capability and the kind of syntax envisaged under the ‘deep-object’ analysis of unaccusative subjects. In fact, the distribution of bare subjects appears to be largely conditioned by two semantico-pragmatic principles, viz. (i) that they are preferred to overtly quantiﬁed subjects when, and only when, the quantiﬁcational meaning associated with the latter is incompatible with the context or with the speaker’s target assertion, and (ii) that the verb–subject complexes that contain them must occur in contexts in which an appropriate non-subject argument can be determined. The second of these principles can then be identiﬁed as the prime cause of the prevailing assumption that bare subjects diagnose unaccusativity,

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

given that certain unaccusatives are more suggestive of a non-subject argument than are many unergatives, with the consequence that uncontextualized specimen sentences involving unaccusatives and bare subjects are more likely to elicit favourable acceptability judgments than are equivalent unergative formulations. However, the ﬁrst principal is probably implicated as well, because achievement verbs, which typically are classiﬁed as unaccusative (when intransitive), are in practice more likely than other types of verb to have occurrences that are incompatible with overtly quantiﬁed subjects. In certain cases, the stage-level versus individual-level distinction is also relevant, given that (i) there are no (unmodiﬁed) bare universal subjects in Romance and (ii) only stage-level predicates admit nonuniversal bare subjects. Accordingly, a general principle naturally arises whereby a bare (unmodiﬁed) noun cannot be the subject of an individual-level predicate. This phenomenon produces a rather striking ‘unaccusative mismatch’, given that Spanish gustar ‘please’ is conspicuously an individual-level predicate, but its Italian counterpart is assigned perfect auxiliary essere. The ﬁnal piece of the puzzle relates to the superﬁcially mysterious licensing effect of modifying or conjoining a bare preverbal subject. This is plausibly analysed as one instance of a generalized informational heaviness effect. Bare preverbal subjects appear always to bear quite a heavy stress. As a consequence, they are sensitive to a requirement that they deliver a certain level of informational content. The modiﬁcation or conjoining of a bare subject increases its informational content and can thus be viewed as a strategy for the satisfaction of the requirement in question. A similar outcome can be achieved through the selection of an informationally rich or otherwise surprising unmodiﬁed noun as the subject, as was illustrated in the text by the contrast between hombres ‘men’ and extraterrestres ‘aliens’ when considered as possible candidates for preverbal placement. In short, bare subject distribution is primarily a semantic/pragmatic affair, and attempts to reconstruct the relevant causalities in syntactic terms have been unsuccessful to date.

5 Perfect Auxiliary Selection

5.1 Introduction All the Romance languages have at some point in their history exhibited a split perfect auxiliary system, with transitive verbs generally taking a ‘have’ verb (normally descended from Latin habere) and some intransitives taking a ‘be’ verb (normally related to Latin esse). For convenience the letters ‘A’ and ‘E’ are used here to denote ‘have’ and ‘be’ verbs respectively. In the standardized languages of the Iberian Peninsula (Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and Galician), the E perfect auxiliary has been entirely displaced by the A auxiliary, although it survives in some Catalan and Aragonese dialects. On the other hand, the E auxiliary survives in standard French and is highly productive in standard Italian.1 In both of these languages E is assigned uniformly to all reﬂexives (including middle and impersonal reﬂexive constructions). As regards non-reﬂexive verbs, E is assigned to a narrowly deﬁned group of French verbs but to a much larger class in Italian. Table 5.1 gives a reasonably complete list of the relevant French verbs, while Table 5.2 gives illustrations for Italian. The semantic classiﬁcation given in the latter table is for convenience only and nothing depends on it. As far as perfect auxiliary selection is concerned, the Ergative Analysis and Unaccusative Hypothesis are inspired primarily by the Italian situation. Constructions that select perfect auxiliary E other than passives, raising predicates (for example, parere ‘seem’ and risultare ‘turn out’) and reﬂexives are assumed to be unaccusative. E assignment is thus identiﬁed as the reﬂex of a syntactic property that is common to all of these constructions. 103

104

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages Table 5.1

French intransitive verbs that select être

aller apparaître arriver descendre* devenir entrer intervenir monter* mourir naître partir rentrer rester retourner revenir sortir survenir tomber venir

go appear arrive go down become enter intervene go up die be born depart return home stay return come back go out appear/happen fall come

* Selects avoir when used transitively

5.2 Burzio’s theory The classic syntactic analysis of perfect auxiliary selection in Italian is due to Burzio (1981, 1986). His fundamental claim (1986, pp. 55–6, 139–40) was that perfect auxiliary E was assigned whenever a binding relation existed between an item in the preverbal subject position and either a clitic or an item in the direct object position. Given its speciﬁc deﬁnition, this binding relation included the antecedent–trace relation and the relation between the subject and a reﬂexive clitic, but it excluded the binding relation between the subject and the strong reﬂexive se stesso. The two basic patterns thus envisaged are illustrated below: (a) Subject binds clitic: 2 (1)

La tigrei sii è leccata. ‘The tiger licked itself.’

(b) Subject binds its own trace: 3 (2)

Alessandroi è nato ti nel 1980. ‘Alessandro was born in 1980.’

Table 5.2 Italian intransitive verbs that select essere (‘A/E’ denotes that either auxiliary is commonly possible depending on the meaning or context) (i) Verbs designating non-agentive events affogare drown affondare arrossire blush/redden asciugare calare ebb/wane/set cambiare crollare crumble/collapse dimagrire esplodere explode ﬁorire impazzire go crazy imputridire ingrassare get fat ingrossare migliorare improve morire peggiorare worsen piovere sbiadire fade sbocciare scurire darken sprofondare

or processes: sink dry/set change slim bloom (A/E) rot swell die rain (A/E) ﬂower/open up collapse/sink

annegare aumentare congelare diminuire ghiacciare indurire invecchiare nascere ringiovanire scolorire spuntare

drown increase freeze diminish freeze (A/E) harden age be born rejuvenate fade emerge

annerire bruciare crescere diventare imbrunire ingiallire marcire nevicare rinverdire scoppiare tramontare

turn black burn grow become get dark turn yellow rot snow (A/E) go green again explode set

go run (A/E) reach return jump (A/E) slip/slide ﬂy (A/E)

arretrare entrare girare rotolare sbarcare smontare

withdraw enter rotate (A/E) roll disembark dismount

arrivare evadere incespicare ruzzolare scappare uscire

arrive escape stumble topple/tumble escape go out

(iii) Time and aspect verbs: cessare end (A/E) ﬁnire end (A/E) scadere expire

begin (A/E) begin (A/E) follow (A/E)

continuare passare subentrare

continue (A/E) pass succede

durare proseguire trascorrere

last (A/E) continue (A/E) elapse

cominciare iniziare seguire

105

(ii) Verbs related to movement: accorrere rush (A/E) andare cadere fall correre fuggire ﬂee giungere rimbalzare rebound (A/E) ritornare salire go up saltare scendere go down scivolare venire come volare

106

Table 5.2

Continued

(iv) Verbs of appearance and accadere happen emergere emerge/surface sparire disappear (v) State verbs: appartenere belong convenire be advantageous/ agree (A/E) essere be piacere please

occurrence: apparire appear risultare turn out succedere happen

avvenire scomparire svanire

happen disappear vanish

capitare sorgere toccare

happen arise fall (to)

avanzare dipendere

be left over depend

bastare dispiacere

be sufﬁcient displease

bisognare esistere

be necessary exist

importare rimanere

matter remain

mancare sembrare

be missing (A/E) seem

parere stare

appear stay/be

fail/go bankrupt (A/E)

prevalere

prevail (A/E)

riuscire

succeed

colare ﬂuire luccicare

trickle/seep (A/E) ﬂow/stream shimmer (A/E)

deﬂuire fuoriuscire penetrare (in)

stream away leak out seep (into)

risuonare

sboccare (in)

ﬂow/lead (to)

suonare

boom/resound (A/E) ring/toll (A/E)

traboccare

overﬂow (A/E)

(vi) Verbs of success and failure: capitolare surrender (A/E) fallire

(vii) Phenomena and emission verbs: balenare ﬂash baluginare ﬁltrare drain/ﬁlter ﬁoccare gocciolare trickle (A/E) grondare riecheggiare resound

rimbombare

ﬂicker rain/spew drip/stream (A/E) rumble (A/E)

scaturire zampillare

squillare

ring/sound (A/E)

ﬂow out gush/spurt (A/E)

Perfect Auxiliary Selection

(3)

Mariai è stata invitata t i. ‘Maria has been invited.’

(4)

Mariai è sembrata ti risolvere il problema.4 ‘Maria has seemed to solve the problem.’

107

Thus Burzio’s auxiliary-selection argument for the Ergative Analysis is that only this analysis enables an E-triggering binding relation to be posited for unaccusatives. If unaccusatives did not have the syntax he proposed assigning to them, there would in his view (1986, p. 57) ‘be no reason why they should fall together with passive and reﬂexive constructions with respect to auxiliary assignment’. In this way, without actually being exclusive to unaccusatives, essere assignment came to be a diagnostic for such verbs, as did être assignment in French, on the assumption that similar principles to those that existed in Italian governed auxiliary assignment in French.5 A problem arises, however, with postverbal subjects. Here, by hypothesis, no movement has occurred6 and so there is no antecedent–trace relation. Nor, obviously enough, is there an antecedent–clitic relation. As a consequence, Burzio (1986, p. 98) attempted to derive the required subject–object binding relation by assuming that a null expletive in the preverbal subject position (shown here as pro) bound the postverbal subject, as schematized below: (5)

proi È uscita [una nuova edizione di questo celebre romanzo] i. ‘A new edition of this celebrated novel has come out.’

(6)

proi Sono stati incontrati [alcuni problemi] i. ‘Some problems were encountered.’

However, Burzio’s strategy is immediately problematic. The doctrine of the null expletive results from an assumed parallel between, on the one hand, the ‘routine’ pattern of subject inversion observable in Spanish/Italian-type languages and, on the other, English/French-style expletive inversion, as in (7) below: (7)

There arose a great commotion.

Thus the relation envisaged by Burzio for the type of case illustrated by (5) and (6) is essentially analogous to the relation in (7) between there and its associate a great commotion. The only difference is that the

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

expletive is phonologically null in the Italian examples but overt in the English example. The problem for Burzio’s theory is that under current assumptions, there is no syntactic relation (let alone one involving binding) between an expletive and its associate. While it was originally claimed that the (nominative) case-licensing of the associate, together with the determination of the agreement form of the verb, were mediated via the expletive (see, for example, Chomsky 1986a), both processes are now reduced to a long-distance relation that ‘involves features only and is independent of the expletive’ (Chomsky 2000, p. 126, my emphasis).7 Within the newer framework, the expletive is inserted merely to satisfy the Extended Projection Principle (EPP), originally embodying the requirement that every clause have a subject but recast within Minimalism as a speciﬁc feature checking requirement.8 The role of the expletive is if anything even more peripheral in the context of a null-subject language, given Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou’s (1998) hypothesis that in this case the EPP is satisﬁed by verb raising (V-to-T movement). Thus the binding relation alleged by Burzio between a preverbal null expletive and the postverbal subject looks extremely unstable in the present theoretical environment. Such a relation is further ruled out by the fact that it would entail regular violations of binding theory. Condition C of the theory prohibits the binding of so-called R-expressions (referentially free expression), such as Maria in the example below. Thus if the containing sentence receives the analysis proposed by Burzio, there will necessarily be a Condition C violation. However, no such violation is apparent: (8)

proi È arrivata Mariai. ‘Maria has arrived.’

A wholly parallel argument could be made in respect of Condition B, which forbids too close a proximity between a pronominal and its antecedent, ruling out cases such as (9) on the intended reading: (9)

*Johni saw himi. (Compare Johni saw himself i.)

Under Burzio’s analysis, a parallel deviancy should arise with sentences such as (10) below, but clearly this is not the case: (10)

proi Sono arrivato ioi. ‘I have arrived.’

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Given problems of the type just mentioned, Chomsky (1981) originally assumed a special kind of co-indexing relation between the expletive and its associate, represented in the notation by co-superscripting rather than co-subscripting, where only the latter fell within the scope of the binding theory. More recently, Chomsky has assumed that no coindexing relation at all exists: ‘A long-standing question has been why there is no Condition C violation in the case of an expletive and its related associate. But we now assume that the two simply have different indices’ (1995, p. 157).9 To sum up: Burzio’s account of perfect auxiliary selection in terms of the presence or absence of a determinate binding conﬁguration is problematic both theoretically and empirically. A reasonable conclusion to draw would be that his account does not motivate the ergative analysis of unaccusative verbs.

5.3 Accounts based on the nature of the auxiliaries More recently, the emphasis has been on attributing auxiliary alternations to the syntax of the auxiliaries themselves. Some years ago, Benveniste (1960) suggested that items such as French avoir and être were in effect variants of the same underlying unit. Kayne (1993) has developed this idea, arguing that ‘be’ is in some sense the basic perfect auxiliary but is realized as ‘have’ whenever a certain abstract (that is, phonologically null) preposition incorporates to it. It is then claimed that the abstract preposition is systematically missing in the case of unaccusatives in languages like Italian, thus accounting for the apparent unaccusative–unergative asymmetry in terms of perfect auxiliary selection. Cocchi (1994) attenuates the stipulative nature of this analysis by arguing that the abstract preposition is always present but incorporation is blocked by the activation of the head of a low (past participlerelated) agreement projection.10 Such activation is triggered when an unaccusative subject passes through the speciﬁer of the agreement projection on its way from its assumed initial postverbal position to the high preverbal subject position. Finally, Belletti (2001, section 5) suggests that, in Italian at least, E systematically selects participial clauses that lack a subject (that is, an argument merged high in the VP/vp) while A systematically selects clauses that have such an item. In this way E is never associated with unergatives/transitives and A is never associated with unaccusatives/ passives.

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

From the present perspective, the above accounts can be ruled out as evidence in favour of the ergative analysis of unaccusative verbs. Belletti’s and Kayne’s accounts are essentially stipulative in that there is no independent motivation for the assumed correlation between unaccusative–unergative, on the one hand, and E versus A on the other.11 Cocchi’s theory is less stipulative, but it immediately faces problems of empirical adequacy. Firstly, there is an analogue to the problem highlighted in section 5.2 for Burzio’s binding-related theory. Thus consider the occurrence of perfect auxiliary E in examples such as the following: (11)

Sono entrati due ladri dalla ﬁnestra. (From Belletti 2001, (34c)) ‘Two thieves came in through the window.’

The subject due ladri would standardly be analysed as being licensed in situ and hence as undergoing no movement. This follows either from the assumption that the subject has partitive/inherent case (the licensing of which requires no movement to an alternative casechecking location) or, if the subject is assumed to have nominative case, from the assumption that it enters into a long-distance agreement relation with the abstract T(ense) constituent, which c-commands it and hence can ‘probe’ it (see Chomsky 2000, pp. 122–3). Now if the subject does remain in situ, it is unclear how it can be deemed to pass through the speciﬁer of the relevant agreement projection (that is, the projection responsible for past participle agreement). Accordingly, the realization of the perfect auxiliary as E is unexpected under Cocchi’s account.12 An additional problem for Cocchi’s account relates to the selection of E in the impersonal si construction with unergatives, as in (12) below: (12)

Si è parlato di molte cose. (Compare: Gianni ha/*è parlato di molte cose.) ‘One spoke about many things.’

Here, by hypothesis, the subject si cannot have been generated in a position low enough to enable it to pass through the speciﬁer of the relevant agreement projection, and yet the auxiliary is E, implying in Cocchi’s analysis that the head of the agreement projection has been activated (thereby preventing the incorporation to the auxiliary of the

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Kayne-style abstract preposition and the subsequent realization of the auxiliary as ‘have’).13

5.4 Comparison between Italian and French A different set of problems arise when the patterns of auxiliary selection in Italian are compared to those that exist in French. A comparison of the earlier Tables 5.1 and 5.2 immediately reveals a rather dramatic mismatch between the two languages in this respect. Note in particular the fact that perfect auxiliary E in French is systematically not assigned to verbs that enter into intransitive–transitive alternations, such as couler ‘sink’, fondre ‘melt’ and sécher ‘dry’, or to French counterparts of what might be regarded as ‘prototypical’ unaccusatives in Italian (that is, to verbs like manquer ‘be missing’, exister ‘exist’, disparaître ‘disappear’, surgir ‘arise’, and so forth). Sorace (2000), from the semantic point of view, has attempted to provide a framework that can accommodate the Franco–Italian disparity, but, within syntactic approaches to unaccusativity, only Burzio (1986) has made a serious attempt in this direction. We have already had cause to reject the theoretical principle enshrined in his account of auxiliary selection. Nevertheless, his handling of the comparative data illustrates the basic difﬁculties that face any attempt to encompass French and Italian within a single syntactic theory of auxiliary selection. As mentioned in section 5.2, Burzio argued that E assignment in Italian was triggered by the existence of a certain type of binding relation. On this basis, he posited what amounts to a three-way taxonomy of verbs or constructions that are assigned perfect auxiliary E (for simplicity I ignore impersonal si): (a) Transitive reﬂexives14 (b) (Non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives and intransitive reﬂexives (c) Raising verbs (including passive ‘be’) The binding-related basis for the above taxonomy may be unreliable, but the groupings identiﬁed by Burzio form what can plausibly be regarded as natural syntactic classes. Thus the transitive reﬂexives are the only transitive structures that are assigned perfect auxiliary E, while the intransitive reﬂexives frequently parallel (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives in terms of phenomena deemed to be criterial (for example, partitive cliticization from the subject and participation in

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intransitive–transitive alternations). The raising verbs are different again, given that, according to standard analyses, they do not occur in monoclausal sentences (at least not as raising verbs). Now as far as Italian is concerned, class (a) does not admit of any lexical variation in terms of auxiliary selection, given that all transitive reﬂexives select perfect auxiliary E. Class (b) can also be deemed not to admit of any lexical variation, given that (i) intransitive reﬂexives invariably select E and (ii) non-reﬂexive intransitives that do not select E are regarded as not being unaccusative by deﬁnition (in Italian, at least). On the other hand, Burzio argued (1986:139) that class (c) represented an ‘area of idiosyncrasy’, in view of his raising analysis of verbs such as potere ‘be able to’, which may select perfect auxiliary A depending on the following non-ﬁnite verb: (13)

Mariai ha potuto ti risolvere il problema. ‘Maria has been able to resolve the problem.’

Burzio sought to account for the above type of idiosyncrasy by arguing that the system for assigning perfect auxiliary E had a ‘core’ and a ‘periphery’.15 From that perspective, classes (a) and (b) were core cases for E assignment, while (c) was in the periphery of the system. In the periphery, E assignment was assumed to be partly lexically conditioned, or at least subject to a degree of idiosyncrasy. Burzio assumed, as was reasonable, that the assignment of perfect auxiliaries in French followed an analogous principle to that which he took to be operative in Italian. However, as was mentioned earlier, raising verbs (including passive être) and most of the cognates or translation equivalents of the Italian (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives select A as their perfect auxiliary. Burzio attempted to impose a certain structure on the large disparity between Italian and French, by invoking the distinction between core and periphery outlined in the preceding paragraph. He argued that only class (a) was core for French, while (b) represented the periphery and (c) was outside the system altogether – see Table 5.3. Therefore the fact that French passives select A followed, in Burzio’s account, from the fact that raising verbs in general were outside the E-assigning system in French (see Burzio 1986, p. 153). Burzio also posited a subregularity within the periphery. He claimed (1986:141) that if a verb could appear in two or more distinct syntactic conﬁgurations, whereby one fell within the core and one within the periphery, the auxiliary assigned in the core was maintained in the periphery. He used this principle to explain why the intransitive use of

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Table 5.3 French and Italian auxiliary assignment mismatches (following Burzio 1986) Class

Membership

Status in Italian for E assignment

Status in French for E assignment

(a) (b)

Transitive reﬂexives (Non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives and intransitive reﬂexives Raising verbs (including passive ‘be’)

Core Core

Core Periphery

Periphery

Outside system

(c)

verbs that can be either transitive or intransitive attracts perfect auxiliary A in French but E in Italian, as is illustrated in (14) below:16 (14)

Due navi sono affondate. (Italian: E) Deux bateaux ont coulé. (French: A) ‘Two ships sank.’

Given that (according to Burzio’s analysis) this is a periphery case for French (but not for Italian), couler inherits the auxiliary assigned to it in its transitive conﬁguration, illustrated in (15), as this was deemed to be a core case, albeit for A assignment: (15)

Ils ont coulé le bateau. ‘They sank the boat.’

On the face of it, then, Burzio’s taxonomy, together with his core–periphery distinction, invests the otherwise striking disparity between French and Italian with a degree of predictability. Nevertheless important difﬁculties remain, even if we order the facts as Burzio proposed. In the ﬁrst place, the claim that passives (together with raising verbs in general) are outside the E-assigning system in French might be viewed as representing a rather stark admission. As we saw with the transitive use of verbs like couler, being outside the system of E assignment entails being in the core for A assignment. Therefore, if we adopt Burzio’s taxonomy of E-selecting constructions, the status of passives with regard to the assignment of perfect auxiliary E becomes somewhat marginal. In French, they are a core case for perfect auxiliary A, while in Italian they are only in the periphery for perfect auxiliary E. In other

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words, French passives pattern absolutely with unergatives, because both are core cases for the assignment of perfect auxiliary A, while Italian passives pattern only partially with unaccusatives (recall that the latter are in the core of the Italian E-assigning system whereas passives are in the periphery). Therefore, taking French and Italian together, Burzio’s proposed analysis implies that passives actually pattern more closely with unergatives with respect to perfect auxiliary assignment than they do with unaccusatives. This presumably is an unwanted result, given that it has been insisted time and again that passives pattern with unaccusatives in terms of phenomena assumed to reﬂect syntactic structure (see, for example, Levin and Rappaport 1989, and Perlmutter 1989). A second problem that arises concerns the intransitive reﬂexives. Under Burzio’s analysis, and indeed many other analyses, these are treated identically to (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives (see Burzio 1986:38). Accordingly, in Italian they are a core case for E assignment, but in French they are in the periphery. However, in French they actually behave as if they were in the core, given that they uniformly select E. Moreover, the behaviour of verbs like se casser ‘break’ (that is, Burzio’s ‘ergative reﬂexives’) is even more problematic in light of the fact that they participate in intransitive–transitive alternations and so are in exactly the same position as verbs like couler ‘sink’. The latter are predicted to always select A in French, given that when they are used transitively they are a core case for A assignment (see the remarks concerning example (15) above). The same should apply to like verbs like (se) casser, because when used transitively (that is, without the clitic), they too are in the core for A assignment: (16)

J’ai cassé le verre. ‘I broke the glass.’

However, such verbs universally select E when used intransitively: (17)

Des branches se sont cassées. ‘Some branches broke.’

Thus French intransitive reﬂexives exhibit an afﬁnity for perfect auxiliary E that exceeds their status within the taxonomy. The only way to remedy this problem would be to subsume the intransitive reﬂexives within class (a), thereby creating a core for E assignment that embraced all constructions involving a reﬂexive clitic. Burzio himself

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115

(1986, p. 142) entertained precisely this possibility.17 However, the proposed manoeuvre would separate the intransitive reﬂexives from the (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives, which would be empirically problematic, given that intransitive reﬂexives in Romance pattern fairly consistently with (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives in terms of other basic unaccusative diagnostics whereas transitive reﬂexives do not. For example, Burzio (1986, pp. 38–41) observed that both the major subtypes of intransitive reﬂexive (that is, his ‘inherent reﬂexives’ and his ‘ergative reﬂexives’) allow ne-extraction from a quantiﬁed postverbal subject, whereas Reinhart and Siloni (2004, p. 172) cite evidence suggesting that transitive reﬂexives do not: Inherent reﬂexives: (18)

Se ne sbaglieranno molti. (Burzio 1986, p. 40) ‘Many of them will be mistaken.’

Ergative reﬂexives: (19)

Se ne rompono molti. (Burzio 1986, p. 38) ‘Many of them break.’

Transitive reﬂexives: (20)

*Se ne sono vestiti tre. (Reinhart and Siloni 2004, p. 172)18 ‘Three of them have got dressed.’

In addition, Reinhart and Siloni (2004, p. 173) observe that cliticized past participles from intransitive reﬂexives behave like (non-reﬂexive) unaccusative past participles as regards their capability to occur in certain adjectival constructions,19 whereas cliticized past participles from transitive reﬂexives do not: Unaccusative past participle: (21)

L’uomo arrivato a Ginevra è una spia. ‘The man who arrived in Geneva is a spy.’

Cliticized intransitive reﬂexive past participle: (22)

Il bicchiere rottosi ieri apparteneva a mio nonno. ‘The glass broken yesterday belonged to my grandfather.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Cliticized transitive reﬂexive past participle: (23)

*L’uomo lavatosi ieri è mio nonno. ‘The man washed yesterday is my grandfather.’

It turns out, then, that the core–periphery approach to perfect auxiliary selection faces what appears to be an insuperable dilemma in respect of reﬂexives. The general pattern in French and Italian suggests strongly that both transitive and intransitive reﬂexives must be in the core of the E-assigning system (in both languages). In addition, the rather noticeable auxiliary selection mismatch between Italian and French as regards (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives implies that, in French at least, the verbs in this latter category are in the periphery of the Eassigning system. Thus the auxiliary selection data on their own call for a taxonomy that groups all reﬂexives together and separates them from (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives, as shown in Table 5.4. However, such a taxonomy cannot be assumed without implicitly downgrading the signiﬁcance of unaccusative diagnostics such as ne-cliticization and behaviour relating to adjectival participle constructions. Like the marginalization of passives noted earlier, this presumably would be an unwelcome result for any theorist attempting to place unaccusativity at the centre of a syntax-based account of perfect auxiliary selection in Romance. Notice that the problems discussed in this section are in principle unrelated to Burzio’s particular analysis of perfect auxiliary selection. They are likely to arise for any plausible syntactic taxonomy of the various constructions that are assigned E. In crude terms, the basic pattern across Italian and French is one in which all reﬂexive constructions invariably select perfect auxiliary E while there is a considerable

Table 5.4 Revised taxonomy for French and Italian auxiliary assignment mismatches Class

Membership

Status in Italian for E assignment

Status in French for E assignment

(a)

Transitive and intransitive reﬂexives (Non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives Raising verbs (including passive ‘be’)

Core

Core

Core Periphery

Periphery Outside system

(b) (c)

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117

disparity in relation to the (non-reﬂexive) intransitives. Now if it was assumed that only E-selecting verbs could be unaccusative, French would have an extremely impoverished class of (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives. Thus the most acceptable solution – and the one which is adopted tacitly or explicitly by the majority of authors – is to assume that at least some French verbs are assigned perfect auxiliary A but are nevertheless unaccusative (obvious candidates would be verbs like manquer ‘be missing’, exister ‘exist’, disparaître ‘disappear’, surgir ‘arise’ and so on, although the exact membership of this category is not strictly speaking relevant). However, this solution will necessarily disturb any syntactically determined concept of core and peripheral classes for E assignment, given that reﬂexive intransitives are usually analysed as being structurally identical to (non-reﬂexive) unaccusatives and yet they systematically select E in both French and Italian. This circumstance, together with the fact that passives are assigned A in French, ensures that the Franco–Italian corpus is likely to remain resistant to any overarching syntactic account of auxiliary selection.

5.5 Auxiliary selection is not directly semantic Sections 5.2 to 5.4 have highlighted (i) a fundamental problem within Burzio’s (1986) account of perfect auxiliary selection in Italian (which resurfaces under a different guise in Cocchi’s (1994) account), (ii) the essentially stipulative nature of more recent approaches such as that proposed by Kayne (1993) and that hinted at in Belletti (2001) and (iii) a possibly irreconcilable disparity between auxiliary selection in French and that in Italian. In the light of these ﬁndings, it is reasonable to conclude that phenomena pertaining to perfect auxiliary selection do not actually compel an ergative analysis of unaccusative verbs. Indeed it is by no means clear that anything of a genuinely syntactic nature can be directly inferred from patterns of perfect auxiliary selection. At best such data provide an explicit indication that verbs grouped together in terms of other phenomena (for example, partitive cliticization from the subject) form a natural class. However, given the ﬁndings of the previous chapters, the mere identiﬁcation of such a class falls some way short of motivating the syntactic analysis envisaged for its members. Moreover, the empirical naturalness of the class itself is by no means a settled issue, given the absence of any real isomorphism between the class as determined by auxiliary selection and the class as determined by the other phenomena in question (partitive cliticization, and so forth). In connection with this latter point, consider, for instance,

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examples such as (24) below (= (49) from chapter 3) and (20) from section 5.4 above (reproduced below): (24)

Come già comunicato in precedenza su 721 elettori ne hanno votato 635. ‘As previously indicated, out of 721 voters 635 voted.’

(20)

*Se ne sono vestiti tre. (Reinhart and Siloni 2004, p. 172) ‘Three of them have got dressed.’

It is tempting, then, to assume that auxiliary selection is likely to respond to semantic factors. However, while a number of tendencies can be identiﬁed, it seems in practice to be impossible to identify a non-vacuous semantic principle that will account for every case. This can be illustrated by considering some recent semantics-based approaches to the question. 5.5.1 The aspectual account In an inﬂuential paper, Van Valin (1990, p. 233) postulates the following generalization for Italian: (25)

AUXILIARY SELECTION WITH INTRANSITIVE VERBS :

Select essere if the LS [logical structure] of the verb contains a state predicate. In effect this means that achievement, accomplishment and state terms select E while activity terms select A. This follows from the assumption (originally due to Dowty 1979) that the meaning of achievement and accomplishment predicates, but not that of activity terms, involves the concept of a state. This assumption in turn stems from the belief that achievement predicates denote the inception of a state, while accomplishment predicates indicate that one event, normally an activity, has resulted in an achievement (see Van Valin 1990, pp. 223–4). For example, if ‘BECOME’ is an operator signalling inchoatives and ‘dead¢’ represents the state predicate dead, the logical (that is, semantic) structure of the achievement term die would be represented as in (26) below (Van Valin 1990, p. 233): (26)

BECOME

dead¢ (x).

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119

The accomplishment term ‘kill’ would be represented as in (27) below (Van Valin 1990, p. 243). There ‘do¢’ represents an unspeciﬁed activity predicate and ‘CAUSE’ is an operator indicating a causal link:

(27)

[do¢(x)]

CAUSE [ BECOME

dead¢ (y)].

Thus for Van Valin, the semantic representation or logical structure of achievement and accomplishment terms contains a state predicate, as does that of state terms (for obvious reasons). On the other hand, the logical structure of activity terms does not involve a state predicate. While a principle of the kind embodied in (25) works for a large number of cases,20 it is impossible to deny that (i) some activity terms are assigned E and (ii) some non-activity terms are assigned A. The Eselecting activity terms include certain occurrences of change-of-state verbs that have no built-in terminus, with meanings like ‘grow’, ‘age’, ‘increase’, ‘worsen’ etc.21 As is well known, verbs of this type are typically ambiguous between activity and either achievement or accomplishment meanings. The problem for the aspectual account of E selection is that in Italian these verbs can be assigned auxiliary E regardless of whether they are used as activity or achievement/accomplishment terms. This is apparent from the examples below, where I assume that compatibility with durational per or ﬁno a diagnoses activity status: 22

(28)

Questo segmento è cresciuto per quasi tutti gli anni’ 90. ‘This sector grew throughout almost the entire 90s.’

(29)

Il valore delle azioni è aumentato ﬁno alla prima settimana di dicembre. ‘The value of the shares increased until the ﬁrst week of December.’

(30)

Già dal lunedì sucessivo ho iniziato ad accusare dolore al ginocchio destro ed è peggiorato ﬁno al sabato, quando non riuscivo più a reggermi in piedi. ‘Already on the following Monday I started to feel pain in my right knee and it got worse until Saturday, when I could no longer stand up.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Particularly in Romance, motion verbs meaning ‘go up’, ‘go down’ and so forth exhibit a similar ambiguity to the one just described. For example, Italian salire ‘go up’ is an activity term in (31) but an accomplishment term in (32): (31)

Salimmo per ore su campi inclinati. ‘We ascended for hours on gently inclined terrain.’

(32)

Salimmo in poco più di cinque ore. 23 ‘We climbed up in little more than ﬁve hours.’

As intransitives, salire and similar verbs (for example, scendere ‘descend’) are assigned E in not just their accomplishment use (which is predicted by the theory) but also in their activity use: (33)

Siamo saliti per un’ora e alla ﬁne era come essere in paradiso. ‘We climbed for an hour and at the end it was like being in heaven.’

This again falsiﬁes the claim that activity terms always select A. Conversely to the above cases, A can be assigned to non-activity terms. A assignment to achievement or accomplishment terms is illustrated below: (34)

La pioggia ha smesso. (Verb: smettere) ‘The rain has stopped.’

(35)

Lo squalo ha deviato a sinistra. (Verb: deviare) ‘The shark turned to the left.’

(36)

Ho svoltato sulla strada principale. (Verb: svoltare) ‘I turned onto the main road.’

(37)

Sono esseri umani che hanno sbagliato. (Verb: sbagliare) ‘They are human beings who have made a mistake.’

(38)

Abbiamo atterrato a Tirana alle 18,30. (Verb: atterrare) ‘We had landed in Tirana at 6.30 p.m.’

(39)

Ho votato per i Verdi e me ne pento. (Verb: votare) ‘I voted for the Greens and I regret it.’

(40)

Il re ha abdicato. (Verb: abdicare) ‘The king has resigned.’

Perfect Auxiliary Selection

(41)

121

Sﬁnito ha ceduto alla corrente. (Verb: cedere) ‘Exhausted he succumbed to the current.’

It might be suggested that an appeal to the concept of agentivity could account for some of the above cases (for example, those involving votare ‘vote’ and abdicare ‘abdicate’). However, it seems to be impossible to devise a generalization that correctly predicts when agentivity will be signiﬁcant and when it will not.24 For example, both capitolare ‘give in’ in (42) below and abdicare ‘abdicate’ in (40) above appear to be agentive, and both appear to have the same aspectual property (viz. they are achievement terms), but one is assigned E and one is assigned A:

(42)

Nel 1992 il sinodo anglicano è capitolato e ha votato a favore delle ordinazioni femminili. ‘In 1992 the Anglican synod capitulated and voted in favour of female ordinations.’

Finally in this connection, it should be noted that the activity versus non-activity distinction correlates poorly with auxiliary alternations in the case of physical phenomena verbs. For example, Italian scorrere ‘ﬂow’, suonare ‘sound’ and nevicare ‘snow’ are capable of selecting E even when used as activity terms:

(43)

il ﬁume di sangue che è scorso per tutto il Novecento ‘the river of blood that ﬂowed throughout the 20th century’

(44)

L’allarme è suonato per 18 minuti prima che le forze dell’ordine intervenissero. ‘The alarm sounded for eighteen minutes before the police intervened.’

(45)

É nevicato per tutta la notte. 25 ‘It snowed all night.’

Conversely, debordare ‘overﬂow’ (an achievement or accomplishment term) routinely selects A:

122

(46)

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Il lago di Como ha debordato dai suoi argini ed il livello continua a salire. ‘Lake Como has overﬂowed beyond its banks and the level continues to rise.’

Thus we see that while there is clearly some form of relationship between aspectual class and auxiliary selection (in Italian at least), a substantial minority of cases of auxiliary assignment are idiosyncratic in this respect.

5.5.2 Combinations of semantic properties A number of authors have attempted to do justice to the data in terms of combinations of semantic properties. The pioneer in this area of research is Sorace, who devised the cross-linguistic Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH) – see Sorace (2000) and Legendre and Sorace (2003). Basing themselves on the ASH, Bentley and Eythórsson (2003) have recently attempted to characterize E selection in Italian in terms of cross-linguistically relevant combinations of semantic properties. They make two complementary claims about the semantic distribution of E and A assignment, which are expressed in terms of the semantic properties dynamicity (‘D’), telicity (‘T’) and stativity (‘St’). The latter are glossed as follows: ‘Dynamicity’ (D) is the property of verbs denoting change: directed change of location or change of state. ‘Stativity’ (St) is the property of verbs denoting continuity and lack of agent control. ‘Telicity’ (T) is an aspectual property. Telic predicates encode an endpoint and, therefore, a delimited event. (Bentley and Eythórsson 2003, pp. 460–1) The relevant combinations are [D+T], [D−T], [St−D] and [St]. Following Sorace (2000), Bentley and Eythórsson classify the verbs/ predicates that select E in Italian as follows: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

Change of location Change of state Continuation of pre-existing state Existence of state

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Verbs in class (i) are [D+T]. Some of the verbs in class (ii) (for example, morire ‘die’) are also [D+T], while others (e.g. cambiare ‘change’) are [D−T]. Verbs in class (iii) are [St−D]. Verbs in class (iv) are [St]. Bentley and Eythórsson’s two generalizations about the semantic distribution of E and A assignment (to intransitives) in Italian can then be characterized as follows: (a) E is assigned to verbs that are [D+T], [D−T], [St−D] or [St] (pp. 463–4). (b) A is assigned ‘when none of the properties [dynamicity, telicity, stativity] apply to an intransitive predicate’ (p. 461). However, given their characterization of the relevant features or properties, Bentley and Eythórsson’s account is vulnerable in similar ways to Van Valin’s account (discussed in 5.5.1). In the ﬁrst place, the verbs in the earlier examples (34) to (41) appear to be [T+D]. Therefore, according to generalization (a), they should be assigned E, but in fact they exhibit A. Secondly, apparently identical occurrences of at least some phenomena- or emission-type verbs can be assigned either E or A: (47)

Quella frase mi è rimbombata tutto il giorno nella testa. ‘That sentence resounded in my head all day long.’

(48)

Questa frase ha rimbombato nelle nostre teste per tutto il viaggio. ‘This sentence resounded in our heads for the whole journey.’

Presumably the above occurrences of rimbombare each receive the same assignment of semantic properties. However, such a possibility appears to be ruled out by the conjunction of the two generalizations (a) and (b). The same point could be made in respect of a number of other phenomena/emission verbs, such as those illustrated in examples (43) to (45), because these too are associated with an apparently unpredictable A/E alternation.26 Bentley and Eythórsson also refer to French, stating (p. 464) that E is assigned in that language to verbs that are [D+T].27 While this is largely true (except in the case of rester ‘remain’, which is classiﬁed as [St−D]), it leaves unexplained the assignment of auxiliary A to a fairly large group of French [D+T] verbs, such as exploser ‘explode’, crever

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‘burst’, disparaître ‘disappear’, etc. This latter class is all the larger if agentive verbs such as capituler ‘capitulate’, démissionner ‘resign’ and so on are also deemed to be [D+T]. In addition, there is a counterpart to the problem noted earlier for Van Valin’s account in relation to verbs such as salire (see example (31)). Thus E is assigned equally to [−T] and [+T] occurrences of verbs like descendre ‘go down’ and monter ‘go up’: (49)

Nous sommes descendus/montés pendant des heures. ‘We descended/climbed for hours.’

(50)

Nous sommes descendus/montés en une heure. ‘We got down/climbed up in an hour.’

5.5.3 Subject-affectedness The semantic accounts discussed in 5.5.1 and 5.5.2 focus on the nature of the situation described by the verb. An alternative approach, in which the focus is on the role of the subject, has been put forward by Chierchia (2004 [originally written 1989]). Under the assumption that auxiliaries were ‘property modiﬁers’28 and hence could be sensitive to the meaning associated with what they modiﬁed, he argued (2004:46– 7) that the choice of Italian essere versus avere was sensitive to what he termed ‘subject affectedness’, where the subjecting-affecting operations were the following: P(assive), E(xpletive) and R(eﬂexive). Below, I describe each of these operations in turn. Note that, in order to make sense of Chierchia’s notation, it needs to be understood that he takes non-linguistic items such as properties and relations to be primitives within his system. Linguistic sentences are then analysed as involving what he calls the ‘predication relation’, represented by the symbol ∪, which takes a property as its input and yields a propositional function as its output. For example, the sentence ‘John runs’ is analysed as in (51) below, where ‘run’ stands for the property of running (Chierchia 2004, p. 26): (51)

∪

run(John)

Informally, this can be read as ‘John instantiates [the property of] running’. 5.5.3.1 Operation P(assive) This is the most straightforward of the operations just enumerated. Chierchia deﬁned it as an operation that takes a relation as its input

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and yields a property as its output, by ﬁlling the argument position corresponding to the linguistic subject with a variable bound by an existential quantiﬁer. For example, the property of being seen (represented below by ‘P(see)’) is analysed as being derived through the application of P to the two-place relation of seeing (represented by ‘see’). By applying the predication relation to this property, we get the propositional function ∪ [P(see)], which is subject to the following equivalence: (52)

∪

[P(see)](x) ↔ ∃y∪ [see(x)](y)

In other words, x is seen if and only if something sees x. 5.5.3.2 Operation E(xpletivization) Chierchia deﬁnes the basic predication relation (notated by ∪ ) as requiring a property and an individual as its arguments. Now in order to apply this apparatus to constructions of the form It seems that p, Chierchia posits an E(xpletivization) operation that converts the seems that p component into a property, which must be predicated of an ‘arbitrarily chosen funny object’ (Chierchia 2004, p. 32), presumably the denotatum of the expletive subject. For example, if ⊥ represents such an object, a sentence such as (53) below could be analysed as in (54): (53)

It seems that tax cuts are off the agenda.

(54)

∪

[E(seems that tax cuts are off the agenda)]⊥

5.5.3.3 Operation R(eﬂexivization) Chierchia envisaged two different reﬂexivization operations, denoted as ‘R’ and ‘R I’ (the latter becomes r in a postscript to Chierchia 2004 – see below). The R operation identiﬁes the two arguments of a relation, thereby reducing it to a property. For example, if the relation in question is that of washing, we have the following equivalence (p. 29): (55)

∪

[R(wash)](x) ↔ ∪ [wash(x)](x)

In other words, x R-washes if and only if x washes x. Initially, Chierchia deﬁned the R I operation in a similar way. The only difference in comparison to the R operation was in the logical type of the output: a property in the case of R and a propositional

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function in the case of R I (Chierchia 2004, p. 38). The signiﬁcance of this latter point stems from Chierchia’s stipulation that the argument to a propositional function must correspond, at the syntactic level, to an ‘internal argument’, such as an unaccusative subject deemed to remain in situ. Moreover, given Chierchia’s deﬁnition of the ∪ relation, according to which its arguments must be a property and an individual, a propositional function cannot enter into a predication relation (in Chierchia’s sense). Rather, the proposition resulting from the application of a propositional function to its (internal) argument must undergo the operation of Expletivization. The output of this operation then enters into a predicational relation with a ‘funny’ object (see 5.5.3.2 above). For example, given Chierchia’s assumption that la barca in (56) is an internal argument, the analysis of the containing sentence would be as in (57): 29 (56)

È affondata la barca. ‘The boat has sunk.’

(57)

∪

[E(R I (affondare)(la barca))]⊥

Notice, however, that Chierchia’s (initial) assumption that R I was analogous to R implies that (57) must be equivalent to (58): (58)

∪

[E([affondare(la barca)](la barca))]⊥

Analysed in this way, the extension of intransitive affondare excludes any individual x that was sunk by another individual y, where x ≠ y. But this does not seem to be correct, given that a boat sunk by Maria, for example, will still be in the extension of intransitive affondare, despite the fact that the boat and Maria are non-identical. Speaking generally, Chierchia’s R I operation converts a relation f into a property y that fails to be instantiated by any individual that is not in the f relation to itself. This is not the required result if f and y are associated with transitive and intransitive uses of the same verb. In a postscript to his article, Chierchia recognizes this problem (2004, pp. 54–5) and proposes solving it by introducing a new operation called ‘reﬂexive closure’, represented by r. This deletes the subject argument (which may or may not be an eventuality type of object rather than, say, a person) of a relation and replaces it with a copy of the object argument. For example, affondarer is a relation in which the subject (a sinker) is identical to the object (a thing sunk). This then reduces

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to a property through the application of REFL (which appears to be identical to the R of the original paper) or by some other means.

5.5.3.4 Auxiliary selection Returning now to auxiliary selection, Chierchia’s original contention was that each of the various constructions that are assigned perfect auxiliary E in Italian was associated with one or more of P, E and R/R I. As just noted, R I gives way to a combination of r and REFL in a postscript to the original proposal, but presumably the overall theory of auxiliary selection remains essentially the same. Now, according to the original paper, passives require P and ‘true’ reﬂexives require R (and raising predicates like sembrare ‘seem’ presumably require E, given that they lack personal subjects). In addition, in light of the postscript, unaccusatives that have transitive counterparts (for example, affondare ‘sink’) require a combination of r and REFL. Finally, Chierchia argued at length (pp. 39–45) for a parity between affondare-type unaccusatives and unaccusatives that do not have transitive counterparts. Presumably, therefore, the latter must be deemed to be associated with whatever operations are deemed to be involved in the meaning of affondare-type unaccusatives.30 Now Chierchia’s claim (p. 46) was that all of the operations just mentioned affect the subject slot of a relation: P by quantifying into the subject slot, E by adding a truth-conditionally inert subject slot and R by identifying the subject with the object slot.31 He thus arrived at the conclusion alluded to earlier, according to which the domain32 of perfect auxiliary E (now viewed as a function) is the set of all and only those properties that are the output of ‘subject-affecting’ operations on relations, that is, the set of ‘subject-affected’ properties. He then identiﬁed the complement of this set with the domain of perfect auxiliary A (p. 47). The foregoing theory is a masterpiece of ingenuity. However, it is problematic in two interconnected ways. Firstly, a respectable minority of A-selecting intransitives enter into transitive–intransitive alternations that are analogous to the affondare pattern. Examples include deviare ‘deviate’, bollire ‘boil’ and girare ‘turn’ (note that (63) and (64) reproduce (ii) and (i) from note 16): (59)

All’improvviso l’auto ha deviato. ‘Suddenly the car swerved.’

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(60)

La polizia municipale ha deviato il trafﬁco. ‘The local police have diverted the trafﬁc.’

(61)

Il latte ha bollito. ‘The milk has boiled.’

(62)

Ho bollito il latte. ‘I have boiled the milk.’

(63)

La macina ha girato. ‘The millstone has turned.’

(64)

Il mulo ha girato la macina. ‘The mule has turned the millstone’

Presumably, if Chierchia’s semantic analysis is applied consistently, the intransitive uses of the above verbs must be associated with some subject-affecting operation such as r (or r together with REFL). But if that is the case, the distinction between perfect auxiliaries E and A cannot correlate with the distinction between the set of subject-affected properties and its complement, as proposed by Chierchia. Conversely, we ﬁnd E-selecting verbs for which there exists no independent motivation for assuming that any of the subject-affecting operations are involved. Two such cases are illustrated below: (65)

Saddam è capitolato. ‘Saddam has given in.’

(66)

Berlusconi è andato a Tripoli. ‘Berlusconi has gone to Tripoli.’

Presumably P can be ruled out immediately, as can the R operation that is associated with true reﬂexives. E also can be excluded, given that this seems not to be intended for cases in which the subject is VPexternal (see Chierchia 2004, p. 38). This leaves just the reﬂexive closure operation proposed for verbs like affondare (or something similar, given Chierchia’s contention (p. 57) that ‘verbs that cannot take eventualities as subjects . . . cannot undergo reﬂexive closure’). However, while the involvement of such an operation is not explicitly ruled out, there is nothing about the verbs capitolare and andare that actually calls for an analysis along those lines. Nothing, that is, apart from the selection of perfect auxiliary E. However, if the semantic analysis is allowed to dance to the tune set by the pattern of auxiliary

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selection, it starts to become circular. In other words, once certain Eselecting verbs receive a certain semantic analysis merely because of the auxiliary they select, that analysis can no longer be used to explain why the particular auxiliary is assigned. It is true that an assumption to the effect that all unaccusatives can be assimilated to the affondare paradigm would assist in explaining how certain verbs that are strictly intransitive in one linguistic variety may be capable of being used transitively in others, as with Italian crescere and Spanish desaparecer in the non-standard examples below: (67)

I ﬁgli, Gianni li ha cresciuti bene. (Chierchia 2004, p. 40) ‘His sons, Gianni has raised them well.’

(68)

A otros denunciantes los han desaparecido. ‘Other accusers have been made to disappear.’

However, the difﬁculty lies in the fact that there is no natural division between cases that should be treated like affondare and cases that should not. Moreover, it is doubtful that any such dividing line can plausibly be made to coincide with the distribution of the perfect auxiliaries. To take a few examples, capitolare in sentence (65) is semantically like abdicare in the earlier sentence (40), reproduced below, and unlike intransitive affondare, and yet the pattern of auxiliary assignment completely ignores this state of affairs: (40)

Il re ha abdicato. ‘The king has resigned.’

Conversely, intransitive deviare, bollire and girare in (59), (61) and (63) are like intransitive affondare and they are unlike abdicare in (40), and yet auxiliary selection groups them with abdicare. The implication of Chierchia’s theory is that the pattern of auxiliary selection can be understood as determining the boundary between the affondare paradigm and those intransitives that must receive a different analysis. However, as observed above, an approach based on that assumption will necessarily be circular.

5.6 The historical perspective The various problems identiﬁed for the accounts discussed in 5.5 appear to be illustrative of an inescapable fact,33 viz. that the assignment of

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perfect auxiliary E is not a phenomenon about which an empirically complete semantic generalization can be made. Proponents of the syntactic basis for perfect auxiliary assignment have argued that precisely this state of affairs constitutes evidence in favour of the syntactic approach (see for example, Rosen 1984). However, while it illustrates the limitations of attempts to characterize E assignment semantically, it is hard to see how it constitutes empirical evidence in favour of the syntactic account. The leading hypothesis in that account is that the occurrence of E assignment reﬂects a certain syntax. By hypothesis, then, all cases of E assignment will involve the syntax in question, including those that are resistant to a semantic generalization. But this inference is merely a deduction from the hypothesis and cannot, without an obvious circularity, be used to reinforce that hypothesis.34 On the other hand, given the rejection in 5.2 to 5.4 of syntax-based generalizations, the assumption that a semantic generalization is not viable either seems to leave perfect auxiliary selection without any explanation at all. However, on the purely synchronic level, this should not be regarded as an unacceptable ﬁnding. For there are plenty of phenomena that cannot, in purely synchronic terms, be given a non-vacuous explanation. For example, no theoretical principle can accurately predict when the subjunctive mood will be assigned to complement clauses in Spanish. Attempts have been made to characterize this in terms of assertive versus non-assertive matrix predicates but, as shown by Palmer (1986), for example, such characterizations are circular, in that the semantic property alleged to trigger subjunctive assignment cannot be given an independent deﬁnition, and as such is merely a label. The case of perfect auxiliary is in broad terms analogous. While some relatively far-reaching generalizations can be made, the attempt to ﬁnd an all-encompassing principle having purely synchronic import can only result in (i) vacuity or (ii) empirical inadequacy. A different question, and one that can be given a non-vacuous answer, is why the synchronic data is as it is: ultimately untameable in terms of an overall determining principle but nevertheless subject to tantalizing trends and family resemblances, especially in relation to aspect. Here it will be argued that the limited semantic regularities that attach to the class of modern E-selecting verbs are a residue of an earlier more uniﬁed semanticism. This will be analysed as a concomitant of the syntax embodied in the early Romance E + intransitive past participle construction, prior to its grammaticalization as a true exponent of the perfect. It will then be claimed that the earlier, more uniﬁed, semanti-

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cism has narrowed in French and in effect expanded in Italian, owing largely to the trend towards the conventionalization of auxiliary assignment, understood as the process whereby given assignments cease to reﬂect meaning differences. It will be assumed that the parallel in terms of E assignment between the E-selecting non-reﬂexives and the intransitive reﬂexives results from a merger in late Latin or early Romance of the various E + past participle structures that were inherited from earlier Latin. As for the anomalous assignment of E to transitive reﬂexives, the position here will be that the traditional account is largely correct, whereby the transitive reﬂexives were attracted historically to the model established by the much more frequent intransitive reﬂexives. The striking uniformity among reﬂexive constructions in terms of auxiliary selection, regardless of semantic and syntactic considerations, is presumably a reﬂex of this evolutionary pattern. In what follows, I will assume a taxonomy of perfect uses of the sort proposed by numerous authors. For example, I will distinguish between the perfect of result and the experiential perfect (Comrie 1976, pp. 56–60). In the former use, a particular state exists at the appropriate reference time, for instance, the moment of speech. This state is the result of the occurrence (or, in the negative, the non-occurrence) of the event denoted by the verb. For example, sentence (69) below uttered while Pedro was still at the relevant location would illustrate the perfect of result: (69)

Pedro has arrived.

A sentence illustrating the experiential perfect is essentially a quantiﬁcation to the effect that zero or more times in the past are times at which a given event or state occurred. Thus (70) below is an example of this use: (70)

Jones has been in prison four times.

5.6.1 E as a copula As is well known, the paradigm of A perfect forms descends from a Latin construction involving habere as a full lexical verb. For example, in venenum praeparatum habebat ‘he had the poison ready’ the unit venenum praeparatum is plausibly analysed as a small clause, on a par with similar units in the following examples from modern Italian, Spanish and French:

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(71)

Hai [ SC la camicia sporca]. ‘Your shirt is dirty.’ (Literally: ‘You have the shirt dirty.’)

(72)

Tienes [ SC abandonados a tus amigos]. ‘You have your friends abandoned.’

(73)

J’avais [ SC la porte ouverte]. ‘I had the door open.’

The A + small clause construction differs from the true perfect construction in several ways. Most signiﬁcantly from the present perspective, the participle in the small clause functions as a predicative adjective and so, where extraneous factors do not prevent this, the small clause can usually be expanded to a full copular construction in which the tense of the copula replicates that of the A verb: (74)

Hai [ SC la camicia sporca]. ‘You have the shirt dirty.’

La camicia è sporca. ‘The shirt is dirty.’

(75)

Tienes [ SC abandonados a tus amigos].

Tus amigos están abandonados. ‘Your friends are abandoned.’

‘You have your friends abandoned.’ (76)

J’avais [ SC la porte ouverte]. ‘I had the door open.’

La porte était ouverte. ‘The door was open.’

This correspondence appears to have been less productive in Latin, perhaps because (i) the E + past participle formulation was the locus of the passive and the deponent perfects and (ii) it was quite common for a single intransitive verb to express what in the modern languages is expressed using E + past participle, as in patent ‘are open’ corresponding to modern sono aperti, están abiertos, sont ouverts, and so on. As is well documented, the above A + small clause construction coalesced over time producing the Romance A perfect, presumably following a long period of structural ambiguity. Now the Romance E perfect also has a Latin forerunner, viz. the deponent perfect, as in mentitus sum ‘I lied/have lied’ (from mentiri ‘lie’). It would be logical for the E and A perfects to have followed parallel historical paths, that is, for the participle in both constructions to have originally functioned as a predicative adjective (under common syntactic assumptions that would in fact amount to assuming a small clause in both cases). At ﬁrst

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glance, however, this seems to be ruled out by the fact that periphrastic forms like mentitus sum are assumed to have occupied the same place in the deponent paradigm as synthetic forms like cucurri ‘I ran/have run’ (from currere ‘run’) within the non-deponent paradigm. While certain speciﬁc forms such as mortuus est may have been syntactically ambiguous, as between the perfect structure (with the meaning ‘died/ has died’) and the copula–adjective construction (with the meaning ‘is dead’), this duality cannot easily be generalized throughout the deponent perfect. Accordingly the syntactic statuses of the forerunners of the E and A perfects do not appear, in Classical Latin at least, to have been analogous. On the other hand, there are grounds for thinking that towards the end of the Latin period the deponent perfect underwent a process of syntactic reanalysis. With the demise of the passive/deponent morphology and the migration of the deponent verbs to the various spoken Latin conjugations, many of the deponent perfect forms were replaced by non-standard formulations modelled on the synthetic perfect, reﬂexes of which abound in the modern languages.35 For example mentitus sum ‘I (have) lied’, was replaced by a form constructed from the root ment- together with the ﬁrst person singular synthetic perfect ending -i(v)i, giving rise ultimately to modern Italian mentii, Spanish mentí, and so on. Such analogical forms were created also for those deponent verbs (sequi ‘follow’, mori ‘die’, nasci ‘be born’, and so on) which in Romance exhibit a deponent-style E perfect. For example, when mori became assimilated to the -ir(e) conjugation, it both retained the form corresponding to its periphrastic perfect, which surfaces in the various Romance languages as è morto, est mort and so on, and also acquired an analogical synthetic perfect paradigm constructed from the stem mor- together with the relevant synthetic perfect endings. The latter analogical paradigm surfaces in Romance as the synthetic preterite (morì, murió, and so on). Analogous remarks apply mutatis mutandis to the (larger) group of verbs that are not descended from Classical Latin deponent verbs but which in spoken Latin or Romance became attracted to the periphrastic pattern. For example, spoken Latin ven + itum/utum (replacing Classical ventum) sum yields Romance forms like sono venuto, suis venu and so forth, but the paradigm of the synthetic perfect (Latin veni, and so on) persisted into Romance: venni, vine, and so on. Overall a pattern emerges, involving (i) the retention and generalization of the synthetic perfect, and (ii) the reorganization of the membership of the class of intransitives that entered into the periphrastic

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construction: out go activity verbs like fabulari ‘talk’, as well as transitive verbs such as metiri ‘measure/evaluate’, while in come prototypical unaccusatives like venire ‘come’ and intrare ‘enter’. This suggests that at some point (presumably towards the end of the Latin period) the periphrastic construction and the synthetic perfect came to be functionally non-equivalent: if this did not happen, it is hard to see why verbs like mori, nasci and so forth should develop new synthetic perfects and still retain a periphrastic form involving E. Moreover it was through the synthetic perfect that the semantics of the Latin perfect, deponent or otherwise, persisted into Romance. For example, in the Iberian Peninsula the sense of periphrastic fabulatus est ‘spoke/has spoken’ was continued via analogical synthetic forms such as fablaut, fablot (>modern Sp. habló, Pt. falou and so on).36 Accordingly, the meaning associated with the E periphrasis must have altered over time: in (earlier) Latin it was presumably largely equivalent to the synthetic perfect, but new semantic life appears to have been breathed into it with the replacement of the somewhat diffuse group of Latin deponent verbs by the semantically coherent class of E-selecting Romance intransitives. Arguably, this development reﬂects an underlying process of syntactic reanalysis. The most likely scenario is that the Latin perfect auxiliary E was reanalysed as a copula, with the past participle adopting its alternative role as an adjective. It is difﬁcult to avoid positing such a development for verbs like venire (that is, intransitive verbs which were not deponent in Classical Latin but which were later attracted to the E + past participle pattern), because in this case the past participle was originally only adjectival, given that non-deponent verbs formed their perfects synthetically. Moreover, even at the relatively late stage at which texts written in the Romance vernaculars began to be produced, it can plausibly be argued that E is still typically a copula when used with the past participle.37 Note ﬁrst of all that while examples are forthcoming in which E is best analysed as a true perfect auxiliary, as in (77) below, they are uncommon throughout much of the Middle Ages, because the synthetic preterite was the primary locus of such usages, as in (78): (77)

De vasselage es suvent esprovet.38 (R 3163) ‘He has often proved his courage.’

(78)

Uscicci mai alcuno . . . ? (I IV, 49) ‘Has anyone ever left here?’

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In fact, in the vast majority of the examples in the medieval corpus, E + intransitive past participle has a resultant-state type of meaning, which in principle is compatible either with a ‘perfect of result’ analysis or with an analysis in which E is a copula and the past participle an adjective denoting a resultant state: (79)

Fenduz en est mis olifans el gros, Caiuz en est li cristals e lis ors. (R 2295–6) ‘My oliphant is split at the wide end, the crystal and gold have/are fallen off.’

(80)

Or incomincian le dolenti note a farmisi sentire; or son venuto là dove molto pianto mi percuote. (I V, 25–6) ‘Now the doleful notes begin to reach me; now I have/am come to where much wailing smites me.’

(81)

L’altra ﬁata ch’i’ discesi qua giù nel basso inferno, questa roccia non era ancor cascata. (I XII, 34–6) ‘The other time I came down here to lower Hell, that rock had/was not yet fallen.’

(82)

Los unos eran muertos e los otros fuydos (A [Paris ms.] 1415b) ‘Some were dead and the others had/were ﬂed.’

However, the copular analysis seems preferable for several reasons. Firstly, there is the way in which the imperfect–preterite distinction interacts with the construction, with the imperfect form merely stating what was the case at a given time, as in (81) and (82) above, and the preterite form typically occurring within the scope of a temporal quantiﬁer, as in (83) below, or after items that introduce or imply a change of state, as in examples (84) and (85): (83)

Anzi ‘mpediva tanto il mio cammino, chi’i’ fui per ritornar più volte vòlto. ‘It so impeded my path that several times I turned to go back.’ (I I, 36)

(84)

hasta que fue la alma de la carne partida (M 318b) ‘until the soul had separated from the ﬂesh’

(85)

Poi che mosso fue, intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro. (I II, 142) ‘After he had moved, I entered along the high and wild path.’

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This rather sharply deﬁned contrast is somewhat arbitrary if E is analysed as a perfect auxiliary, devoid of semantic content in its own right.39 However, the contrast immediately seems natural if E is analysed as a copula, given the general tendency in Latin/Romance for copulas to preferentially select the preterite rather than the imperfect both in cases of temporal quantiﬁcation, as in examples (86) and (87), and in change-of-state contexts, as in examples (88) to (90): (86)

Bis post Numoe regnum Ianus clausus fuit. (Dicc A27) ‘Twice after the reign of Numa the temple of Janus was closed (that is, unopen).’

(87)

María estuvo enferma cuatro veces el año pasado. (Mod. Sp.) ‘María was ill four times last year.’

(88)

Quinci fuor quete le lanose gote. (I III, 97) ‘Whereupon the hairy cheeks were quiet.’

(89)

E all’improvviso fu buio e freddo. (Mod. It.) ‘And suddenly it was dark and cold.’

(90)

hasta que estuvo hundido en el barro (Mod. Sp.) ‘until it was sunk into the mud’

The copular analysis is additionally suggested by certain quasi-equivalence patterns that are observable in the medieval corpus, viz. between E-preterite + past participle and the synthetic preterite, as in examples (91) to (93), and between E-present + past participle and the simple present tense, as in (94) and (95): (91)

En el octavo dia . . . fo ida la dolor. (S 594d) ‘On the eighth day, the pain went away.’

(92)

Paien dient: ‘Si mare fumes nez!’ (R 2146) ‘The pagans say: “We were born for such a misfortune.” ’

(93)

Allor li fu l’orgoglio sì caduto che . . . (I XXI, 84) ‘Then his pride collapsed to such an extent that . . .’

(94)

Li reis Marsilie s’en fuit en Sarraguce, Suz un olive est descendut en l’umbre.’ (R 2570–1) ‘King Marsile ﬂees to Zaragoza, He dismounts under an olive tree in the shade.’

Perfect Auxiliary Selection

(95)

137

A icel jur venent a Sarraguce . . . Li amiralz est issut del calan. (R 2645–7) ‘They arrive that day at Zaragoza. The emir disembarks from the lighter.’

The near equivalences illustrated by the above examples are again mysterious if E is analysed as an empty auxiliary, but they have a straightforward explanation if E is treated as a copula. We simply assume that the copula, like other state verbs, always has the potential to be used inceptively. In the past tense, the inceptive value is explicitly indicated by the preterite,40 while in the present tense an inceptive reading falls out from the context. Finally, treating E as a copula explains the otherwise surprising medieval phenomenon normally analysed as the omission of the reﬂexive pronoun from the perfect. In fact, as Brambilla Ageno (1964:200) points out, ‘il pronome non viene tralasciato . . . ma non è ancora stato introdotto’.41 Examples from Old Spanish include the following (see Lapesa 2000, p. 785): (96)

Çiento quinze cavelleros todos iuntados son. (C 291) (Verb: iuntarse) ‘One hundred and ﬁfteen knights are/have all joined together.’

(97)

Non era puesto el sol. (C 416) (Verb: ponerse) ‘The sun was/had not set.’

(98)

El Campeador en pie es levantado. (C 2219) (Verb: levantarse) ‘The Cid is on his feet.’

For Old Italian, compare mosso fue in the earlier example (85), reproduced below, with si mosse in (99) (see also the many examples in Brambilla Ageno (1964, pp. 200–5): (85)

Poi che mosso fue, intrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro. (I II, 142) ‘After he had moved, I entered along the high and wild path.’

(99)

Allor si mosse, e io li tenni sietro. (I I, 136) ‘Then he moved and I followed him.’

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For Old French compare sunt asemblez in (100) with s’ . . . asemblent in (101): (100)

E Sarrazins, ki tant sunt asemblez . . . (R 1030) ‘And the Saracens who are assembled in such numbers . . .’

(101)

Tels.IIII. cenz s’en asemblent a helmes. (R 2120) ‘Four hundred of them assemble, wearing helmets.’

The phenomenon in question is unsurprising if E is a copula, because there is ample evidence from the modern languages that the past participles of reﬂexive verbs never retain their reﬂexive pronoun when used in small clause complements of copulas. Compare the following pairs of examples (from modern French and modern Spanish): (102a)

Ils se sont tous réunis. (Sont is perfect auxiliary) ‘They have all met up.’

(102b)

Ils sont tous réunis. (Sont is copula: no reﬂexive pronoun) ‘They are all together.’

(103a)

Me había levantado del asiento. (Había is perfect auxiliary) ‘I had got out of my chair’.

(103b)

Estaba levantado del asiento. (Estaba is copula: no reﬂexive pronoun) ‘I was out of my chair.’

On the other hand, there is no obvious explanation (for the medieval ‘omission’) if E is a perfect auxiliary. As noted in La Fauci (1992, pp. 218–19), the ‘omission’ of the reﬂexive pronoun appears to be characteristic mainly of the intransitive reﬂexive construction. This construction evolved as a replacement for the ‘middle’ use of the Latin passive morphology (see 5.6.5 below) and no phenomenon within this process of replacement would account for the failure of the reﬂexive pronoun to appear in the periphrastic members of the paradigm but not in the synthetic ones. 5.6.2 Semantics of the copula–adjective construction There are then a number of reasons for supposing that the Romance E perfect was at some stage in its history a copula–adjective construction. First, the pattern of the reorganization of the perfect system in late

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Latin/early Romance, as described earlier, suggests that E + intransitive past participle (< Latin deponent perfect) underwent a process of reanalysis at or before the beginning of the Romance period. Secondly, even as late as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries few examples of E + intransitive past participle unambiguously call for an analysis in which E is a true perfect auxiliary. In many cases E is best analysed as a copula and in the majority of cases either analysis is possible. Given that over the course of the Romance period the direction in which E + intransitive past participle has evolved is towards its ever greater grammaticalization as an exponent of the perfect, the low frequency in the late Middle Ages of examples that unambiguously reﬂect such a process implies the relatively recent existence of a state of affairs in which ‘perfect auxiliary’ E was in fact a copula. Assuming such a state of affairs existed, a cyclical pattern of development can be posited, with reanalysis occurring twice over: 42 Phase 1: Latin mortuus est (perfect) Phase 2: Early Romance morz est, muerto es and so on (copula– adjective) Phase 3: Modern Romance est mort, ha muerto and so on (perfect) If the above pattern of development is an accurate approximation to the facts, then during the early Romance phase only verbs whose past participle could function as an adjective could occur in the E + intransitive past participle construction. It has been argued (for example, by Levin and Rappaport 1986) that this capability is essentially syntactic, with the past participle morphology systematically blocking the externalization of subject q -role, thus preventing unergative past participles from occurring as adjectives.43 In fact this position is difﬁcult to maintain given the existence of unergative adjectival participles: Spanish: (104)

Los niños están bañados y cenados. ‘The children are bathed and have had their supper.’

(105)

No podemos aceptar apuestas de personas resididas en el Canadá. ‘We cannot accept bets placed by persons residing in Canada.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Italian: 44 (106)

Anzi avevo imparato la sottile arte di presentarmi alle cene già cenata. ‘In fact I had learned the subtle art of appearing at dinners already having dined.’

(107)

O ci andate già mangiati, solo per vedere la partita . . . oppure è meglio stare alla larga. ‘You either go there having already eaten, just to watch the match . . . otherwise it’s best to stay away.’

English: (108)

He is widely travelled and has lived at various times in France, Canada and America.

(109)

The two men were rather studied in their mannerisms.

It is true that unergatives are in general rather less likely than unaccusatives to be available in an adjectival capacity. However, unaccusatives can hardly be said to enjoy unfettered productivity in this respect. Consider, for example, some of the complex semantic and syntactic restrictions that apply in English: (110)

*Tyres become worn must be changed.

(111)

*Smith is standing for the seat of the recently died member for Glasgow central.

(112)

*The spectators remained in the ground witnessed an extraordinary comeback.

I assume, then, that the past participle morphology does not block the externalization of subject q -role and that, accordingy, the proposed analysis of the E + intransitive past participle construction in early Romance does not rule out any intransitive verbs on a priori grounds. On the other hand, given that the earliest attested examples of the construction almost invariably refer to the state resulting from the event denoted by the verb (or the predicate as whole), it can be assumed that access to the construction was limited to those verbs whose past participles expressed a resultant state, a constraint which would obviously favour achievements and accomplishments. This point can be

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illustrated in connection with modern Spanish estar + past participle, assuming this has a similar meaning to that attributed here to early Romance E + intransitive past participle. Consider, for example, the verb dormir ‘sleep’, which is an activity term while its reﬂexive form dormirse ‘go to sleep’ is an achievement term (or possibly an accomplishment term) and the past participle dormido can in general correspond to either of these meanings. Notice that, as used with estar, the participle dormido can only correspond to the achievement meaning: (113)

El niño está dormido. ‘The boy is asleep.’ (i.e. ‘has gone to sleep’)

Therefore, ignoring state terms for the moment, it can be surmised that in early Romance the class of verbs that occurred in the E + intransitive past participle construction comprised exclusively achievement and accomplishment terms. Notice that this means that if a given verb could be used both as an achievement or accomplishment term and as an activity term, E was assigned only in the former case. Compare for example the achievement and activity occurrences of Old Spanish folgar ‘rest/recover’ illustrated below: (114)

Sólo que y plegasse luego serié folgado. (S 599d) ‘If he could just get there he would be recovered.’

(115)

desque ahí hobieron morado é folgado algunos dias (U p. 87) ‘after they had dwelled and rested there for a few days’

The indirect perspective onto this ‘initial’ state of affairs that is afforded by the data from the Middle Ages appears to conﬁrm the basic conjecture just outlined. This can be seen by considering the aspectual classes of the verbs/predicates that appear in the medieval examples in 5.6.1 above. 5.6.3 Conventionalization of auxiliary assignment and other processes If the ‘initial’ state of affairs (as just outlined) had persisted unchanged, then the aspectual account of auxiliary selection in modern Italian discussed in 5.5.1 would essentially be correct (except in its predictions about E-selecting state terms, for which see 5.6.4 below), and indeed it would also be applicable to modern French, modern Spanish and so

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forth. However, a number of processes have conspired to alter somewhat the linguistic landscape. In the ﬁrst place the grammaticalization of E + intransitive past participle as an exponent of the perfect necessarily (under the view of perfect auxiliaries adopted here) resulted in a dissociation of the ‘resultant state’ constraint from its original syntactic locus (viz. a copula– adjective construction). In other words, while the class of verbs that could occur in E + intransitive past participle had a motivated semanticism as long as E was a copula, this ceased to be the case once E became essentially an empty marker of perfectivity. In Ibero–Romance, the unmotivated nature of E assignment was resolved through elimination of auxiliary selection. In French and Italian this essentially redundant feature survived but, in the French case at least, only in a radically impoverished form. In both of the latter languages, conventionalization has occurred to varying degrees, but with different effects. In French, there has been a tendency towards the elimination of auxiliary alternations altogether,45 usually in favour of the commoner A auxiliary. This has entailed the complete elimination of auxiliary alternations in the case of transitive–intransitive verbs of the type geler ‘freeze’, pourrir ‘rot’, sécher ‘dry’ and so on, which in Old French routinely selected E in the intransitive use. The same process operated also in respect of purely intransitive verbs where these could have both achievement/accomplishment (hence E-selecting) occurrences and activity (hence A-selecting) occurrences. For example, while A assignment to courir ‘run’ is categorical in modern French, E assignment was routine in Old French whenever the verb was used as an accomplishment term: 46 (116)

Rollant reguardet, puis si li est curut. (R 2086) ‘He looks at Roland, than ran up to him.’

In modern Italian, while auxiliary alternations are very common, conventionalizing tendencies have had the effect of rendering these immune to any generally applicable principle (other than the principle that A is selected in transitive occurrences). Thus aspectually ambiguous intransitives that in Old Italian alternated their auxiliary consistentlyas a function of the dichotomy between achievements/ accomplishments and activities often exhibit, in the modern language, unique E assignment or what is in effect free variation between E and A (see the discussion of the problematic cases in 5.5.1 and 5.5.2 above). Conventionalization is also likely to have been involved in the other-

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wise surprising (under the account proposed here) assignment of E to a number of Italian state verbs (see 5.6.4 below). In other cases, the developments in Italian seem to parallel those that took place in French, with A spreading at the expense of E. An illustrative example is deviare ‘deviate’. In modern Italian this is typically assigned A but in Old Italian E appears to have been the norm. Indeed cognates of Italian deviare are widely attested with E across early Romance, as illustrated by this example from Old Spanish: (117)

El ladrón cató ora que el religioso fuese desviado. (Cal p. 138) ‘The thief waited until the monk had/was turned away.’

Plausibly, the displacement of E by A results from conventionalization based on the common transitive use, possibly assisted by the sense that the intransitive use frequently involves an implicit object, corresponding to the explicit object in cases such as the following: (118)

La colata è giunta vicinissima ed alla ﬁne ha deviato il suo corso. ‘The lava ﬂow came very close but in the end altered its course.’

Elsewhere, the period at which the verb in question entered the language is likely to be relevant. Many of the achievement/accomplishment terms that select A in either Italian or French or both (for example, words meaning ‘vote’, ‘abdicate’, ‘explode’) are modern or early modern borrowings (either from written Latin or from other European languages). These obviously had no ‘inherited’ perfect auxiliary assignment and instead were assimilated to the prevailing principles governing such assignment. However, assuming that such principles were by then already self-conﬂicting, as in the modern period, any such assimilation is unlikely to have followed a consistent pattern. One striking case is that of Italian esplodere and French exploser, which are eighteenth/nineteenth century derivations from words meaning ‘explosion’, themselves post-Renaissance calques modelled on Latin explosio. Despite both being obvious achievements (hence obvious candidates for E assignment), esplodere is assigned E and exploser is assigned A. The reason for this disparity is simply that by the time exploser was incorporated into the French lexicon, E assignment in that language had long since become a purely conventionalized affair and the E-selecting class of verbs was effectively closed. Attempting to capture the auxiliary assign-

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ment contrast between Italian esplodere and French exploser in terms of a modern synchronic principle (semantic or otherwise) is therefore clearly pointless. In yet other cases, account needs to be taken of the tendency for perfect auxiliary assignment to acquire a disambiguating function between different senses or uses of a given verb, with A often being linked to meanings or contexts that involve a greater element of human deliberation, though not in any consistent way. Presumably this rough correlation results from the fact that A is more closely associated with agentivity than is E, a circumstance which itself can be seen as an oblique reﬂection of the original adjectival function of the perfect participle. Some illustrations are given below: Convenire: (119)

Il Ministro ha convenuto sulla richiesta delle parti sociali. ‘The minister agreed to the demand of the unions and management.’

(120)

500 delegati di 20 nazioni sono convenuti a Roma. ‘500 delegates from 20 nations convened in Rome.’

Mancare: (121)

Il ministero ha mancato al suo dovere verso i cittadini. ‘The ministry has failed in its duty towards the citizens.’

(122)

All’Europa è mancata l’Italia. ‘Europe has missed Italy.’

Fallire: (123)

Berlusconi ha fallito. ‘Berlusconi has failed.’

(124)

Il progetto politico di Berlusconi è fallito. ‘Berlusconi’s political project has failed.’

Subregularities such as the above attach to speciﬁc verbs or groups of verbs only, and thus contribute to the absence of any overall semantic principle governing auxiliary selection.

Perfect Auxiliary Selection

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5.6.4 State terms At ﬁrst glance, the earlier assumption that only achievement and accomplishment terms occurred in the E + intransitive past participle construction in early Romance appears to be at variance with fact that E is assigned to a number of state verbs. This is observed commonly in modern Italian (see Table 5.2 above), vestigially in modern French, and was common across the Romance languages up until the end of the medieval period. However, state verbs usually also have achievement acceptations, and these typically are more common in contexts of perfective aspect: (125)

La casa è rimasta al ﬁglio. (Rimanere ‘remain’.) ‘The house went to the son.’

(126)

All’ultimo momento sono mancati i soldi. (Mancare ‘be missing’.) ‘At the last minute the money ran out.’

(127)

È mancata l’acqua. (Mancare ‘be missing’.) ‘The water supply failed.’

It is suggested below that E assignment to many of the verbs in this category became conventionalized at an early date, on the basis of the achievement acceptations, which historically were even more closely linked to the E + past participle construction than they are in the modern languages. In other cases, the semanticism of the verb has changed over time, with an earlier achievement spectrum of meanings giving way to pure stativity. Some of the various possibilities are considered below. 5.6.4.1 Ambiguous state/achievement terms As is well known, many state verbs are also achievement terms. For example English understand can designate a certain state of the mind or a momentary event that brings the state into existence (on this and related points, see Vendler (1967, pp. 113–18). Where a verb has a dual aspectuality of this kind, the state and achievement senses are always linked by speciﬁc implicational relations. For example, sentence (128) below, understood as stative, implies (129), understood as referring to an achievement:

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

(128)

I understand the theory.

(129)

I have understood the theory.

The reverse implication can hold, but only under the perfect of result (see beginning of 5.6). Thus (128) is implied by (129) qua perfect of result but not qua experiential perfect. In the latter case, (129) indicates merely that there is at least one occasion in the past when I have understood the theory, and nothing is implied about the present moment (compare I have understood the theory [that is, previously] but have since forgotten).47 Discussions of verbs that can be both achievement terms and state terms tend to focus on psychological verbs (understand, recognize, see and so on) but the same duality of use applies to verbs like remain, for example. This latter verb clearly has a state sense in sentences such as (130) below: (130)

At this time he remains a suspect.

However, it has an achievement sense in sentences like (131): (131)

When the others were released, he remained in prison.

In the achievement use, the insertion of a duration phrase produces an anomaly, which is unexpected if the verb is analysed as being stative: (132)

?When the others were released, he remained in prison for six months.

In order for there not to be any deviancy, the duration phrase must construe with another verb, as in (133) below: (133)

When the others were released, he remained in prison, and he stayed there for six months.

Notice also that the implicational relation identiﬁed between the achievement and state senses of understand can also be observed with remain. In particular, a sentence such as He has remained in prison entails (under the perfect of result) the corresponding sentence He remains in prison. Several of the apparently stative verbs that are associated with auxiliary E in Romance can be assimilated to the remain pattern. Clearly

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this is the case with some of the verbs that actually mean ‘remain’. Thus Italian rimanere has an achievement occurrence in (134) and a stative occurrence in (135): (134)

Molti emigrati sono poi tornati in Italia ma milioni sono rimasti all’estero. ‘Many emigrants have since returned to Italy but millions have remained abroad.’

(135)

Rimangono all’estero ancora 3 milioni di vacanzieri italiani. ‘Three million Italian holidaymakers remain abroad.’

As regards (134), under the assumption that sono rimasti is a perfect of result, the appropriate implicational relation obtains between milioni sono rimasti all’estero and the corresponding state clause (136): (136)

Milioni rimangono all’estero. ‘Millions remain abroad.’

Note that not all ‘remain’ verbs can be assimilated to this pattern. Spanish quedar, for example, is more robustly an achievement term. Thus while it translates rimanere as used in (134) – han quedado en el extranjero – it cannot do so when the use is as in (135)/(136): *quedan en el extranjero. Other verbs that ﬁt the ‘remain’ pattern include Italian mancare ‘be missing’ and avanzare ‘be left over’: (137a)

Manca l’acqua nelle case. (State) ‘There is no water supply in the houses.’

(137b)

È mancata l’acqua nelle case. (Achievement) ‘The water supply in the houses has failed.’

(138a)

Avanza della pasta. (State) ‘There is some pasta left over.’

(138b)

È avanzata della pasta. (Achievement) ‘Some pasta has been left over.’

Here again we ﬁnd the appropriate implicational relation. Thus, assuming the perfect of result, the (b) sentences imply the (a) sentences.48 Plausibly, though less obviously, the same analysis can be extended to the verbs piacere ‘please’ and parere ‘seem’. Thus if we again assume

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

the perfect of result, the stative (a) sentences below are implied by the corresponding (b) sentences, and so the relation is analogous to that which obtains between the (a) and (b) sentences for mancare and avanzare: (139a)

Gli piace il dono. ‘He likes the gift.’

(139b)

Gli è piacuto il dono. ‘He liked the gift.’

(140a)

Mi pare una ragazza sensibile. ‘She seems a sensitive girl to me.’

(140b)

Mi è parsa una ragazza sensibile. ‘She seemed a sensitive girl to me.’

Where a state–achievement ambiguity exists, the modern perfect is not incompatible per se with the state sense. Thus in the examples below, the occurrence of the duration phrases introduced by per indicates that the verb is stative: (141)

In Guatemala sono rimasti per un mese. ‘In Guatemala they stayed for one month.’

(142)

È mancata la luce per molte ore. ‘The power was off for many hours.’

(143)

Per molto tempo è parso niente altro che un bel sogno. ‘For a long time it seemed nothing more than a beautiful dream.’

However, an incompatibility with the state sense arises in the speciﬁc instance of the perfect of result, because this necessarily calls for the achievement sense. For example, if sentence (144) below is an instance of the perfect of result (= ‘He remained in bed and is still there’), then this particular occurrence of rimanere must be of the achievement type: (144)

È rimasto a letto. ‘He remained in bed.’

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This follows from the nature of the perfect of result, together with the achievement–state implicational relation described earlier. With ambiguous state–achievement verbs, the effect of the perfect of result is to indicate that a state exists of the type designated by the verb under its stative meaning, but only the achievement sense of the verb in question brings such a state about. It is widely assumed that, at ﬁrst, the Romance perfect was primarily a perfect of result.49 Other functions, for example, those associated with the experiential perfect and the perfect of recent past, were typically effected using the preterite, as in the earlier example (78), reproduced below, and in the examples from note 36, reproduced below as (145) to (147): (78)

Uscicci mai alcuno . . . ? (I IV, 49) ‘Has anyone ever left here?

(145)

Yo, de que fu rrey, non ﬁz mas de dos cortes. (C 3129) ‘Since I became king I have convened only two sessions of the Cortes.’

(146)

Io vidi già cavalier muover campo. (I XXII, 1) ‘I have before now seen horsemen moving camp.’

(147)

Lessiez ester et me dites se vos menjastes hui. (Q 106, 28) ‘Rest and tell me if you have eaten today.’

During the early phase, then, ambiguous state–achievement verbs such as rimanere, mancare, avanzare and so on would normally occur in the perfect only as achievement terms and rarely or never as state terms. This would motivate the assignment of auxiliary E on a categorical or near categorical basis. On the other hand, once the perfect had ceased to be purely (or primarily) a perfect of result, there would be no barrier to stative occurrences of such terms in the perfect. Under the analysis proposed here, the assignment of E in these latter cases would be at variance with the prevailing ‘inherited’ tendency to assign E only to achievement and accomplishment terms.50 The fact that (in the modern languages at least) E is assigned even in these unmotivated cases can be attributed to the process of conventionalization alluded to in 5.6.3, one possible outcome of which is the ﬁ xing of a single auxiliary (in this case E) for all acceptations of a given verb.51 In the particular case of the ‘remain’ verbs, which uniquely among the state terms are associated with E both in Italian and French, an

150

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

early freezing into place of E assignment may have been assisted by the previously common ‘cease’ type of meaning, which is attested across the Romance languages: (148)

maguer era el planto e el duelo quedado (A [Paris ms.] 652a) ‘although the lamenting and mourning had ended/ quietened’

(149)

poi que la voce fu restata e queta (I IV, 82) ‘after the voice had ceased and was still’

(150)

Car li soleilz est remés en estant.52 (R 2459) ‘For the sun has come to a stop.’

5.6.4.2 Verbs that evolved through non-stative meanings Verbs like occorrere and convenire exhibit an aspectual duality that if anything is more striking than that exhibited by rimanere, mancare and so on. In the case of occorrere, E assignment is obviously strongly motivated in examples such as (151) below: (151)

È occorso un errore. ‘An error has occurred.’

The above ‘occur’ acceptation has always existed, with the stative ‘be necessary’ acceptation perhaps developing from the formerly common collocation of occorrere (in the ‘occur’ sense) with the deverbal noun bisogno, as in sequences such as the example below: (152)

se un gran bisogno non mi fosse occorso (Mal 4, 55) ‘if a great need had not occurred’

The ‘occur’ sense is logically more compatible with the perfect of result than is the ‘be necessary’ sense. Therefore a ﬁ xed auxiliary assignment could plausibly have arisen on the basis of the ‘occur’ sense. Turning now to convenire, this verb retains at least two achievement acceptations, as illustrated by the earlier examples (119) and (120), reproduced below: 53 (119)

Il Ministro ha convenuto sulla richiesta delle parti sociali. ‘The minister agreed to the demand of the unions and management.’

Perfect Auxiliary Selection

(120)

151

500 delegati di 20 nazioni sono convenuti a Roma. ‘Five hundred delegates from twenty nations have convened in Rome.’

Moreover, other achievement meanings were formerly common, in particular the ‘occur necessarily’ sense illustrated below: (153)

El s’accese e arse, e cener tutto convenne che cascando divenisse. (I XXIV 101–2) ‘He caught ﬁre and burned and of necessity, falling, became ash.’

As with occorrere, the achievement strand of meaning is commoner in the perfect than is the stative sense (that is, ‘be advantageous’) and so, once again, the assignment of auxiliary E could well reﬂect an early conventionalization based on non-stative meanings. 5.6.4.3 Diachronic meaning shifts A number of state verbs have undergone a signiﬁcant change in their associated semanticism. The verbs in question include bastare ‘sufﬁce’, importare ‘matter’ and stare ‘stay/stand’. Each of these appears to have been primarily an achievement term at an earlier phase in the history of Italian and thus the assignment of auxiliary E is perhaps best explained as a relic of a previous situation. (a) Bastare. This verb and its cognates in Spanish, Catalan and so on were commonly used with achievement meanings that approximated more to those of the etymon, viz. late Latin bastare ‘carry/endure’. As regards Italian bastare, Corominas (1980–91) gives ‘durar’ [‘last’], ‘dar de sí’ [‘last out’] and ‘alcanzar’ [‘reach’] as typical former acceptations. The ‘last’ and ‘reach’ meanings would appear to be illustrated in the examples below: (154)

Per grande spazio bastò il rovinìo delle pietre che cadevano giù. (F 957, 29) ‘The destruction caused by the falling stones reached far and wide.’

(155)

In molte parti [la neve ghiacciata] bastò nella città piu di tre mesi. (V 4, 65) ‘In many parts [the frozen snow] lasted more than three months in the city.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

Note that the phrase piu di tre mesi in (155) is a durational complement as opposed to a durational adjunct. In other words it is not asserted that some state designated by [la neve ghiacciata] bastò endured for more than three months. Rather, bastò . . . piu di tre mesi forms a single achievement term indicating that a certain period, viz. that during which snow was on the ground, exceeded a determinate measure. (b) Importare. In older forms of Italian this was more commonly used in the achievement senses of ‘cost’ or ‘attain’: (156)

Il regalo . . . sarà importato intorno a duemila pezze. (FC 2, 153) ‘The present must have cost around two thousand pieces.’

(157)

Ci’importava lo spazio di sessanta passi. (T 1, 218) ‘It attained a distance of sixty paces.’

Presumably the modern sense of ‘matter’ reﬂects (i) a generalization away from the earlier ﬁnancial/spatial acceptations, and (ii) suppression of the nominal complement. (c) Stare. In addition to the ‘remain’ and ‘stand (up)’ meanings that persist into modern Italian, stare formerly had a variety of meanings related to the concepts of becoming still and not succumbing to external actions: (158)

Non si potenno stare di piangere. (Sette 28) ‘They could not stop crying.’

(159)

Né le campane stavan di suonare. (Cent 84, 17) ‘Even the bells didn’t stop ringing.’

(160)

. . . il quale starà a tutte le pruove (Tra 52) ‘which will withstand all tests’

The ‘stop’ sense is also illustrated in cases such as the example below, where presumably si stanno is an intransitive reﬂexive and stea is transitive: (161)

Se i piè si stanno, non stea tuo sermone. (P XVII, 84) ‘If our feet are stayed, do not stay your speech.’

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(As far as the task of identifying the motivation for E assignment is concerned, reﬂexive intransitive constructions such as si stanno receive an identical treatment to non-reﬂexive intransitive constructions – see 5.6.5 below.) Note that stare and essere merge in the perfect, in that stare supplies the past participle of essere. Thus it may be that the assignment of the perfect auxiliary E to passives is simply a reﬂex of the assignment of auxiliary E to stare, which according to the view developed here is historically motivated, given the earlier predominance of achievement acceptations in this verb’s meaning range. (d) Esistere and appartenere. A similar account to that put forward for bastare, importare and stare may be available for esistere ‘exist’ and appartenere ‘belong to’, although early examples are somewhat inconclusive. The ﬁrst of these verbs is a relatively late borrowing from Latin and therefore is likely to have been used initially with the meaning assigned to its Latin model exsistere. Now Latin exsistere was primarily an achievement term meaning ‘appear/arise’, as in the example below: (162)

Magna inter eos exsistit controversia. (Dicc 183) ‘An argument arose between them.’

Thus it is unlikely that Italian esistere (or indeed its cognates in other languages) was always a state term. As regards appartenere, this, like its Old French cognate apartenir, was formerly widely used in the achievement sense of ‘come to be close/linked to’. Plausibly this achievement acceptation could have been signiﬁcant in conditioning E assignment at an early period. 5.6.4.4 Pseudo-state terms Certain terms masquerade as state terms, but in fact are achievement terms used either with habitual aspect or in a kind of historic present construction. The latter case is illustrated by English turn out in a sentence such as (163) below: (163)

It turns out that they are innocent.

While turn out is in may respects similar to the verb appear, the two differ crucially in terms of their compatibility with duration phrases:

154

(164)

Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

For a few weeks it appeared/*turned out that that they were innocent.

Assuming that duration phrases are possible with state terms but not with achievement or accomplishment terms, turn out must belong to one of the latter classes. Presumably it is not an accomplishment term (compare *It took ﬁve years to turn out that . . .) and although one cannot say, for example, *At that moment it turned out . . ., the event implied in a formulation such as It later turned out that . . . can only be punctual. Now an achievement term like turn out can also be used in habitual sentences such as (165) below: (165)

It frequently turns out that he underperforms.

Notice that in the habitual sense it is possible to apply a duration phrase, as in (166): (166)

For many years underperformed.

it

frequently

turned

out

that

he

But this is not in itself signiﬁcant, given that all achievement and accomplishment terms become compatible with duration phrases when used with habitual meaning: (167)

For six months he arrived on time every day

(168)

For several decades she wrote a book every six months.

Several of the Italian E-selecting verbs are like English turn out. In particular spettare ‘fall to’ patterns in a similar way. Standard examples such as (169) below can be regarded as involving a kind of historic present occurrence of the achievement sense illustrated in (170): (169)

A Nicole spetta la parte da protagonista. ‘Nicole has the lead role.’

(170)

A Nicole è spettata la parte da protagonista. ‘Nicole has been given the lead role.’

Like English turn out, spettare is incompatible with a duration phrase unless it is used with habitual aspect, as in (171) below:

Perfect Auxiliary Selection

(171)

155

Per anni il ruolo è sempre spettato a lui. ‘For years the role has always fallen to him.’

Risultare is analogous to spettare when it means ‘result/turn out’, as in the example below: (172)

Il margine operativo è risultato negativo. ‘The operating proﬁt has turned out to be negative.’

We can assume, then, that in the favoured sense both risultare and spettare are achievement terms. With the weakened meaning of ‘be’, however, risultare becomes fully compatible with duration phrases, implying a stative aspectual classiﬁcation: (173)

Per lungo tempo è risultato imbattibile. ‘For a long time it has been unbeatable.’

Therefore, as with many of the other verbs considered in this section, it has to be assumed that auxiliary assignment at some point became ﬁ xed on the basis of the achievement sense. As in the other cases, the preference is explicable because the perfect of result, which for centuries was effectively the only perfect, is compatible with achievement meanings but not with stative meanings. 5.6.4.5 Concluding remarks on state terms The above brief survey of a number of E-selecting state terms points to several plausible models whereby the auxiliary assignment can be ascribed ultimately to an achievement meaning, following conventionalization at an early period. The driving force in each case is the fact that the perfect of result, which we take to be the basic use throughout much of the Middle Ages, necessarily calls for non-stative (and indeed non-activity) meanings. Firstly, we have the ‘remain’ type of verb, which is systematically ambiguous between an achievement sense and a state sense. With the latter being ruled out in the perfect of result, categorical assignment of auxiliary E at an early period is well motivated. The modern state of affairs would then follow under the assumption that this categoricity persisted even when other uses of the perfect began to be commonplace. A similar model can be advanced for verbs like convenire and occorrere, although in this case the relevant state and achievement meanings are rather sharply differentiated from each other. As regards

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verbs such as stare and bastare, diachronic semantic development appears to obscure an earlier achievement-centered semanticism. Conventionalization based on these core meanings would then produce the modern situation. Finally, the verb risultare can be viewed primarily as an achievement term which, through semantic weakening, acquires the value of a stative copula. Here again the achievement meaning can plausibly be regarded as driving categorical E assignment. 5.6.5 Reﬂexive constructions Turning now to reﬂexive constructions, the pattern of auxiliary assignment here appears to have been driven by the dominant intransitive reﬂexive construction, which arose as a by-product of the disintegration of the Latin passive morphology. As Brambilla Ageno (1964:200) points out, in late Latin the reﬂexive came to be used with ‘i verbi esprimenti un’azione alle quale il soggetto non partecipava ma che subiva soltanto, e il cui agente rimaneva affatto indeterminato’.54 In Classical Latin these verbs exhibit the non-passive use of the ‘passive’ morphology, as in the example below: (174)

Aqua conclusa facile corrumpitur. (Dicc A25) ‘Stagnant water quickly goes bad.’

Here the ‘passive’ third-person singular sufﬁ x -itur applied to the otherwise transitive corrumpere ‘corrupt/adulterate’ indicates that the subject acqua has theme q -role, but not in the sense that it is affected by an agent. Corrumpitur in this instance can be regarded as a kind of ‘intransitive passive’,55 in the way that the corresponding sentence in modern Spanish, for example, involves an ‘intransitive reﬂexive’: (175)

El agua estancada se corrompe fácilmente. ‘Stagnant water quickly goes bad.’

Thus the actual historical process whereby the reﬂexive pronoun was substituted for the passive morphology can to a large extent be regarded as a superﬁcial phenomenon that did not alter the nature of the construction. The Latin ‘intransitive passive’ or middle voice formed its perfect in an identical fashion to the true passive, that is, it used a periphrastic construction involving esse and the past participle of the relevant verb. This pattern persisted even when the passive morphology gave way to the reﬂexive pronoun. However, as mentioned in relation to the earlier

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examples (96) to (101), it was not until centuries later that the reﬂexive pronoun began to be used with the past participle. Thus the history of the perfect of the intransitive reﬂexives can be assimilated to that of the non-reﬂexive E-selecting intransitives discussed in 5.6.1, with apparently the same initial semantic constraint being in force (capability to denote a resultant state). Numerous examples from the early modern corpus conﬁrm this parallel semanticism. Brambilla Ageno (1964, pp. 201–9) provides a copious supply of instances from old Italian: (176)

Per tutti i Cristiani è sparta questa malattia. (Verb: spargersi) (TF 119, 20–1) ‘This sickness has/is spread among all the Christians.’

(177)

Egli ne era fatto ricchissimo. (Verb: farsi) (D 7, 7, 4) ‘As a consequence he had become very rich.’

(178)

la nebbia che era levata in quel padule (Verb: levarsi) (Trec 48, 18) ‘the mist that had risen up in that marsh’

And many similar examples are forthcoming from Old French and Old Spanish too. In some cases, purely intransitive verbs also became reﬂexive in Romance or late Latin, giving rise to the Romance ‘inherent reﬂexives’. As with the verbs just considered, the associated semanticism appears to have been identical to that of the non-reﬂexive E-selecting intransitives: (179)

Ed i miei prossimi son ribellati. (Verb: ribellarsi) (L 67, 46) ‘Those close to me have rebelled/are in rebellion.’

Thus the history of the inherent reﬂexives can also be assimilated to that of the non-reﬂexive E-selecting intransitives. The penultimate piece of the jigsaw involves the attraction of the transitive reﬂexives to the E-selecting paradigm. These are not in general attested in early Romance in the E + past participle periphrasis, presumably because E + transitive past participle normally had a passive interpretation,56 as in the following (relatively late) Italian examples (from Brambilla Ageno 1964, p. 190):

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(180)

Forse m’è costei mandata da Dio. (D 3, 9, 18) ‘Perhaps she has been sent to me by God.’

(181)

Ricorditi del bene che t’è fatto. (Cres 66, 46–7) ‘Remember the good that has been done to you.’

(182)

Non so se v’è contato che . . . (Po 2, 49–50) ‘I don’t know if it has been told to you that . . .’

An analogous situation existed in French, Spanish and so forth (see Pountain 1985). Once the above passive pattern had been replaced by the more modern perfect passive patterns such as Italian essere stato + past participle and French avoir été + past participle, the assimilation of the transitive reﬂexives to the intransitive reﬂexive pattern of perfect formation could proceed unchecked, and this is presumably what happened (see Vincent 1982, pp. 94–6, for a partially similar account). 5.6.6 Impersonal si According to Burzio (1986, p. 43), the clitic si has an impersonal occurrence in any of the following construction types: (183)

Gli si telefona spesso. ‘One phones him often.’

(184)

Si leggerà volentieri alcuni articoli. ‘One will read eagerly a few articles.’

(185)

Alcuni articoli si leggeranno volentieri. ‘A few articles will be read eagerly.’

(186)

Si leggeranno volentieri alcuni articoli. ‘A few articles will be read eagerly.’

Historically speaking, the patterns illustrated by (185) and (186) have an identical origin to the intransitive reﬂexives discussed in 5.6.5. The theoretical division that separates (185) and (186) from intransitive reﬂexives such as (187) below is purely a function of modern grammatical analysis: (187)

Il vetro si rompe. ‘The glass breaks.’

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159

Accordingly, the assignment of auxiliary essere to the impersonal si constructions illustrated by (185) and (186) can receive exactly the same explanation as the assignment of essere to the intransitive reﬂexives. The use of si illustrated by sentences (183) and (184), like the analogous use of Spanish se, is generally regarded as the outcome of a relatively recent development, whereby the reﬂexive pronoun in cases such as (186) was reanalysed as a subject clitic. Alternatively, it may be that the usage has always existed, given that Classical Latin offers numerous precedents (for the (183) type of pattern, at least), assuming the Classical Latin ‘passive’ sufﬁ xes correspond in these cases to reﬂexive pronouns in late Latin or Romance: (188)

Ab hora tertia bibebatur. (Dicc A25) ‘One had been drinking since three o’clock.’

(189)

Legendo discitur. (Dicc A34) ‘By reading one learns.’

Under either view, the construction illustrated by (183) and (184) was at the very least uncommon until the end of the Middle Ages, and so attraction to the highly productive intransitive reﬂexive pattern of perfect formation is entirely unsurprising.

5.7 Conclusion We saw in the ﬁrst part of this chapter that the mere fact that some intransitives select perfect auxiliary E, and in so doing pattern with passives and reﬂexives, does not in itself motivate the assumption that the subjects of such verbs are deep objects. Burzio (and to a lesser extent Cocchi) attempted to identify a property that was common to all of these constructions under the assumption that unaccusative subjects were generated in object position, but the blindness of auxiliary selection to whether the subject is preverbal or postverbal constitutes an insuperable obstacle to that enterprise. The remaining theories are essentially stipulative, in that they do no more than state – albeit within a certain theoretical architecture – that unaccusative verbs select E and unergatives select A. Possibly the stipulative nature of the latter theories could be overlooked if other unaccusative diagnostics deﬁned classes that were iso-

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morphic to the E-selecting class. But the lesson of Chapters 2 to 4 of this book, as well as Chapters 6 and 7 to come, is that such isomorphism is notably absent, both within particular languages and (a fortiori) from the cross-linguistic perspective. Moreover, there are plausible explanations, unreliant on any underlying syntactic analysis, for even the limited degree of convergence noted in the literature. The insistence, then, that auxiliary selection can be explained in terms of the Ergative Analysis or the Unaccusative Hypothesis is somewhat bafﬂing. At best, such approaches simply relabel a problematic area of empirical description. At worst they are a barrier to a genuinely explanatory analysis of the various factors in play. Nevertheless, the view that auxiliary selection can be accounted for in terms of a semantic generalization is also problematic. Clearly, aspect is the crucial semantic parameter in Romance, but in a signiﬁcant minority of cases auxiliary assignment appears to ignore aspectual distinctions assumed to be criterial. By a process of elimination, then, it was surmised that no general synchronic principle governs auxiliary selection. In French it seems fair to say that auxiliary selection is lexically conditioned in the (non-reﬂexive) intransitive class. For example, faced with the two verbs apparaître ‘appear’ and disparaître ‘disappear’, no non-stipulative principle can predict that the former is assigned E and the latter A. The situation in Italian is rather less straightforward, in that both lexical and semantic conditioning appear to co-exist, and the latter is partly fragmented into a range of subregularities. However, the view advanced in this chapter was that this complex and unordered situation could in principle result from the uneven effects of linguistic change upon a once transparent system. Thus it was argued that a window is likely to have existed in late Latin or early Romance for the creation of just such a system, with the erstwhile deponent/passive perfect auxiliary recycling itself as a copula. While no direct conﬁrmation of such a development can in principle be forthcoming, given that the early examples never unambiguously call for a single analysis, the treatment of the embryonic ‘perfect auxiliary’ E as a copula is supported by the high frequency of the resultant-state type of meaning during the Middle Ages, together with the otherwise mysterious distribution of the preterite and the imperfect within the E + past participle construction and the adjective-like nature of the past participle of reﬂexive verbs. Assuming the correctness of the copular analysis, the aspectual constraints that are imperfectly manifested in the modern distribution of

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161

the E and A auxiliaries are immediately accounted for. The copular analysis implies that, at the initial stage (late Latin/early Romance) only achievement and accomplishment terms could occur in the E + past participle construction. At this stage, then, the semantic principle underlying E assignment can be assumed to have been completely transparent. The modern, fragmented, situation can then be derived by assuming a process of conventionalization, whereby speciﬁc au xiliary assignments became categorically associated with speciﬁc verbs or with speciﬁc strands of meaning within the overall semanticism of given verbs, without the emergence of any general organizing principle. It was argued that stative verbs were a case in point, given that E assignment to states is unmotivated under the analysis just sketched. It was shown that many state terms are in fact systematically ambiguous between state and achievement senses, while others formerly had achievement senses that have now been lost. Therefore, in view of the systematic exclusion of stative verbs from the perfect of result, widely assumed to have been the primary instantiation of the perfect in the Middle Ages, E assignment to the verbs in question is at ﬁrst strongly motivated. Plausibly, then, E assignment to state terms in the modern era can be regarded as the outcome of a process of conventionalization, whereby an initially motivated pattern of assignment ceased to be sensitive to relevant semantic distinctions, and the auxiliary came to be assigned on a lexical (or quasi-lexical) basis. As regards reﬂexives and the related impersonal si construction, it was argued that the intransitive reﬂexives, descended from the Latin middles, had an analogous semanticism to the E-selecting non-reﬂexive intransitives and that this accounted for their occurrence in the E + past participle construction. E assignment to transitive reﬂexives and the impersonal si construction can then be viewed as the outcome of the familiar process of attraction. To sum up, then, the modern distribution of the perfect auxiliaries appears to reﬂect the operation of a number of long-term historical processes. While these have not entirely obliterated the original semantic basis for auxiliary assignment, they have created a degree of arbitrariness within the modern situation that will always resist analysis in terms of a ﬁnite set of general principles. Accordingly, any strictly synchronic theory will always be incomplete from the explanatory point of view.

6 Past Participle Agreement

6.1 The basic patterns Past participle agreement phenomena are widespread in Romance. Although the picture is somewhat fragmented when all the various Romance dialects are taken into consideration,1 certain basic trends are readily observable across the standard languages, and it is these that have provided the essential data feeding into the participle agreement diagnostic for unaccusativity. We can note ﬁrst of all that participle agreement in the perfect is typically impoverished or completely absent in those languages that have lost perfect auxiliary E.2 In Spanish, for example, which now has only the A auxiliary, the past participle is invariable in the perfect: (1)

María ha salido. ‘María has gone out.’

(2)

Las hemos comprado. ‘We have bought them.’

In contrast, Italian and French, which both retain the E auxiliary, show participle agreement in the perfect in broadly similar circumstances. These are as follows: With E-selecting intransitives (including intransitive reﬂexives): (3)

Maria è uscita. (It.) ‘Maria has gone out.’

(4)

La sala si è svuotata. (It.) ‘The hall emptied.’ 162

Past Participle Agreement

(5)

Marie est sortie. (Fr.) ‘Marie has gone out.’

(6)

La porte s’est ouverte. (Fr.) ‘The door opened.’

163

With transitive reﬂexive constructions (including reciprocals): (7)

La tigre si è leccata. (It.) ‘The tiger licked itself.’

(8)

Les soldats se sont tués. (Fr.) ‘The soldiers killed each other.’

With direct object cliticization: 3 (9)

Giovanni la ha accusata. (It.) ‘Giovanni has accused her.’

(10)

Je les ai achetés. (Fr.) ‘I have bought them.’

A language like Catalan occupies an intermediate position in terms of the two poles established by the Italian/French pattern and the Spanish pattern, in that while it has lost the E auxiliary (in standard varieties at least) it retains optional agreement under direct object cliticization, but only in the third person: 4 (11)

L’havia comprada feia uns anys. ‘He had bought it some years previously.’

Unlike perfect-related participle agreement, passive-related participle agreement occurs uniformly, regardless of whether E has been retained as a perfect auxiliary: (12)

Due persone furono ferite. (It.) ‘Two people were injured.’

(13)

Dos personas fueron heridas. (Sp.) ‘Two people were injured.’

(14)

Dues persones van ser ferides. (Cat.) ‘Two people were injured.’

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Unaccusative Verbs in Romance Languages

6.2 Agreement by movement Under widely (though not universally) held assumptions, the subjects in (3) to (6) and (12) to (14), as well as the clitics in (7) to (11), are analysed as having moved from the direct object position (that is, the structural position in which the direct object originates or externally ‘merges’).5 Superﬁcially at least, this suggests that participle agreement is in some sense connected to direct object movement (although the absence of participle agreement in the Spanish examples (1) and (2) would immediately imply a degree of cross-linguistic variation in this regard). Moreover, such a view is reinforced by the possibility in French of participle agreement in the perfect being triggered by wh-movement, again from direct object position: (15)

Voilà les sottises que Jean n’aurait jamais faites. (Belletti 2001, 2.2) ‘These are the stupid things that Jean would never have done.’

An early approximation to the perspective just sketched is enshrined in Burzio’s (1986:56) pioneering account of participle agreement in the Italian perfect. There a binding relation is posited between the item triggering agreement and the direct object position. Thus the participle agreement manifested in the case of E-selecting intransitives, assumed to be unaccusative, was claimed to result from a binding relation established between the subject and its trace (located, by hypothesis, in direct object position), while the agreement manifested in the cases of transitive reﬂexives and constructions involving (non-reﬂexive) direct object clitics was claimed to result from a binding relation between the clitic and an empty category in direct object position.6 Later approaches, essentially starting with Kayne (1989) have attempted to establish a symmetry between participle agreement and subject–verb agreement. Given that the latter has, until recently at least, been assumed to be the reﬂex of a spec–head relation established inside a ‘high’ subject agreement projection, authors such as Belletti (2001) have claimed that past participle agreement is obtained through a spec–head relation in a ‘low’ participle agreement projection. Assuming the direct object has access to the speciﬁer of this projection, the pattern of apparently direct object-triggered participle agreement discussed above is thus naturally derived. The impossibility of agreement between the subject and the participle when the auxiliary is A is also

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165

derived, under the further assumption that the participle agreement projection is located lower than the base position of the subject of Aselecting verbs. Both the Burzio-style analysis in terms of a binding relation and the Belletti-style analysis in terms of a spec–head relation clearly require the subject of an unaccusative to be generated in a low position, by hypothesis the direct object position. Therefore, if either of those analytical approaches is correct, so too is the ergative analysis of unaccusative verbs. From that perspective, past participle agreement phenomena can be seen as providing indirect support for the latter analysis.

6.3 The problem of postverbal subjects However, while the uniﬁed perspective offered by the approaches discussed in 6.2 has a certain attraction, it is arguable that this apparent unity conceals a major ﬂaw. This relates to the case in which the subject is postverbal and the auxiliary is E.7 Notice ﬁrst that the participle systematically agrees with the subject in this type of case: (16)

Sono arrivate/*arrivato molte lettere. (It.) ‘Many letters have arrived.’

(17)

Le silence se ﬁt. Alors sont entrés/*entré deux hommes.8 (Fr.) ‘There was silence. Then two men entered.’

In Burzio’s original account (1986, pp. 98–9), the above pattern of participle agreement was claimed to be triggered by a binding relation between a null expletive in the preverbal subject position and the postverbal subject. However, as detailed in 5.2, an expletive–associate binding relation of this sort is unmotivated within current theoretical frameworks and in any case has always been at variance with the principles of binding theory. In more recent accounts, where object movement is identiﬁed as the trigger for participle agreement, the problem posed by cases such as (16) and (17) is if anything more acute. This is because, under most standard analyses, the subjects of such sentences are licensed in situ and undergo no movement. In Belletti’s partitive/ inherent case framework, this hypothesis is implemented by assuming that a VP-internal case position is systematically available for indeﬁnite unaccusative subjects (see Belletti 1999, p. 34). Alternatively, in theories in which postverbal unaccusative subjects are assumed to have nominative case, they naturally fall within the scope of the ‘long-distance

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agreement’ analytical paradigm associated prototypically with Englishstyle expletive associates. Within Chomsky’s probe-goal version of this approach, c-command is taken to be a sufﬁcient conﬁgurational condition for a (feature-checking) agreement relation to be established. Accordingly, an expletive associate (hence, by implication, a postverbal unaccusative subject also) is licensed in its (external) merge site, through agreement with the abstract T(ense) constituent, which c-commands it (see Chomsky 2000, p. 123). We see, then, that while movement of the agreement-determining item is a prerequisite for past participle agreement according to the agreement-by-movement theory, cases such as (16) and (17) show that such agreement can occur even when mainstream theory implies that no relevant movement has taken place. Moreover, analogous difﬁculties presumably affect postverbal passive subjects also. Here too the auxiliary is E and here too the past participle systematically agrees with the subject. If the subject is in situ, no such agreement is expected under the agreement-by-movement theory. (18)

Furono catturati/*catturato quattro presunti membri dell’Eta. (It.) ‘Four suspected members of ETA were captured.’

(19)

Han sido demolidas/*demolido tres casas. (Sp.) ‘Three houses have been demolished.’

The unexpected pattern of subject–participle agreement illustrated by (16) to (19) contrasts rather starkly with the notable absence of object–participle agreement in cases such as the following: 9 (20)

Hanno arrestato/*arrestate due persone. (It.) ‘They have arrested two people.’

(21)

Ils ont fait/*faites des recherches. (Fr.) ‘They have done some research.’

In some respects, participle agreement here might seem to be more likely (under the agreement-by-movement theory) than in the type of case illustrated by (16) to (19). A number of frameworks assume movement of a direct object out of its base position to a case-checking position in which accusative case can be licensed. Now some authors at least assume this position to be relatively high. Thus Bennis (2004, pp. 86–7) identiﬁes it with the outer speciﬁer of vp, while Belletti (2004)

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167

assumes it to be above the position in which postverbal unergative/transitive subjects are licensed,10 implying that it would be above vp in a vp-shell type of analysis. On the other hand, according to Belletti (2001), the participle agreement projection (responsible for agreement on the past participle) is relatively low, below the base position of an unergative/transitive subject. Taken together, assumptions such as these imply that the case-checking position for a direct object is in fact above the agreement projection responsible for past participle agreement (although see Richards (1998, p. 624) for the reverse hypothesis). Accordingly, these assumptions might well be taken to imply that a full direct object such as those shown in (20) and (21) has the capability to pass through the participle agreement projection (and hence trigger past participle agreement) on the way to its case-checking position. Speaking more generally, we can note that both the agreement-bymovement theory of past participle agreement and Burzio’s original formulation in terms of binding represent attempts to assimilate various superﬁcially distinct participle agreement patterns to a single underlying mechanism. However, the implication of the foregoing discussion is that the theoretical mechanisms enshrined in these approaches appear, in a signiﬁcant subset of cases, to be irrelevant to the observable agreement phenomena. The most telling case is that in which there is systematic agreement between the subject and the participle whenever the auxiliary is E. Such agreement is manifestly blind as to whether the subject is preverbal or postverbal, whereas both the agreement-bymovement theory and Burzio’s theory can only predict agreement with any plausibility when the subject is preverbal. In fact, from the synchronic perspective, there would appear to be two irreconcilable systems of past participle agreement. On the one hand, we have the case in which the participle agrees only with items that by hypothesis have moved (that is, clitics and wh-words), and on the other hand, we have the case in which the participle agrees with items regardless of whether they have moved (that is, subjects). Given this fundamental fault line cutting across the distribution of past participle agreement, no single principle can be expected to have general applicability. Now if this is the case, the participle agreement phenomena cease to count as evidence for the ergative analysis of unaccusative verbs. The view that such phenomena were evidence for that analysis was based on the argument that a uniﬁed account of past participle agreement could only be achieved under the assumption that the subjects of E-selecting intransitives are ‘deep’ objects. However, it turns out that no uniﬁed account can be given even if that assumption is accepted.

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I conclude, then, that past participle agreement phenomena do not motivate the ergative analysis of unaccusative verbs.11

6.4 Fragmentation of the system The major ﬁnding of the previous section is that participle agreement phenomena in Romance do not constitute a uniﬁed system. Such a conclusion might seem to be in some sense ‘untidy’, but there is no obvious beneﬁt from positing generalizations that do not in reality correspond to the observable facts. Moreover, as with the distribution of the perfect auxiliaries discussed in Chapter 5, the modern fragmented state of affairs can plausibly be argued to stem historically from a genuinely uniﬁed pattern. This unity results in part from the trivalent functionality of the late Latin or early Romance E + past participle construction, which could be related to a non-reﬂexive intransitive (mortuus est ‘has died’), to a reﬂexive intransitive (dissolutus est ‘has dissolved’, from reﬂexive se dissolvere), or to a passive (factus est ‘is done/has been done’).12 In each case the E verb can be analysed as a copula selecting a participial small clause, out of which the argument of the participle may or may not raise to the high preverbal subject position. The latter optionality is apparent in comparable constructions in modern Romance, such as the Spanish estar + past participle construction: (22)

Está [ SC hecha la cama.] ‘The bed is made.’

(23)

La cama está [ SC hecha]. ‘The bed is made.’

Now as discussed in 5.6.1, the A + past participle construction initially receives a similar analysis, with the difference that the participle’s argument is never required to raise out of the small clause. This can be illustrated with the following Latin example from Cicero, cited in Vincent (1982) p. 82, where pecunias magnas remains within the small clause: (24)

[ SC In ea provincia pecunias magnas collocatas] habent. ‘They have much money invested in that province.’

A single rule of past participle agreement can then be seen to govern all of the possible cases at this early stage. We simply assume that the

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participle agrees with its argument.13 This entails that the participle will agree with the object of the ﬁnite verb when this is A and with the subject of the ﬁnite verb when this is E (the latter may occupy either a high preverbal position or remain in the small clause). The A type of agreement is illustrated by collocatas in (24) above, while the E type is illustrated by migrati in the sequence below, extracted from a medieval Latin example (Menéndez Pidal 1926, p. 33): (25)

migrati sunt de hoc sec(u)lo a sa(n)cta Maria ‘[they] have gone from this world to saint Mary’

This system persisted into Romance and is well-documented in the standard philological works. The important point from the current perspective is the pattern of erosion of this system, which gives rise to the modern fragmented situation. In fact, the erosion affects primarily the A type of agreement, given that the E type survives largely intact in the modern languages, modulo (i) the reanalysis of E as a perfect auxiliary and (ii) the loss of this auxiliary in some languages.14 Presumably the robustness of the E type of agreement results from the powerful analogy exercised by the agreement pattern in standard adjectival small clause complements of E (for example, Maria è malata ‘Maria is ill’). The retrenchment of the A type of agreement is a natural concomitant of the grammaticalization of A + past participle as an exponent of the perfect, under which the A verb was reanalysed as an auxiliary (as opposed to a full verb, as in (24) above). The modern pattern of A-type agreement in Italian, French, Catalan and so forth, whereby agreement tends to occur when the direct object occupies a relatively high position, appears to represent an intermediate stage in the historical trajectory towards eventual elimination. This is suggested by the fact that languages in which the A type of agreement has been completely lost typically pass through a stage at which such agreement is largely conﬁned to cases involving ‘high’ objects. For example, while agreement under A occurs only inconsistently in the medieval Spanish corpus, a higher level of consistency is apparent under topicalization, cliticization or relativization of the direct object, all of which processes involve placing the agreement-triggering nominal to the left of the auxiliary: (26)

Una tienda á dexada (C 582) ‘One tent he has left.’

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(27)

El agua nos an vedada. (C 667) ‘The water they have cut off.’

(28)

Los de Valençia çercados nos han. (C 1119) ‘The people of Valencia have surrounded us.’

(29)

Tierras de Borriana todas conquistas las ha. (C 1093) ‘The lands of Burriana he has conquered.’

(30)

aquéllas que avién dexadas (C 929) ‘those they had left behind’

(31)

la ganançia que han fecha (C 1084) ‘the booty they have made’

Presumably, when the direct object is ‘high’ this obscures the reanalysis of the A verb as perfect auxiliary, thus braking the historical process towards the complete elimination of A-type agreement. In languages like Spanish and Portuguese this process reached completion at a comparatively early period. For Italian, French, Catalan and so on, it has to be assumed that the high object pattern of agreement was sufﬁciently robust to withstand the general eliminatory pressure. In the modern languages, maintenance of vestigial A-type agreement is assisted by standardization. Note in particular the normative French rule of ‘the preceding direct object’, which according to Togeby (1974, p. 189) can be attributed to a single individual, the sixteenth century poet Marot, himself apparently inspired by Italian formulations such as Dio noi a fatti ‘God has made us’.15 Thus the rather untidy modern situation concerning past participle agreement can receive a natural explanation in terms of the operation of long-term processes of linguistic change upon an initially simple system. Where these processes have reached a natural terminus, as in Spanish and Portuguese, participle agreement has reacquired the transparency of the early Romance system. Where these processes are only partially complete, as in most of the other Romance languages, participle agreement becomes inconsistent and often optional, both classic symptoms of a system in transition.

6.5 Conclusion The adoption of the deep-object analysis of unaccusative subjects enables a superﬁcial unity to be imposed on the otherwise fragmented system of Romance past participle agreement. Under this analysis, all

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participle agreement is object-related and is triggered by movement of the object through a relevant agreement projection. The problem for this approach is that agreement in many cases occurs regardless of whether movement can be claimed to have occurred. This suggests that the agreement-by-movement analysis is essentially incorrect. The view adopted here is that the modern situation is irreducibly split, although this has not always been the case. Plausibly it can be assumed that past participle agreement originally followed a maximally simple principle, whereby the participle agreed with its argument in the participial small clause. Given the availability of raising-to-subject with E but not A, this in effect entailed subject–participle agreement in the case of the former and object–participle agreement in the case of the latter. Reanalysis of the E and A verbs as perfect auxiliaries might well have been predicted to eliminate perfect-related participle agreement altogether. However, presumably on account of analogical pressure exercised by passives and copular constructions, assisted no doubt in the modern era by the forces of standardization, the E type of agreement pattern has remained largely intact. In contrast, the erosion of the A type has been far reaching. The scattered and rather inconsistent examples of A-type agreement that are observable in the contemporary languages appear to bear some similarity to patterns that existed in medieval Ibero-Romance prior to complete elimination of this type, with agreement proving most robust in relation to ‘high’ objects. Plausibly, then, the current situation as regards A in languages like French, Catalan and Italian represents merely one synchronic phase within a long-term diachronic process of change.

7 Participial Absolutes

7.1 The basic data The participial absolute diagnostic for unaccusativity relates to a subset of small clause-type constructions involving past participles. The context that apparently discriminates between unaccusatives and unergatives is that in which the past participle co-occurs and agrees with a lexical subject in the same clause. The illustrations below are from Spanish and Italian: (1)

Salidos los padres jesuitas, Colombia prometió a Ecuador ‘una paz permanente’. ‘With the Jesuit Fathers having left, Colombia promised Ecuador “a permanent peace”.’

(2)

*Jugados los niños, el césped estaba muy deterioriado. ‘The children having played, the lawn was in a bad condition.’

(3)

Appena uscita la nuova versione mi sono catapultato ad acquistarla. ‘Hardly had the new version come out, I rushed to buy it.’

(4)

*Telefonata Maria, Gianni andò all’ appuntamento. ‘Maria having phoned, Gianni went to his appointment.’

Perlmutter (1989) originally implied (in respect of Italian) that unergatives could not occur at all in participial absolutes. However, as recognized by Dini (1994) and Loporcaro (2003), they are not in principle excluded when there is no overt subject within the participial clause:1 172

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(5)

Telefonato a Gianni, Mariai uscì di casa. (Belletti 1992, p. 44) ‘Having phoned Gianni, Maria left the house.’

(6)

Vendemmiato, i contadini lasciarono il paese. (Loporcaro 2003, p. 214) ‘Having harvested, the farmers left the town.’

(7)

Bussato alla porta, Gianni entrò. (Loporcaro 2003, p. 220) ‘Having knocked at the door, Gianni went in.’

A similar possibility exists in other Romance languages such as Spanish and Catalan: (8)

Una vez concursado se marchan sin quedarse a aplaudir a los de la categoría abierta. ‘Once they’ve competed, they leave and don’t stay around to applaud contestants in the open category.’

(9)

El green haurà de ser inmediatament abandonat una vegada jugat.2 ‘The green must be vacated immediately after playing.’

Thus the participial absolutes diagnostic for unaccusativity reduces to the claim that overt unergative subjects cannot occur in participial absolutes. In fact, I will show below that in some cases they can and that the apparently impossible pattern illustrated by (2) and (4) is not impossible for all unergative verbs. However, before looking at the relevant data, I think it can be argued that there is no theoretical reason for assuming unergative subjects to be excluded from participial clauses.

7.2 Structural analyses of participial absolutes Within the Relational Grammar framework, as exempliﬁed by Perlmutter (1989) and Loporcaro (2003) the assumed exclusion of unergative subjects is derived by stipulating that the nominal in a participial absolute must be an initial 2, that is, a ‘deep’ direct object. Presumably, the correctness or otherwise of this stipulation is essentially an empirical matter, and so does not motivate in a theoretical sense the exclusion in question. Within Generative Grammar, the emphasis has been on deriving the exclusion from general principles. Within that framework there appear to be two basic mechanisms for securing it.

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7.2.1 Blocking subject q -role Firstly, Burzio (1986, pp. 151–2, 191) and others have argued that the past participle morphology prevents the licensing of subject q -role in perfective participle constructions, as is assumed to happen in passive constructions.3 This implies, assuming that subject q -role is the only possibility for the subject of an unergative, that a participial clause based on an unergative could not in principle have a subject. Such a state of affairs would rule out cases such as (2) and (4), but not cases such as (1) and (3), where by hypothesis the subject has object q -role.4 Note, however, that the kind of structure illustrated by (5) to (8) would also be ruled out, given that the control relation exhibited by the matrix subject implies the existence of a covert PRO subject within the clause. It was precisely on these grounds that Burzio (1986:151, 190) ruled out the possibility of unergatives in participial reduced relatives. Thus he attributed the deviancy of the example below to the inability of unergative applied to license subject q -role, which meant that no PRO subject could be available within the participial clause for control by the matrix subject a student: (10)

*A student [ SC applied to the program] arrived yesterday. (Burzio 1986, p. 190)

Given the general recognition that structures such as (5) to (9) are in fact possible, the subject q role-suppression analysis of perfective past participles immediately looks suspect. It looks even more so in the light of two other types of data. Firstly, it appears that transitive verbs in Italian can have active (that is, nonpassive) occurrences in participial clauses, as indicated by the overt accusative case on me in the example below: (11)

Conosciuta me, hai cominciato ad apprezzare il mare. (Belletti 1992, p. 32) ‘Having met me, you started liking the seaside.’

Secondly, at least some unergative past participles appear to be possible in secondary predicate-type constructions, as illustrated below: (12)

Anzi avevo imparato la sottile arte di presentarmi alle cene già cenata. ‘In fact I had learned the subtle art of appearing at dinners already having dined.’

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(13)

175

O ci andate già mangiati, solo per vedere la partita . . . oppure è meglio stare alla larga. ‘You either go there having already eaten, just to watch the match . . . otherwise it’s best to stay away.’

Belletti analyses sentences such as (11) as control structures, with a PRO subject inside the participial clause. If that analysis is correct, it conﬁrms that subject q -role can be licensed in the presence of past participle morphology. The participial clauses in (12) and (13) might in principle receive a similar type of analysis, that is, as involving a PRO subject, or they could be analysed as involving externalization of the subject as is often assumed in copular constructions. Either way, a conclusion to the effect that subject q -role is licensed appears to be unavoidable. Thus there are several cases that appear to falsify the assumption that perfective participles cannot license subject q -role. Accordingly, no theoretical exclusion of unergative subjects from participial absolutes based on that assumption need be regarded as compelling. 7.2.2 Failures of case The second of the two theoretical devices for securing the exclusion in question stems from Belletti’s (1990, 1992) study of agreement and case in Italian past participle clauses. In broad terms, she envisaged two possible types of structure for such clauses, one consisting in an agreement phrase of the sort posited in accounts of past participle agreement and one constituting a full CP (complementizer phrase). The primary exemplar of the ﬁrst pattern was the active transitive clause, illustrated by Salutata Maria in (14) below: 5 (14)

[AGRP PROi Salutataj t j Maria], Giannii se ne andò. ‘Having greeted Maria, Gianni left.’

In this type of case, Belletti assumed a covert PRO subject in the specAgrP position, with the past participle in the Agr position (after verb raising), and the object in its original position as complement of the verb. The CP paradigm is instantiated by unaccusative clauses, as in (15) below: (15)

[ CP Arrivatai [AGRP Mariaj ti t j ]], Gianni tirò un sospiro di sollievo. ‘Maria having arrived, Gianni gave a sigh of relief.’

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Belletti analysed the unaccusative subject as raising to the spec-AgrP position and the past participle as raising even higher, to C, assumed by Belletti to be a position from which nominative case could be licensed on the subject. Participial clauses involving an unergative verb without an overt subject were then assimilated to the transitive paradigm (p. 44): 6 (16)

[AGRP PROi Telefonatoj t j a Gianni], Mariai uscì di casa. ‘Having phoned Gianni, Maria left the house.’

Belletti derived the assumed exclusion of unergative subjects by showing (pp. 38–9) that a participial clause containing an unergative with an overt subject would be incompatible with both of her two main analytical paradigms. Incompatibility with the transitive paradigm followed from the supposition that the unergative subject would not be case-marked. Belletti had argued (p. 36) that the object in the transitive construction was case-marked through agreement, but she assumed agreement between an unergative and its subject, as in (17) below, was systematically impossible:7 (17)

*Telefonata Maria, . . . ‘Maria having telephoned, . . .’

Incompatibility with the unaccusative paradigm was derived by assuming that unergative past participles were case-marked (speciﬁcally, with accusative case). By hypothesis, the C position to which Belletti analysed unaccusative past participles as raising was a case position (speciﬁcally, a nominative case position). Thus the analogous raising of an unergative past participle would, Belletti argued, entail a case conﬂict, under the assumption that (structurally) case-marked elements could not move to a case position. This latter assumption was itself derived from Chomsky’s (1986a) chain condition, which stated that every chain must contain exactly one q -marked position and exactly one case-marked position. We can probably accept without further question Belletti’s claim that a participial clause with an unergative subject would in principle be incompatible with the analytical paradigm put forward for transitives. The lexical argument of an unergative is at no stage a complement and so the head–complement agreement pattern observable in the standard transitive case clearly could never exist. However, were it not for the alleged case conﬂict, it might well be supposed that unergative subjects

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could be accommodated along similar lines to unaccusative subjects, modulo the assumed lower initial position of the latter. Now the case-conﬂict analysis proposed by Belletti is crucially dependent on the assumption that unergative verbs are licensers of accusative case, which Belletti argued (1992, p. 38) was taken up or received by the past participle morphology attaching to unergative past participles. The assumption in question is due to Burzio (1986, pp. 184–5) and has been widely adopted in the literature (see, for example, Levin and Rappaport Havav 1995). However, the logic behind it is somewhat mysterious. To demonstrate this, I reproduce the key argument from Burzio below (in the text cited, the phrase ‘the statement in (22)’ refers to the statement that all assigners of subject q -role are potential assigners of accusative case, and the notation ‘-q s’ means ‘does not assign subject q -role’): The statement in (22) is also true, though this time true necessarily, for precise theoretical reasons. Consider the case of a verb which takes the direct object but does not assign Case to it. This verb will have to fail to assign q -role to the subject position, since the only two possibilities for such a direct object to receive Case will be: (i) that it be linked with a non-argument subject; 8 (ii) that it move into subject position. Both possibilities require -q s. (Burzio 1986, p. 184) Notice that the argumentation refers only to verbs that take a direct object (understood as the complement of the verb). Now strictly speaking such verbs are transitive. Unergatives, in contrast, are intransitive. Therefore, on the face of it, the above line of reasoning does not affect the position of unergatives. Nevertheless, much has been made of the possibility of unergatives appearing with ‘expletive’ objects (He slept the sleep of the just and so forth), which has been claimed to show that unergatives can appear with direct objects. However, if such items really are direct objects, then logically the verb must be deemed to have a transitive occurrence rather than an unergative occurrence and the situation would then be analogous to that of verbs that can be either transitive or unaccusative (for example, John opened the door versus The door opened). On the other hand, if expletive objects are not really direct objects, then the possibility of assigning accusative case does not arise. Under either interpretation of the data, there is no obvious motive for assuming that verbs that have an unergative argument structure must be capable of licensing accusative case.

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If the above train of thought is correct, there is no reason to assume that unergative past participles are case-marked, hence no reason to assume that a case conﬂict would necessarily arise were an unergative verb to raise in the manner posited for unaccusatives. By the same token, Belletti’s theoretical derivation of the assumed exclusion of unergative subjects from participial absolutes need not be regarded as compelling. The question then is whether, as a matter of empirical fact, unergative subjects do occur in this type of structure.

7.3 Unergative subjects in participial absolutes The answer to this appears to be that they do, although the possibility is conﬁned to a subset of the unergative class (examples below from Italian and Spanish): 9,10 (18)

Abdicata la regina, la popolazione si rivoltò contro il nuovo governo. ‘The queen having abdicated, the people rebelled against the new government.’

(19)

Una volta attecchito il tappeto erboso, il grigliato è quasi non visibile. ‘Once the turf has taken root, the grating is almost invisible.’

(20)

Una volta bollito il brodo, immergerci la zucca in pezzetti. ‘Once the broth has boiled, immerse the chopped pumpkin.’

(21)

Tracimato il Lago Maggiore, straripano il Seveso e il Lambro a Milano. ‘With lake Maggiore having overﬂowed, the Seveso and the Lambro in Milan ﬂood.’

(22)

Triunfados los rebeldes en el norte, el gobierno ya no podía garantizar la seguridad de la capital. ‘With the rebels having triumphed in the north, the government could no longer guarantee the security of the capital.’

(23)

Cenados los niños, salimos al cine. ‘With the children having had supper, we went out to the cinema.’

(24)

Recién abdicado el rey Carlos IV tras el motín de Aranjuez . . . el joven monarca Fernando VII fue acogido verdaderamente como El Deseado por sus súbditos. (José Gella Iturriaga)

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‘With King Carlos IV recently abdicated after the Aranjuez mutiny . . . the young monarch Fernando VII was welcomed truly as El Deseado [The Desired] by his subjects.’ Thus, in addition to the ﬁnding in section 7.2 that there is no compelling syntactic motive for assuming unergative subjects to be incapable of occurring in participial absolutes, we now have factual evidence instantiating precisely this possibility. A reasonable conclusion, then, is that the hypothesized syntactic distinction between unergatives and unaccusatives is not relevant to the ability of a verb to co-occur with its subject in a participial absolute. This conclusion leaves unexplained the undeniable unergative–unaccusative asymmetry in terms of overall productivity in the construction under consideration. However, as is well known, this construction is associated with a pragmatic requirement that the participial clause indicate a resultant state, which is then a factor in conditioning the relevance of the matrix clause. This requirement, assuming that neither activities nor states give rise to resultant states in this sense, in effect means that the verb supplying the past participle must be an achievement or accomplishment term, or a state term functioning as an achievement term, as in the example with rimanere ‘remain’ below: (25)

Sposatosi il ﬁglio, tornato libero dalla prigionia, e rimasto paralizzato il marito, Francesca nel 1425 con un gruppo di tredici amiche pronunciò la formula di oblazione dei monaci di S. Maria Nova. (Franco Rossi) ‘With her son married, having returned from captivity, and her husband having been paralysed, Francesca in 1425 with a group of thirteen friends uttered the oblation of the order of Santa Maria Nova.’

As noted in many places, intransitive achievement, accomplishment and state verbs are liable to be classiﬁed as unaccusative, particularly in Italian, where the majority of such verbs are assigned perfect auxiliary essere (see Van Valin 1990). Thus unaccusatives are likely to satisfy the aspectual criterion for occurrence in the participle + overt subject construction. In contrast, unergatives more often than not are activity terms, and hence are likely to be unsuitable. The unergative– unaccusative asymmetry thus falls out straightforwardly from the aspectual composition of the two classes.

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Notice that the PRO type of construction illustrated by (5) to (9) does not appear to be subject in principle to any overriding aspectual requirement. For in this case, the occurrence of activity verbs is unproblematic (examples from Spanish and Italian): (26)

Residido tanto tiempo en exterior, había perdido su sentido de identidad cultural. ‘Having resided abroad for so long, he had lost his sense of cultural identity.’

(27)

Trastullatasi a lungo, Maria rientrò inﬁne a casa. (Loporcaro 2003, p. 221) ‘Having amused herself (idly), Maria eventually went back home.’

As was observed in 7.1, the capability to appear in the PRO construction is not in principle an unaccusative diagnostic. Concerning the two examples above, I assume residir is unergative11 while trastullarsi is presumably unaccusative (speciﬁcally, an inherent reﬂexive in the sense of Burzio 1986).

7.4 Conclusion The picture that emerges from a review of the participial absolutes diagnostic broadly replicates what has been found in the previous chapters in connection with the other unaccusative diagnostics. Thus there appears to be no real theoretical imperative for assuming that unergative verbs cannot appear in the construction in question and, moreover, data can be identiﬁed that fail to pattern as expected if that assumption is adopted. Concerning the theoretical imperative, we have seen in this chapter that the hypothesis that the past participle morphology systematically blocks the assignment of subject q -role is falsiﬁed by the occurrence of unergatives and active transitives in the PRO type of participial construction. The hypothesis that unergatives are licensers of accusative case was also shown to be improperly motivated. On the basis of the latter ﬁnding, I concluded that there is no reason in principle for a case conﬂict to arise if an unergative subject is overt in a participial absolute, as has been claimed by Belletti. In fact, examples illustrating just that possibility are forthcoming. These are statistically much less frequent than examples with unaccusa-

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tives, but this frequency asymmetry can plausibly be attributed to a resultant-state constraint on absolute participial clauses containing overt subjects. As noted in Chapter 5, resultant-state meanings derive exclusively from verbs in the achievement and accomplishment aspectual classes. Therefore, given that the bulk of the achievement and accomplishment terms are classiﬁed as unaccusative, it is unsurprising that the asymmetry in question should favour unaccusatives.

8 Conclusion

This book began with a summary of the main empirical evidence in Romance for the establishment of an unaccusative–unergative dichotomy within the class of intransitive verbs, together with an overview of the various theoretical analyses that have been brought to bear. Both the empirical evidence and the associated theories have now been reviewed, and a number of common themes have emerged. Firstly, it turns out that no compelling link can be identiﬁed between the empirical data and the basic theory according to which unaccusative subjects are deep objects. Concerning expletive associates, for example, there is no particular reason why there should be a deepobject requirement on these. Historically, an apparent deﬁ niteness effect has given rise to the view that associates must bear partitive case, which (by hypothesis) is effectively limited to objects. However, on closer inspection the deﬁniteness effect turns out to be largely a mirage. The partitive case type of assumption thus ceases to be motivated and, by the same token, so does the presumption that expletive associates must be structural objects. As regards the phenomena that appear to indicate a parallel between unaccusative subjects and transitive objects (viz. the distribution of partitive cliticization and of bare subjects), no theory exists that convincingly embeds this parallel within general principles. The nub of the problem here is that, from the theoretical point of view, it is difﬁcult to ﬁnd any independently motivated principle that discriminates between unaccusative and unergative subjects when they are in postverbal position. Well-known constructs such as the Empty Category Principle and the Condition on Extraction Domains account well for preverbal–postverbal asymmetries, as between English-style subjects and objects, but the ﬁner discrimination required to account for exclusively postverbal asymmetries cannot easily be derived. 182

Conclusion

183

The converse problem arises in connection with theories relating to perfect auxiliary selection and participle agreement, where a postverbal symmetry between unaccusative and unergative subjects would be more convenient. In broad terms, such theories have been claimed to unify otherwise arbitrary distributional patterns, but only under the assumption that unaccusative subjects originate as direct objects. Crucially, the trigger for the phenomena claimed to diagnose unaccusativity is identiﬁed as movement of the unaccusative subject out of its postulated initial position. However, the phenomena in question appear not to be sensitive to whether the unaccusative subject moves or remains in situ. Finally, as regards the alleged exclusion of unergative subjects from participial clauses, the implication of the relevant theories is that such subjects would necessarily be problematic in terms either of q -marking or of case-licensing. However, the assumption that past participle morphology systematically blocks the assignment of subject q -role is falsiﬁed by the occurrence of unergatives and active transitives in the PRO type of participial clause. In addition, there appears to be no compelling reason to assume that unergative verbs are licensers of accusative case, a circumstance that has been claimed to prevent them from occupying a nominative case-licensing position within participial clauses. With these conceptual obstacles removed, there is no reason to presuppose that unergative subjects are barred from participial clauses. Thus careful scrutiny of the syntactic analyses of the phenomena claimed to diagnose unaccusativity in Romance reveals there to be no theoretical imperative (as far as Romance is concerned) for assuming that unaccusative subjects are deep objects. In other words, nothing is actually gained by making this assumption and surrendering it would have no adverse theoretical consequences. On the other hand, a consistent ﬁnding in this book has been that the implications of the foregoing assumption are often at variance with the empirical data. In particular, unergative subjects frequently exhibit behaviour that the deep-object theory predicts to be exclusive to items that are deep objects. For example, in Chapter 3 it was found that partitive cliticization from unergative subjects is not in reality exceptional, although it is less common than partitive cliticization from unaccusative subjects. Faced on the one hand with these concrete empirical failures of the deep-object theory, and on the other with the essential redundancy of that theory, as highlighted above, a logical response would be to surrender the theory. And that, in effect, has been the position taken in this book.

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Accordingly, alternative explanations for the relevant phenomena were identiﬁed. A recurrent theme has been the close link between alleged unaccusativity diagnostics and tendencies relating to information structure. In particular, it was shown in Chapters 2 and 3 that expletive inversion and partitive cliticization from postverbal subjects coincide in diagnosing presentational capability, and it is therefore no surprise that in French the two phenomena are intimately connected. Unaccusatives have a comparatively high frequency in both phenomena because many such verbs naturally are presentational, in contrast to agentive activity terms, which are the most difﬁcult of all the semantic classes of verb to reconcile with presentational uses. The much-cited link between unaccusatives and passives then follows from the natural presentational capability of the latter, which was attributed in Chapter 2 to their suppression of subject q -role. Such an account would explain why, in Romance in general, passives pattern strongly with unaccusatives in terms of expletive inversion and partitive cliticization but only weakly in terms of perfect auxiliary selection (on this latter point see 1.3.3 and 5.4). For the common presentational capability of passives and unaccusatives is a genuine and enduring linguistic phenomenon, whereas coincidences in perfect auxiliary assignment must normally be regarded as the chance outcome of a coincidence between the auxiliary assigned to unaccusatives and that assigned to the relevant copula (which typically supplies the passive auxiliary). In Italian, for example, the copula essere turns out to select the E perfect auxiliary that is also assigned to unaccusatives (presumably because it borrows its past participle from stare, which is independently assigned perfect auxiliary E), whereas in French the copula être selects the perfect auxiliary A that is assigned to unergatives. Thus perfect auxiliary assignment to passives is in general contingent on the perfect auxiliary assignment that arises in respect of the copula. As such, there is no reason to expect that any particular property of passives will play a role in conditioning the overall pattern of perfect auxiliary assignment. As regards this pattern, I have highlighted in this book the intractable problems that prevent the formulation of an adequate semantic generalization and argued that the complex and unordered modern situation results from the uneven effects of linguistic change upon a once transparent system, in which the E verb was a copula and the past participle expressed a resultant state. Given that only achievements and accomplishments can create resultant states, the implication of this analysis is that originally only achievement and accomplishment terms could

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occur in the E + past participle construction. The modern, fragmented, situation can then be derived by assuming a process of conventionalization, whereby speciﬁc auxiliary assignments became categorically associated with speciﬁc verbs or with speciﬁc strands of meaning within the overall semanticism of given verbs. I argued for a similar approach to past participle agreement. Thus while the modern situation appears to be irreducibly fragmented, it can be assumed that past participle agreement was originally governed by the simple principle that the participle always agreed with its argument in the participial small clause. Given that the argument could raise to matrix subject position when the matrix verb was E but not when it was A, this in effect entailed subject–participle agreement in the case of the former and object–participle agreement in the case of the latter. Reanalysis of E and A as perfect auxiliaries would naturally tend towards the elimination of perfect-related participle agreement altogether. And indeed, such a process has occurred in languages like Spanish and Portuguese. However, analogical pressure, possibly assisted in the modern era by the forces of standardization, has resulted in an almost perfect preservation of the E pattern of agreement, and aspects of the A pattern are preserved to varying degrees in languages such as Italian and French. As regards bare subject capability, I argued that the distributional patterns were conditioned by the logically unstructured nature of verb + bare subject complexes. This gives rise to two semantico-pragmatic principles: (i) that bare subjects are preferred to overtly quantiﬁed subjects when, and only when, the quantiﬁcational meaning associated with the latter is incompatible with the context or with the speaker’s intended meaning, and (ii) that complexes consisting of a verb + a bare subject must occur in contexts in which an appropriate non-subject argument can be determined. Both principles are likely to be implicated in the widely held view that bare subject capability is the preserve of the unaccusative class. The main cause of this perception is probably related to principle (ii), in that prominent members of the unaccusative class are naturally suggestive of a non-subject argument in ways that prototypical unergatives are not, with the consequence that uncontextualized specimen sentences involving unaccusatives and bare subjects are in practice more likely to elicit favourable acceptability judgments than are analogous unergative formulations. In addition, however, achievement verbs, the majority of which are classiﬁed as unaccusative (when intransitive), tend more frequently than other types of verb to have occurrences that are incompatible with overtly quantiﬁed sub-

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jects. By the above principle (i), then, achievement unaccusatives will have bare subjects with a relatively high degree of frequency, thereby adding to the impression that there is a direct link between unaccusativity and bare subject capability. Turning ﬁnally to absolute participial clauses, I demonstrated that unergative subjects are not actually barred from this construction although there is an asymmetry as regards frequency. This I attributed to a resultant-state constraint on such clauses when they contain overt subjects. Such a constraint implies that only achievement and accomplishment terms can occur in this construction. Obviously enough, this will favour unaccusatives, given that the bulk of the intransitive achievement and accomplishment terms are classiﬁed as unaccusative. We thus arrive at the general conclusion that no unaccusative– unergative distinction is required in Romance to account for the phenomena that that distinction has been claimed to explain. General theory provides no a priori basis for assuming that the phenomena in question must be sensitive to the unaccusative–unergative distinction, there is ample empirical evidence that these phenomena are not systematically sensitive in this way, and alternative explanations are readily available.

Notes 1 The Ergative Analysis and the Unaccusative Hypothesis 1. I coin this label deliberately in order to distinguish the approach in question from the Unaccusative Hypothesis (see 1.2 below), which strictly speaking can only be expressed within the framework of Relational Grammar. 2. The term ‘ergative’ in this sense is due to Burzio (1981, 1986), while ‘unaccusative’ ﬁgures prominently after the publication of Perlmutter 1978, but is apparently due to Geoffrey Pullum (exact source unknown). Burzio’s use of the term ‘ergative’ represents a continuation and extension of the common 1960s and 1970s usage to denote intransitive occurrences of verbs like roll or sink (The boulder rolled down the hill; The ship sank) as opposed to their transitive occurrences (We rolled the boulder down the hill; They sank the ship). For this more speciﬁc sense, see Lyons (1968). In typological studies, ‘ergative’ denotes the case assigned to transitive subjects in morphologically ergative languages. The latter use will not ﬁgure in this book. 3. Unlike Belletti, Burzio (1986) drew no distinction between indeﬁ nite and deﬁ nite postverbal unaccusative subjects, both of which he assumed to remain in situ. 4. Another means of capturing syntactically the unaccusative–unergative distinction is inspired by a line of research stemming from Larson (1988). Within that approach, it is assumed that VP is subdivided into an inner VP and an outer ‘shell’, denoted by ‘vp’. Unergative subjects are then regarded as originating or (externally) ‘merging’ in spec-vp, while unaccusative subjects are analysed as originating either as the complement of V (as under the original theory) or in spec-VP. For the ﬁ rst of these latter suppositions, see Bennis (2004), and for the second, Radford (1997:399). Compare also the framework devised by Bowers (2001:309), who argues that unergative subjects originate in the speciﬁer position of a predicate constituent (labelled ‘Pr’), which is superordinate to VP, while unaccusative subjects originate in the speciﬁer of VP. 5. In fact, as will be pointed out in 3.2.6, the c-command analysis of ne is empirically inadequate. This was noted long ago by Belletti and Rizzi (1981:127). 6. It is commonly supposed, however, that this does not apply when the participle is embedded under a perfect auxiliary. 7. An additional approach, which appears to have been advanced primarily for Germanic languages, involves the stipulation that ‘have’ and ‘be’ select vp complements that respectively have and do not have a thematic argument in their speciﬁer (see, for example, Radford 1997:399). Given the usual assumption (within the vp shell framework) that unergative subjects, but not unaccusative subjects, are (externally) merged in spec-vp, this stipula187

188

8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

Notes tion guarantees that unergatives will be associated with auxiliary ‘have’ and unaccusatives with auxiliary ‘be’. Within this framework, unaccusative verbs are verbs that ‘determine’ (Perlmutter 1978:162) an initially unaccusative stratum. The 2hood analysis also enables passive subjects and subjects of raising predicates to be brought under the same descriptive generalization as unaccusative subjects. The ‘tail b’ terminology simply indicates that the classiﬁcation of the nominal applies to its occurrence in clause b. This latter condition is designed to reserve ne-cliticization to postverbal indeﬁ nite subjects, which are analysed by Perlmutter as chomeurs rather than 1s (see example (4) in the text above). ‘Object arc’ is a portmanteau term equivalent to ‘either a 2-arc or a 3-arc’, where 3s are indirect objects. The qualiﬁcation ‘P-initial’ (suggesting ‘Predicate-initial’) rules out the possibility that the nominal is an initial 2 in relation to a construction involving an auxiliary, as in the ungrammatical example below: *State cadute le arance dall’albero, nessuno le raccolse. (Loporcaro 2003, p. 223) ‘The oranges having been fallen from the tree, nobody picked them up.’

14. The brother-in-law is the postverbal indeﬁ nite nominal in the ‘impersonal’ construction illustrated by example (4). 15. Spanish pasar is standardly classiﬁed as unaccusative (see, for example, Torrego 1989, Garrido 1996). Note in particular that (i) it is routinely cited as the type of verb that has bare subject capability (the main Spanish-internal diagnostic for unaccusativity), (ii) it occurs in participial absolutes (Pasados los botes a la otra ribera . . . ‘With the boats having passed to the other bank . . .’), (iii) it falls within the unaccusative semantic spectrum on Sorace’s cross-linguistic Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (see Sorace 2000), and (iv) its Italian equivalent is assigned perfect auxiliary ‘be’. 16. Note, though, that in Lasnik’s view (1999:186), accusative objects acquire the necessary ‘height’ to c-command into an adjunct by raising overtly to an object agreement projection for case-checking purposes. However, Lasnik then acknowledges that the failure of a transitive direct object to control into an adjunct (as in my example (12)) is ‘mysterious’ (1999:189). 17. Notice that, unlike accusative direct objects (see note 16), postverbal unaccusative subjects are not widely assumed to have to raise out of their base position for case-checking purposes (not when they are indeﬁnite, at least). For example, in Belletti’s partitive/inherent case framework, it is assumed that indeﬁ nite postverbal unaccusative subjects have their case licensed in their base position (see Belletti 1999: 34). The same applies if postverbal unaccusative subjects are assumed to have nominative case, because they then naturally fall within the scope of the ‘long-distance agreement’ ana-

Notes

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lytical paradigm associated prototypically with expletive associates in English. Within Chomsky’s probe-goal theory, an expletive associate (hence, by implication, a postverbal unaccusative subject also) is licensed in its base position, through agreement with the abstract T(ense) constituent, which c-commands it (see Chomsky 1998: 123). 18. On the other hand, Chomsky cites the possibility of ne-cliticization from the postverbal subject in this type of sentence as evidence that it occupies complement (direct object) position. 19. Curiously, Perlmutter (1983:150) denies the possibility in Italian of examples such as this one. He basis this generalization on the apparent deviancy of the following example: (i)

Sono rimasti nel paese dei profughi ungheresi senza ottenere permessi di lavoro. ‘Some Hungarian refugees remained in the country without obtaining work permits.’

Presumably the deviancy here results from something speciﬁc to this particular example, rather than from a general prohibition on the conﬁguration in question. Possibly the problem stems from the information structure implied by the placement of dei profughi ungheresi after the prepositional complement nel paese. Belletti (1999:37) analyses ‘reordered’ structures of this sort as having a topicalized VP and a focalized subject. Conceivably the relevant adjunct control is degraded under a marked information structure of this kind. 20. Marandin (2001) observes a parallel control disparity, internal to French, between the il construction and certain ‘stylistic’ inversion constructions not involving il: (i)

*Il est entré deux hommes avinés sans frapper/en riant. ‘Two drunk men entered without knocking/while laughing.’ (ii) *Il est entré sans frapper/en riant deux hommes avinés. ‘Two drunk men entered without knocking/while laughing.’ (iii) Alors sont entrés sans frapper/en riant deux hommes avinés. ‘Then two drunk men entered without knocking/while laughing.’ Marandin’s conclusions are rather different from those drawn here. In addition, he assumes (erroneously) that the ‘stylistic’ inversion illustrated by (iii) is limited to unaccusative verbs. (See Legendre and Sorace 2003 for a demonstration of this error.) 21. This example is cited by Martin and Wilmet (1980: 201). 22. Burzio 1986 (152–3) attempted to account for the French–Italian disparity in terms of his binding-related analysis of perfect auxiliary selection (see 1.1 above). He argued that the relevant binding relation was weaker in the case of passives than in that of unaccusatives, because with passives it had to cross a small-clause boundary (assuming a small-clause analysis of passives). Accordingly, some degree of variation might be expected. However, it will be shown in 5.2 that Burzio’s attribution of ‘be’-selection to the existence of a determinate binding relation cannot be accepted, for

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Notes

important theoretical and empirical reasons. Thus his proposed explanation for the French–Italian disparity in this regard ceases to be motivated. 23. In fact, assuming the now widely accepted small clause analysis of ‘be’ (both qua passive auxiliary and qua copula), the structure of (26) is essentially analogous to that of (23). 24. The rationale was that the postverbal subject position (unlike the preverbal position) was properly governed by the verb, thus legitimizing the trace resulting from wh-extraction (assuming traces required proper government). The relevance of the presence versus absence of an intervening overt complementizer is that the presence of such an item was assumed to block proper government of the trace by its antecedent.

2 Expletive Inversion 1. Where exactly depends on the structure envisaged for VP. Typically the VP of earlier accounts is now assumed to have at least two layers of structure, for example, a low VP and higher ‘shell’ VP, designated as ‘vp’. The subject (i.e. of unergatives and transitives) is then assumed to be base-generated or ‘merged’ in spec-vp. 2. Note that the very same linear sequence ‘expletive + unergative verb + argument’ is routinely countenanced under the supposition that postverbal subjects in general (regardless of whether the verb is unergative or unaccusative) co-occur with a null expletive ﬁ lling the preverbal subject position. This assumption was once widespread in Romance linguistics and remains popular (see, for example, Belletti 1999: 11). 3. This example is cited in Legendre and Sorace (2003). 4. I assume the verbs in these examples are unergative because (i) they select perfect auxiliary A (as do their Italian equivalents), (ii) they cannot occur in participial absolute constructions, (iii) they appear within the unergative semantic spectrum on Sorace’s cross-linguistic auxiliary selection hierarchy Sorace (2000). 5. For a similar account, speciﬁcally in relation to the French il construction, see Arteaga and Herschensohn (2004:9–10). They assume that in the lexical array for the sentence Il arrive des jeunes ﬁlles ‘There arrive some young girls’ the associate is marked for partitive case and the expletive for nominative case. The case of the associate is licensed directly by the verb while that of the expletive is checked and deleted in spec-TP/IP. Any other combination of cases would cause the derivation to crash. 6. For example, È arrivato Gianni ‘Gianni has arrived’ was assigned the following analysis (p. 17): NPi [VP [VP é arrivato [NP e] i ] [NPi Gianni]]. Notice that the postverbal subject Gianni has moved from its original position as the complement of arrivato, which is now occupied by the empty category e. The empty NP in the preverbal subject position is a null expletive of the kind alluded to in note 2 above.

Notes

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7. Presumably the same applies to passive postverbal subjects, although Belletti (1999) does not appear to make a speciﬁc ruling on this. 8. This follows from the type of approach embodied in the nuclear stress rule (NSR) line of research, as exempliﬁed by Zubizarreta (1998). 9. This approach has a precedent in McNally (1998), where it is argued that quantiﬁcational and deﬁnite restrictions in existential sentences have nonidentical causes. 10. This sentence might be rescued by assuming a very emphatic stress on cada alumno. For diagnostic purposes, however, a neutral intonation should be assumed. 11. This presumably results from the fact that prior mention conﬂicts with the generally presentational nature of overt expletive constructions, which typically requires the description/associate to have an ‘introducing’ function. In the case of the il construction, this conﬂ ict is not insurmountable, given that examples like (40) are fairly routine in French. Presumably the acceptability of (40) results from the fact that while the referent of le sénateur is part of the ‘given’, the identiﬁcation of this referent as the winner of the election represents the ‘new’. It must be surmised then that the French il construction is compatible with narrow focus on the associate whereas the there construction is more strictly presentational (calling for wide focus). 12. It is not clear whether this conclusion is applicable when the verb is be. The persuasive discussion in Ward and Birner (1995) would suggest that to a large extent it is. Note also that in Catalan the equivalent of the English there is construction is routinely compatible with deﬁnite associates: (i)

Hi havia la Joana a la ﬁesta. (McNally 1998: 367) ‘Joana was at the party.’

French il y a is similar in this respect: (ii) Il y a Pierre qui est malade. ‘Pierre is ill.’ 13. In this particular case, in addition to remedying the deﬁciency in the associate I have deleted the word here and inserted the PP at this point. This is for stylistic reasons only. The sequence there arose the long-dreaded storm has a somewhat literary ﬂavour, which would be at odds with the rather banal locative here. Presumably this additional amendment does not invalidate the basic point, viz. that there arose is not incompatible with deﬁ nite associates. 14. Like the second sentence in (40), this presupposes prior mention of the referent of the associate. Here, though, unlike in (40) the associate is not in (narrow) focus, or at least this is unlikely. More plausibly, the clause-ﬁ nal locative can be expected to be focused or, alternatively, the sentence may receive wide focus. Given this latter possibility, the remark made at the beginning of note 11 above may require some qualiﬁcation. 15. Pinto’s analysis of (19) parallels the earlier conclusions regarding French/ English (14) to (16). It would also be applicable to a ‘deﬁ niteness effect’ that

192

Notes is sometimes alleged for the Spanish faltar construction, as in (i) and (ii) below, where (ii) is alleged to be deviant: (i)

Falta un alumno. ‘A student is missing.’ (ii) Falta el alumno. ‘The student is missing.’ To the extent that there is a problem with (ii), it is that, out of context, it is impossible to identify the referent of el alumno. Nevertheless, faltar does not impose any prohibition on deﬁ nite subjects per se, as is shown by the unproblematic examples below: (iii) Falta Pedro. ‘Pedro is missing.’ (iv) Falta la hermana de Miguel. ‘Miguel’s sister is missing.’ 16. The apparent acceptability of sentence (52) may appear to be at odds with Belletti’s claim that the earlier sentence (26), repeated below, is marginally deviant: (26) ?È entrato Mario dalla ﬁ nestra. ‘Mario came in through the window.’ Notice, however, that sentence (52) has the adverbial all’improvviso in sentence-initial position, and this appears to force a presentational reading. If this is the case, il cane in (52) does not carry narrow focus and might thus not be expected to require clause-ﬁnal placement. In contrast, sentence (26) does appear to have narrow focus on Mario, and so the normal rule about clause-ﬁ nal placement applies. 17. Note in particular that Belletti’s argument that somehow the semanticism of the ‘uniqueness interpretation’ is compatible with the semantics of partitivity is entirely impressionistic (see Belletti 1988:15–16). 18. Note also that ne-extraction is possible from a deﬁnite postverbal subject, as illustrated by the example below (from Burzio 1986: 75): Ne sono arrivati i dirigenti. ‘Their managers have arrived.’ Under Belletti’s proposal, the structural position of the postverbal subject in the example above would be identical to that of an unergative postverbal subject. Yet Belletti also maintains (1999:37) that unergative postverbal subject position is not a proper position for ne-extraction (when the extraction is from a quantiﬁed nominal at least). Thus Belletti’s assumption of a deﬁniteness effect requires acceptance of a somewhat surprising state of affairs, viz. one in which ne-extraction both is and is not possible from unergative postverbal subject position. 19. In fact, as in Spanish inversion, there is also a third possibility, in which the item in focus is a clause-ﬁ nal locative or time phrase, such as aux Ètats

Notes

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Unis and en 1890 in (41) and (42). These cases are discussed at the end of this section. 20. In fact, this is truer of Italian than French, given that many of the prototypical presentational verbs select perfect auxiliary avoir in French and so are potentially classiﬁable as unergative: manquer ‘be absent’, exister ‘exist’, disparaître ‘disappear’, surgir ‘emerge’, falloir ‘be lacking’ etc. However, if these French verbs are deemed to be unergative, then the empirical basis for the claim that the il construction exhibits a bias towards unaccusatives becomes severely degraded. 21. Lonzi (1986:106) and others have assumed that the presentational type of information structure corresponds to the type of syntax assigned to unaccusatives under the Ergative Analysis (see 1.1 in this book). However, I can ﬁ nd no theoretical motivation for this assumption. Moreover, as noted below, unergative verbs routinely enter into presentational information structures. These presentational unergatives can only be accommodated within a model that identiﬁes presentational information structure with ergative/unaccusative syntax under the assumption that they ‘switch’ to the unaccusative class. However, the positing of such taxonomic switches merely to accommodate adverse data is methodologically a somewhat suspect strategy. Normal scientiﬁc practice calls for a revision of the theory in such cases, rather than a reclassiﬁcation of thedata. 22. For an interesting study of the relationship between objecthood and presentational information structure in a variety of languages, see Lambrecht (2000).

3 Partitive Cliticization 1. Extraction from a preverbal subject is rare (except in the case of the French en-avant construction). This has been attributed to Fiengo’s (1974, 1977) proper binding requirement on traces. On this point, see Belletti and Rizzi (1981: 120). 2. Note, however, that extraction from a postverbal subject of telefonare appears to be possible when the postverbal subject is not followed by a subcategorized PP. The example below is from Lonzi (1986: 113): Ti accorgerai che in quest’ufﬁcio ne telefonano davvero molti, di stranieri. ‘You’ll notice that in this ofﬁce really a lot, of foreigners, call.’ 3. To be more precise, they assumed (128–9) that ne-extraction was subject to subjacency under a revised deﬁnition incorporating this ‘argumenthood requirement’. 4. For the original formulation of the Condition on Extraction Domains, see Huang (1982). 5. Roughly speaking, a category is L-marked if and only if it is q -marked by a lexical head. 6. This assumption represents a continuation of the view articulated in Belletti (1988). There she argued that a deﬁ niteness effect was detectable in Italian, indicating that deﬁ nite postverbal subjects of unaccusatives and

194

7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

Notes passives were in fact in a structurally identical position to postverbal unergative subjects in general. See 2.3 in this book. Perlmutter in fact explicitly makes the ﬁ rst of these points when he insists (1989:107–8) on the non-equivalence of 1s and 2s with GB/Minimalist-style conﬁgurational deﬁ nitions of subject and direct object. As regards the absence of any surface morphosyntactic property that might provide an objective correlate of 2hood, this is obviously implicit in the Unaccusative Hypothesis itself, which denies the traditional distinction between subject and direct object in terms of surface properties such as case, overt agreement with the verb and linear position. Suggestions of this kind are not new: see also Lonzi (1986) and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995: 276–7). However, to judge from her conclusion (p. 116), she appears to assume that unergatives have an ergative/unaccusative-type syntax when ne is extracted from their subject. She links this view with what she takes to be a prohibition against partitive cliticization from an unergative subject occurring in the perfect (that is, when auxiliary avere is present). In fact such a prohibition does not appear to be general, as is illustrated by examples such as Italian (49) below. Given this circumstance, I can see no motivation for assuming that unergatives undergo a switch to the unaccusative class (which is in effect what Lonzi appears to assume). Indeed, from a general methodological viewpoint, the positing of such taxonomic switches merely to accommodate adverse or unexpected data should presumably be avoided if at all possible. In such cases, the preferred scientiﬁc method involves revising the theoretical model. Some of the examples given below and elsewhere in this chapter involve preverbal locatives. Any suggestion that the presence of such an element indicates that the unergative verb has ‘switched’ to being an unaccusative is unmotivated under current theoretical assumptions – see the discussion of Torrego’s (1989) claim that such an alternation was operative in Spanish (4.2 in this book). Note also the general qualms expressed in note 9 above concerning the positing of taxonomic switches to accommodate adverse data. CNR and CNRS are the Italian and French national research councils respectively. This extract is taken from a (publicly available) document produced by the Conferazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro. This extract is taken from a (publicly available) Rome courtroom transcript. I think this example works in isolation. However, in case the context is required, the immediately adjacent sequence is as follows: L’aula gamma ha 24 computer (quanti ne funzioneranno? lo scorso febbraio quando ho fatto soundforge un 30 percento non andava . . .) anche se sul sito indica 50 posti. ‘The Gamma computer room has 24 computers (how many will be working? last February when I used Soundforge, 30 percent were out of action . . .) although on the website it says 50 workstations.’

15. As in 2.5.2, by ‘passive’ I mean to include both true passives and also reﬂexive passives.

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16. I use the term ‘canonical presentational verb’ to refer to verbs/constructions that have a natural presentational capability, viz. presentational verbs in the strict sense (those meaning ‘arrive’, ‘appear’ etc.) and verbs that often are presentational but need not be (for example, verbs meaning ‘die’). The dual nature of verbs in the latter class may not be immediately obvious in languages like English, but it is rendered rather conspicuous in the alternations between preverbal and postverbal subject placement that are characteristic of the null subject languages, as is illustrated by the pair of Spanish examples below: (i)

Murió much gente. (Presentational.) ‘Many people died.’ (i.e. ‘There were many deaths.’) (ii) Mucha gente murió. (Non-presentational.) ‘Many people died.’ (i.e. ‘Many individuals suffered death.’) As noted in 2.5.2, passives can be included among the canonical presentationals, given that they too have natural presentational readings when they occur with postverbal indeﬁ nite subjects. 17. The dissociation between syntax and focus/intonation envisaged here is at variance with the restrictive approach adopted in, for example, Belletti (2004) where it is assumed that intonation should optimally be read off the syntactic conﬁguration directly. However, the view taken here is that it is unrealistic to expect complete isomorphism between intonation and syntax. 18. The relevant clause is the second conjunct. 19. For example: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)

Su 1.000 imprese registrate ne falliscono 10. ‘Out of 1000 registered companies 10 fail.’ Se ne sono schiantati almeno 6 durante esercitazioni. ‘At least 6 have collided during exercises.’ Ne funzionano pochi. ‘Few work.’ Ne sono passati molti. ‘Many [years] have passed.’ Ne esistono pochi. ‘There are few in existence.’ Ne mancavano quattro ‘Four were missing.’

20. Van Valin (1993) and Bentley (2004a) assume a Dowty-style decompositional treatment of aspectual classes as described (brieﬂy) in 5.5.1 of this book. Within that framework, they argue that there is a direct link between partitive cliticization and aspectual class. In the approach adopted here the principle consideration is information structure, with the aspectual link arising only as a corollary of that. 21. In this respect, one is perhaps tempted to agree with Lambrecht (2000), when he suggests (641) that Italian ne has received an ‘undue’ amount of attention in the Generative literature.

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4 Bare Subjects 1. There are other diagnostics such as compatibility with certain participial constructions, but these alone would deﬁ ne a smaller membership. These constructions are discussed in Chapter 7. 2. Bare postverbal subjects also occur preverbally in literary or journalistic styles when conjoined or modiﬁed: (i)

Ciudades y pueblos fueron destrozados. ‘Cities and villages were destroyed.’ (ii) Expertos de varios países asistieron al coloquio. ‘Experts from several countries attended the conference.’ 3. In some theories, bare arguments in left-peripheral positions are assumed to be immune to this requirement (see, for example, Contreras 1986: 27, 43). Alternatively, as suggested in Lois (1996: 229), such nominals are analysed as being reconstructed in a lexically-governed position. 4. Under the general GB conception, a governs b if and only if (i) a ccommands b and (ii) the path connecting a and b does not cross a maximal projection. Proper government obtains when the governor is a lexical head (for example, a verb or a preposition) or an antecedent. In fact, Minimalism dispenses with the concept of government. Lasnik (1999:27), for example, refers to it as an ‘arbitrary syntactic relation’. However, its effect is achieved by other means. In particular, as regards case-licensing, government has been replaced by agreement conﬁgurations. 5. Actually, Lois refers to it as an eventive q -role (‘papel temático eventivo’: 232). Moreover, the implication of Lois’s paper appears to be that it is the bare subject or object that is assigned this q -role, through either a spec– head relation or a head–head relation. 6. Compare, for example, Burzio’s (1986:99) remark that ‘the postverbal subject in [Ha telefonato Maria] must be governed like an object’. 7. In fact, strictly speaking it should be ‘∃x∃y(Fx & Fy & x ≠ y & Gax & Gay)’, given the irreducibly plural meaning of unas. However, this complicating factor can be set aside for the sake of simplicity (and I will follow this practice in all subsequent examples, as well). 8. In contrast, the possibility exists in Italian and French of sentences such as the following: (i)

Ogni giorno mangia delle mele. ‘Every day he eats apples’ (ii) Il mange des pommes tous les jours. ‘Every day he eats apples.’ Thus the Italian/French partitive article allows for non-quantiﬁcational uses (or, alternatively, narrow-scope uses) in contexts in which unos/unas does not. 9. A sentence such as (37), for example, might then be analysed as asserting the timeless existence of certain triples involving an eater (viz. Jorge) an apple and a time. Arguably, such an analysis would simultaneously capture

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the habitual nature of sentences like (37) and render the bare noun position accessible to quantiﬁcation. I leave the issue open, however. 10. A partly analogous asymmetry is apparent among complements of ser ‘be’, as is illustrated by (i) and (ii) below: (i)

Son médicos. ‘They are doctors.’ (ii) Son unos médicos. ‘They are some doctors.’ The pragmatics of the above sentences are rather different. Roughly speaking, sentence (i) indicates what the persons implicitly referred to are, while sentence (ii) indicates who they are. Thus son in (i) functions as a genuine copula, simply linking the implied subject to the predicate médicos, which in turn ascribes a property to the subject. In contrast, son in (ii) can plausibly be analysed as denoting the identity relation, with the overall sentence asserting an identity between the subject and certain individuals that are doctors. Accordingly, while (i) can be analysed as a conjunction corresponding to the schema ‘Fa & Fb . . .’, where Fs are doctors and a, b and so forth are the persons implicitly referred to, (ii) is more transparently represented in the manner shown below (assuming that the letters ‘a’, ‘b’ and so on must designate distinct individuals): (iii) ∃x(Fx & a = x & b = x . . .) 11. An analysis that is in some respects similar to that proposed here for cases such as (47) is put forward by McNally (2004:125–6) in connection with sentences such as (i) below: (i)

Mucha gente que tiene perros los abandona durante las vacaciones. ‘Many people that have dogs abandon them during the holidays.’

McNally observes that while the bare plural perros ‘licenses a subsequent pronoun’, this licensing ‘cannot be direct, as the BP does not denote the antecedent for the pronoun’. She then infers that the antecedent must be determined via ‘accommodation’, which in her view is facilitated by ‘the descriptive content of the BP and the fact that [the containing sentence entails] the existence of an entity that could support the anaphora’ (126). 12. An alternative way of analysing sequences such as wanted to ﬁnd squirrels is to say that there is a quantiﬁer but it must have narrow scope (in the sense of Russell 1905). Alternatively, some authors state that bare nouns can only have a ‘weak’ reading, as opposed to the ‘strong’ reading represented here by schemata such as (39). Compare, for example, Laca (1996:254). 13. Garrido (1996) makes effectively the same point when he refutes Masullo’s (1996) claim that Spanish (i) below can have the same meaning as English (ii): (i)

Pedro cazó perdices. ‘Pedro shot partridges.’ (ii) Pedro shot some partridges.

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Notes

Of the Spanish sentence, Garrido writes: ‘It is not that a group of partridges is represented, rather the property of hunting partridges is applied to a situation, with the result that in the situation there must exist entities consisting in hunted partridges.’ (Garrido 1996: 315; my translation.) 14. It is worth pointing out at this stage that I am extending Quine’s approach into areas on which Quine himself does not appear to have given any clear pronouncement. Quine’s (1960:175) assessment of verb plus bare noun combinations as being ‘relative to canonical notation, just not structure’ is expressed in relation to the dispositional case. I do not claim that he would endorse the generalization of this position that is being proposed here. 15. In Latin, of course, matters were different, given that there bare nouns routinely had quantiﬁcational meaning. The modern situation results from a gradual diachronic change that has had partially different results in each of the various Romance languages. Modern French, for example, completely disallows bare subjects and objects, while modern Spanish systematically rejects the use of semantically unmotivated determiners. On the other hand, the system embodied in modern Italian is in some respects hybrid, given that it allows bare subjects and objects in the kinds of context in which they are allowed in Spanish, and yet, like French, it also allows semantically unmotivated occurrences of the partitive article, as mentioned in note 8 above. 16. Carlson (1977:422) noted an analogous contrast in cases such as the following: (ia) Max discovered rabbits in his yard for two hours. (ib) Max discovered a rabbit in his yard for two hours. (iia) Chester killed ﬂies repeatedly last night. (iib) Chester killed a ﬂy repeatedly last night. The deviancy of the (b) sentences stems from the assignment of wide scope to a rabbit and a ﬂy, which implies that the same rabbit or ﬂy was repeatedly discovered/killed. 17. Notice also that the occurrence of unos in (57) has nothing to do with any alleged incompatibility between vivir and bare subjects. Thus unos can be deleted from (57) without damaging grammaticality or acceptability, although the quantiﬁcational structure changes accordingly: (i)

En esta casa estuvieron viviendo terroristas durante más de un año. ‘In this house terrorists were living for more than a year.’

Sentence (i) makes an analogous assertion to (53) and has an identical quantiﬁcational structure, that is, the one represented by schema (55), with Fs understood as times within a certain period that exceeds one year and Gs as ordered pairs consisting of a dwelling and a time at which it was occupied by terrorists. Thus (i) involves no implication that any single terrorist lived in the house for more than a year. 18. Notice that these and similar cases involve achievement verbs, with a series of events being presented as if it were a single process. This is no coincidence, given that the punctual nature of an achievement term lends itself

Notes

199

naturally to iterative assertions of this sort (on this point, see Lyons 1977: 712). In practice, then, achievement verbs are likely to have a built-in afﬁnity for bare subjects. Now this circumstance, given that most of the intransitive achievement verbs are classiﬁed as unaccusative in Romance languages (for example, those meaning ‘die’, ‘arrive’, ‘enter’, ‘depart’ and so on), may well contribute to the impression that unaccusatives in general are somehow, in virtue of their unaccusativity, better suited to bare subjects than unergatives are. See also the discussion in the latter part of 4.3.3.5 below. 19. The formulation Viven lobos en aquel bosque would also be possible, but the meaning would be subtly different. With bare lobos as the subject, the structure of the sentence is given by the basic predicational schema ‘Fa’, where a is the forest in question and Fs are places inhabited by wolves. Compare the discussion of the later examples (68) and (69) and also note 21. 20. The assignment here of a single question mark here, rather than a double question mark, is intended to indicate a lower level of deviancy than in the previous examples. Indeed, at the relevant stylistic level, (69) will be wholly acceptable to many speakers. 21. The earlier sentence (65), reproduced below, presumably carries an analogous implicature to (69) and yet is not deviant: (65) Viven unos lobos en aquel bosque. ‘Some wolves live in that forest.’ The absence of deviancy in (65) appears to result from the fact that no anomaly is created if the speaker is implicated to be referring to certain wolves. For example, the speaker may live in an area where wolves are nearly extinct and might then almost always be thinking of speciﬁc wolves when he or she uses the phrase unos lobos. 22. Interestingly, the occurrence of English some in the translations of the (b) sentences may also be slightly deviant, but only if it is unstressed (that is, sm, as in Milsark 1974). In the light of the present analysis, this suggests two things. First, that stressed some is often not referential in Donnellan’s sense and, secondly, that Spanish unos/unas equates to English sm rather than to (stressed) some. The latter in fact has a better Spanish equivalent in algunos/algunas. For example, the type of context illustrated by the sentence below calls for algunas rather than unas, and the English translation must then involve some rather than sm: Algunas madres se preocupan por esas cosas. ‘Some mothers worry about that type of thing.’ 23. In light of the present analysis, it is tempting to treat complexes consisting of a verb and a bare subject as expressing ‘simple’ or ‘thetic’ judgments in the Brentano–Marty sense (see Brentano 1973). However, in the recent literature the thetic–categorical distinction has been deﬁned more or less exclusively in terms of information structure (see Lambrecht 1987, 1994).

200

Notes Deﬁned in that way, the thetic–categorical distinction cuts across the distinction between complexes with bare subjects and those with determined subjects. For example, both faltan cuadros in (i) below and faltan unos cuadros in (ii) are thetic (in the modern sense at least), but whereas faltan cuadros is a single predicate from the logical point of view, faltan unos cuadros is a quantiﬁcation (‘There are some pictures that are missing’): (i)

Faltan cuadros en esta casa. ‘This house needs pictures.’ (ii) Faltan unos cuadros. ‘Some of the pictures are missing.’ Note also that while the class of thetic sentences is usually assumed to include the class of presentational sentences, many of the prototypical presentational verbs may in fact be deviant when used with bare subjects (unless there is independently an imperative for the use of the bare noun, as per the principle stated at the beginning of 4.3.3): (iii) ?Llegaron paquetes esta mañana. ‘Parcels arrived this morning.’ (iv) ?De repente aparecieron lobos. ‘Suddenly wolves appeared.’ Both the type of data illustrated by (i) and (ii) and that illustrated by (iii) and (iv) indicate that verb + bare subject complexes exhibit a property over and above theticity (understood as a type of information structure). According to the view adopted here, this additional property consists in the logically unstructured nature of these complexes. 24. The view espoused here should not be confused with the kind of theory put forward by Kratzer (1995), who argues that stage-level predicates systematically have an argument position corresponding to an event or a spatio-temporal location. The independence of the two approaches can be seen by considering a sentence such as (i) below: (i)

Un niño gritó. ‘A boy shouted.’

Here the verb gritó is a stage-level predicate and so, according to Kratzer’s theory, has a place in its argument structure for an eventive or locational argument. On the other hand, in terms of the analysis developed here, the subject and the verb do not form a logically simple unit, given that that the presence of the determiner un forces a division into a predicative element (gritó) and a bound variable which is the argument of that element. According to the view put forward here, then, sentence (i) is a complete predication as it stands and thus does not require the provision of any additional argument. 25. This particular English translation could be understood with intervene as a (dispositional) individual-level predicate and teachers as having universal

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reference. The corresponding Spanish sentence cannot have this meaning, however. 26. As in (74) and (75), there is no deviancy at all here, given that the argument requirement is satisﬁed deictically. 27. This qualiﬁcation is necessary because, as observed by Longobardi (2000), modiﬁed bare nouns in Romance can be universal (although in fact this represents a rather marked pattern). The following Italian examples (693, 694) illustrate the phenomenon for bare subjects (preverbal and postverbal): (i)

Linguisti capaci di scrivere il Mémoire o LSLT diventano subito famosi. ‘Linguists capable of writing the Mémoire o LSLT immediately become famous.’ (ii) Diventano subito famosi linguisti capaci di scrivere il Mémoire o LSLT. ‘Linguists capable of writing the Mémoire o LSLT immediately become famous.’ Notice, incidentally, that the type of case illustrated by (ii) calls for a discontinuous intonation, with a rather noticeable separation of the predicate from the subject. 28. In fact, because modiﬁcation of the bare subject enables the possibility of a universal interpretation (see note 27), gustar can have a bare modiﬁed subject: Ceremonias así de complicadas no me gustan. ‘I don’t like ceremonies that are that convoluted.’ 29. In these examples, algunos/algunas is preferred to unos/unas because of the fact that me gustan and son peligrosas are individual-level predicates. Accordingly, the English translations have stressed some as opposed to unstressed sm (see also note 22). 30. The deﬁnite article in this case has its speciﬁc, context-dependent, interpretation. 31. Given Diesing’s (1992) mapping hypothesis, linking universal arguments with VP-external positions and non-universal arguments with VP-internal positions, it might be suggested that the gustar–apetecer contrast simply shows that gustar is unergative (with a VP-external subject) and apetecer is unaccusative (with a VP-internal subject). However, that cannot be the correct explanation because, as is immediately apparent, universal arguments routinely occur VP-internally as objects (for example, Odio las ostras ‘I hate oysters’). In any case, several studies have indicated that a VPexternal versus VP-internal distinction of the sort envisaged by Diesing in fact cuts across the unaccusative–unergative distinction (see Pinto 1997: 203; Longobardi 2000: 692). 32. In fact, this requires qualiﬁcation, given that in sentences such as the one below, the bare subject can hardly be said to be informationally rich if we assume the same type of extra-linguistic context as for (108b):

202

Notes Entran espectadores continuamente. ‘Spectators are continually coming in.’ What appears to be the case here is that the adverb continuamente naturally attracts the accent away from the espectadores position, which is thus rendered immune to the informational richness requirement (assuming the latter to be a reﬂex of accentuation). The correct generalization for bare subjects, then, is that they must be informationally rich unless another item is present that can absorb the postverbal accent.

5 Perfect Auxiliary Selection 1. The use of E is productive in Italo-Romance at the dialectal/regional level also. Studies such as Loporcaro (2001) Cennamo (2001) Bentley and Eyrthórsson (2001) reveal a considerably more fragmented or ﬂuid pattern of auxiliary selection at this level, with extraneous factors such as the grammatical feature of person having to be considered. The implication of such wide-ranging variation for the claim that auxiliary selection is a reﬂex of syntactic structure is not immediately obvious. On the face of it, the attested ‘fuzzy’ distributional pattern is not suggestive of a ‘hard’ syntactic template. 2. Burzio also assumed this pattern to obtain in cases involving ‘impersonal si’, as in the example below: ei Sii è parlato di molte cose. ‘One spoke about many things.’ The relevant binding relation arises here (according to Burzio’s analysis) because impersonal si is assumed to be associated with an empty category (shown above as ‘e’) which occupies subject position and which binds si. 3. This pattern also obtains with intransitive reﬂexives, in which the clitic is analysed as not being associated with a q -role: (i)

Gli operaii si sono ribellati t i. ‘The workers have rebelled.’ (ii) Il furgonei si è capovolto t i. ‘The van overturned.’

4. The trace here occupies direct object position under Burzio’s particular deﬁ nition, viz. ‘an A-position governed by the verb’ (1986:56). 5. Another seminal work is Perlmutter 1989, which contains the following auxiliary selection rule for Italian: ‘If there is a nominal heading both a 1arc with tail b and an Object arc with tail b, then clause b requires the perfect auxiliary essere. Otherwise it requires avere.’ (Perlmutter 1989: 82) Note, however, that like the other Relational Grammar formulations given as (5) and (7) in 1.2, this rule is essentially a descriptive generalization, because the crucial concepts (1hood [that is, subjecthood] and objecthood) are assumed to be undeﬁ ned primitives. Thus the formulation ‘a nominal

Notes

6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

203

heading both a 1-arc . . . and an Object arc’ is in effect a label for any subject that is also analysed as an object (in some stratum). Accordingly, Perlmutter’s rule simply asserts a parallel between passives, unaccusatives, raising verbs and reﬂexives, given the RG analysis of these constructions as having subjects that are also objects. This analysis may or may not be accepted, but the auxiliary selection rule does nothing more than group the relevant constructions together. In fact, if Belletti’s (1988, 1999) analysis is adopted, this is only true in the case of indeﬁnite postverbal subjects (see 2.3). Alternatively, under Belletti’s partitive/inherent case hypothesis, (partitive) case is directly licensed on the associate by the verb (see 2.3). For example, in Chomsky (1995b) [Chapter 3], it is recast as the requirement that the strong D feature of the T(ense) position be checked. In languages like English, this requirement is satisﬁed by the occurrence of a (structural) subject in the high preverbal subject position, that is, spec-TP (or spec-IP under older analyses). Somewhat differently, but with the same overall effect, Rizzi (1982) required that binding relations must not involve q -dependency, which ruled out the relation between the preverbal subject position and a postverbal subject, given that he assumed postverbal subjects were q -marked from the subject position. Cocchi in fact refers to this as an object agreement projection (1994:99– 100). The crucial point from the present perspective is that the agreement projection in question (whatever its exact nature may be) is implicated in determining the agreement form of the past participle. The type of account envisaged in note 7 to Chapter 1 (advanced primarily for Germanic languages) is stipulative in a similar way. It is true that the past participle exhibits overt agreement in respect of the subject due ladri, which, according to the agreement-by-movement analysis of past participle agreement discussed in 6.2, implies that movement has taken place. However this simply illustrates a general problem with the agreement-by-movement analysis itself (see 6.3 for further discussion). The equivalent problem is solved in Burzio’s account (1986:58) under the assumption that an empty category in subject position binds the impersonal clitic si, thus creating a subject–clitic binding relation which, for Burzio’s purposes, has the same status as the relation illustrated by the earlier example (1). Centineo (1996:235) takes issue with this solution, observing that the c-command relation is incorrect (the empty category, in effect the trace, c-commands the antecedent rather than vice versa). By the term ‘transitive reﬂexive’ I mean a reﬂexive construction in which the verb has a transitive occurrence and the reﬂexive clitic bears a q -role (other than that assigned to the subject). In contrast, the clitic in an intransitive reﬂexive construction has no q -role and the verb is not deemed to have a transitive occurrence. In fact, intransitive reﬂexives are typically regarded as a subtype within the overall unaccusative class. Burzio (1986) divided intransitive reﬂexives into ‘ergative reﬂexives’ and ‘inherent reﬂexives’, where the former alternate with transitives (for example, rompersi ‘become broken’ versus rompere ‘break (something)’) but the latter do

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Notes

not. Most subsequent authors have tacitly adopted this or a similar subdivision. 15. In this respect, Burzio’s approach foreshadows the core–periphery dichotomy invoked by Sorace (2000) as part of her Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy. Note, however, that while Sorace’s hierarchy is established on exclusively semantic grounds, Burzio’s core–periphery distinction was determined conﬁgurationally. Thus each of the classes (a) to (c) shown in the text was argued to correspond to a different degree of contiguity to the verb on the part of the element that was claimed to be bound by the subject (see 5.2). In class (a), representing the closest degree of contiguity, the clitic actually formed a morphological unit with the verb, while in (c), representing the remotest case, the bound trace was separated from the verb by a clause boundary. 16. In fact, even in Italian some transitive/intransitive pairs exhibit A selection for both members of the pair. One such case, cited by Burzio (1986:177), involves girare ‘rotate’: (i)

Il mulo ha girato la macina. ‘The mule has turned the millstone’ (ii) La macina ha girato. ‘The millstone has turned.’ 17. Interestingly, Belletti (2001) has proposed what amounts to subsuming transitive reﬂexives within class (b), that is, to treating transitive reﬂexives as in effect intransitive reﬂexives. Given that overt past participle agreement in Italian is always obligatory in transitive reﬂexive constructions but not always in non-reﬂexive transitive constructions that involve a direct object clitic (see chapter 6, note 5, of this book), she has suggested that reﬂexive clitics are generated outside the VP projection (perhaps as ‘agreement’ markers within the clause functional structure) and that what determines the agreement form of the participle is not the clitic but the subject. In that analysis, the preverbal subject of a transitive reﬂexive construction would be analysed as having raised from direct object position. Thus the earlier example (1), reproduced below, would receive the type of analysis schematized in (i): (1) La tigrei sii è leccata. ‘The tiger licked itself.’ (i) La tigrei si è leccata t i. ‘The tiger licked itself.’ 18. In fact, despite assigning ‘*’ to this sentence, Reinhart and Siloni note that at least some speakers ﬁ nd it acceptable. As was implied by the discussion in Chapter 3, the view adopted in this book is that the partitive cliticization diagnostic detects pragmatic failures rather than outright grammaticality failures, and so a degree of variation in speaker judgments is only to be expected. 19. For this type of diagnostic, see note 4 in Chapter 7 of this book. 20. This can be seen by considering the aspectual classes of the verbs in Table 5.2.

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21. The term ‘degree achievement’ (Dowty 1979) is sometimes used in connection with some of the verbs in this category. 22. In fact it also diagnoses stativity, but that possibility can presumably be ruled out given the dynamic nature of the processes described. 23. Compatibility with a time-span phrase introduced by a word meaning ‘in’ is a standard diagnostic for accomplishment status. Compare, for example, Smith wrote a book in two months (accomplishment) as opposed to Smith was writing a book for two months (activity). 24. This point is discussed in Rosen (1984). 25. In various places (for example, Centineo 1996, Rohlfs 1949) it is asserted that verbs like suonare and nevicare select only A when used as activity terms. However, scrutiny of authentic contemporary sources reveals E assignment to be possible in this use too. 26. For example, compare (44) to the sentence below: La campana ha suonato per un’ora. ‘The bell rang for an hour.’ 27. More speciﬁcally, this is their generalization for European French. For Canadian French they acknowledge a degree of lexical conditioning. 28. In fact this phraseology is slightly problematic (in my view), given that properties presumably must be extra-linguistic objects and so, strictly speaking, cannot enter into linguistic relations such as modiﬁcation. I leave this detail aside, however. 29. In a theory such as Belletti’s (1988/1999), a deﬁnite subject such as la barca would receive the same analysis as a postverbal unergative subject, that is, it would presumably not be an ‘internal’ argument in Chierchia’s sense. 30. This leaves the case of impersonal si, which Chierchia also claims falls within the scope of this theory (47–50). For simplicity, I leave this issue out of the present discussion. 31. Presumably, something similar could be said about r, for example, that it substitutes a copy of the object for the subject. 32. In essence, the domain of a function is the set of items that can serve as the input to the function (i.e. the set of possible arguments for which the function will return a value). 33. See Perlmutter (1989) and Centineo (1996) for reviews of other earlier, now largely discredited accounts. 34. In fact, given that the syntactic analysis of auxiliary selection does not appear to follow from any general theoretical principle (see 5.2 and 5.3 above), the attribution of E selection to a determinate but non-veriﬁable syntax is to all intents devoid of explanatory power. 35. The corollary of this process in the passive voice was the well-known reinterpretation of the tense value of the auxiliary, with for example factus est giving way to factus fuit as the locus of the meaning ‘was done/has been done’. 36. Even in the later Middle Ages, the synthetic perfect/preterite was still the principle vehicle for the majority of the functions that in the modern languages are associated with the perfect:

206

Notes (i)

Yo, de que fu rrey, non ﬁz mas de dos cortes. (C 3129) ‘Since I became king I have convened only two sessions of the Cortes.’ (ii) Io vidi già cavalier muover campo. (I XXII, 1) ‘I have before now seen horsemen moving camp.’ (iii) Lessiez ester et me dites se vos menjastes hui. (Q 106, 28) ‘Rest and tell me if you have eaten today.’

37. This would apply also to E + past participle qua ‘perfect’ passive – see note 56 below. 38. Presumably, this is an instance of Comrie’s ‘experiential perfect’ (see beginning of 5.6). 39. Here I take for granted the traditional assumption that true perfect au xiliaries have a quasi-morphological function. On this point, see Bentley and Eythórsson (2003) section 5.2. 40. Thus the quasi-equivalence between the periphrastic constructions shown in (91) to (93) and the corresponding synthetic preterite forms (se fue, naquimes, cadde) is analogous to that which exists between, for example, modern Spanish estuvo cerrado ‘was closed’ (that is, ‘became closed’) and the corresponding ‘action’ passive fue cerrado ‘was closed’. This near equivalence can be accounted for in terms of one construction indicating the inception of a state (estuvo cerrado) and the other the occurrence of an event that initiates the same state (fue cerrado). 41. ‘The pronoun is not omitted but has not yet been introduced.’ 42. In fact, assuming that the Latin past participle originated as an adjective, the Classical Latin situation probably represents the outcome of a process of syntactic reanalysis also. Such cyclical developments are not uncommon historically. 43. This follows because unergatives are assumed to assign subject q -role to their subject. If the past participle morphology blocks the externalization of subject q -role, an unergative past participle will fail to assign any q -role either to a matrix subject in a predicative construction (for example, *The customer was complained) or to the modiﬁed noun in an attributive construction (for example, *a coughed patient). 44. In addition to the two examples in the text, consider also the example with convenuti in note 53 below. In the latter case, the participle presumably comes from the ‘agree’ sense of convenire, to which perfect auxiliary A is normally assigned (by hypothesis, this assignment indicates an unergative occurrence). 45. Monter ‘go up’ and descendre ‘go down’ are notable exceptions. 46. As noted in many places, an analogous alternation persists in modern Italian: (i)

Luisa ha corso nel parco per un’ora. (Centineo 1996: 251) ‘Luisa ran in the park for an hour.’ (ii) Luisa è corsa a casa in un’ora. (Centineo 1996: 251) ‘Lucy ran home in an hour.’

47. The exact status of the implication in question depends on the particular analysis of the perfect. If the perfect of result and the experiential perfect

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are assigned the status of different meanings, then the implication has a semantic status. On the other hand, if the usages in question do not involve different meanings, the implication presumably is a pragmatic implicature. 48. Note also that the achievement potential of mancare is rendered rather explicit when the verb is used as a euphemism for morire: Il 16 agosto X è mancato, a 89 anni. ‘On the 16th August, X died, aged 89.’ 49. In fact, given the discussion in 5.6.1, many apparent instances of the perfect of result in the Middle Ages might in reality be instances of a copula–adjective construction. The ‘resultant state’ meaning is the same under both analyses, however. 50. In fact, in early modern Italian, there are fairly frequent attestations with auxiliary avere of at least some of the verbs in question, but never when the perfect is a perfect of result. 51. Possibly bisognare ‘be necessary’ could be assimilated to the general model discussed in this section, given the achievement sense illustrated by the (somewhat archaic) examples below: (i)

Quando bisognò, venne in aiuto coi paladini. (O 31, 59) ‘When the need arose, he came to help with the paladins.’ (ii) Ma quando bisognò, l’ebbe in oblio. (O 43, 70) ‘When the need arose he forgot.’

In these examples, the sequence quando bisognò appears to refer to the inception of a state that could be described using bisognare in its stative sense. 52. Remés is the past participle of Old French remanoir, a cognate of Italian rimanere. 53. The common use of A with the ‘agree’ meaning (example (119)) may result from the uneven tendency for correlations to emerge between the perfect auxiliaries and speciﬁc senses of given verbs, with A often being associated (not particularly systematically) with meanings that involve greater deliberation and control. Given that the past participle convenuto retains its adjectival capability even in the ‘agree’ sense, as illustrated in the example below, there is no a priori reason to expect the latter sense to be incompatible with E assignment: Sono convenuti sulla necessità di utilizzare truppe antisommossa. ‘They are agreed on the need to use riot police.’ 54. Translation: ‘verbs expressing an action in which the subject did not participate but which the subject simply underwent, and whose agent remained completely indeterminate’. 55. Alternatively, it might be classiﬁed as an instance of the ‘middle voice’. 56. Notice that this circumstance implies that E + past participle was three-way ambiguous, as between a strictly intransitive meaning, a reﬂexive intransitive meaning, and a passive meaning.

208

Notes

6 Past Participle Agreement 1. On this point, see Loporcaro (1998) and Bentley and Eyrthórsson 2003 (section 6). 2. I continue using ‘E and ‘A’ to designate ‘be’ and ‘have’ verbs respectively, as in Chapter 5. 3. In Italian this is obligatory only with third person clitics. Italian also exhibits agreement when the clitic is partitive ne: Ne ho viste/*visto molte. ‘I have seen many of them.’ 4. Agreement is also possible (though dispreferred) when the clitic is partitive en: Ja n’havia feta una. ‘I had already made one.’ 5. An alternative taxonomy, proposed by Belletti (2001, section 5), involves assimilating the transitive reﬂexive examples (7) and (8) to the ‘unaccusative’ paradigm of (3) to (6), with the subject and not the clitic raising from object position. This separation of the transitive reﬂexive structure from the (non-reﬂexive) object clitic structure (examples (9) and (10)) would be motivated by the obligatory nature of the agreement with ﬁ rst and second person clitics in the former case and its optionality in the latter: (i)

Ci siamo guardati/*guardato allo specchio. ‘We looked at ourselves in the mirror.’ (ii) Vi ha visti/o.’ ‘He has seen you (pl.).’ 6. Burzio was assuming a ‘base-generated’ account of cliticization, according to which the clitic is base-generated in its clitic position but is coindexed with an empty category in the position in which the q -role borne by the clitic is assigned (for example, direct object position for a direct object clitic). The net effect in terms of the present discussion is analogous to that which follows from the movement-based analysis of clitics assumed in the preceding paragraph in the text (and also in the analysis of Belletti 2001, discussed below). 7. For simplicity I limit my remarks to indeﬁnite postverbal subjects, given that in some theories at least, indeﬁnite and deﬁnite postverbal subjects of Eselecting verbs/constructions receive divergent analyses. 8. Typically the subject is preverbal in French. Thus examples such as this one (from Marandin 2001) are stylistically marked. Notice, in connection with the argument that follows in the text, that the agreement exhibited by the participle is not retained in this inverted construction if avoir is the auxiliary:

Notes

209

Parfois a résonné/*résonnée une voix qui paraissait la sienne. ‘Sometimes a voice that seemed to be hers has resonated.’ 9. Such agreement appears to be possible, however, in non-standard varieties of Italian (compare Centineo 1996: 235; Belletti 2001: section 3.3). This non-standard pattern could perhaps represent a continuation of the initial Romance pattern of A-type agreement discussed in 6.4. 10. It is to this circumstance that she attributes the impossibility of VSO word order in Italian, given that the object would have to cross over the postverbal subject, thereby violating Relativized Minimality. 11. An additional problem with the uniﬁed accounts discussed in the text consists in the fact that they cannot account for the complete absence of participle agreement in the perfect in languages like Spanish. For example, given the assumption that such agreement is triggered by object movement, there would be no reason not to expect participle agreement in cases of object cliticization. Belletti (2001) suggests that the relevant participle agreement projection is missing altogether in Spanish. However, Spanish passive constructions exhibit past participle agreement (see examples (13) and (19)), which presumably motivates the positing of an agreement projection in that type of case. Therefore the absence of such a projection in the perfect must in effect be stipulated. 12. See the discussion in 5.6.5. 13. I leave open whether this is generated as the object or the subject of the past participle. Logically, both possibilities must exist. (Compare the assumption in Cinque 1990 that some adjectives generate their argument in object position and others in subject position, a duality that clearly does not interfere with the agreement form of the adjective.) I also assume that the participle morphology does not systematically block the licensing of subject q -role, for the reasons given in 7.2.1 and 5.6.2. 14. This view might seem to be challenged by the modern dissociation of participle agreement and E selection in the Italian impersonal si construction, in cases when the participle is from a verb that does not itself select perfect auxiliary E, as illustrated by the contrast below: (i)

Si è arrivati. (Compare: Gianni è/*ha arrivato) ‘One has arrived.’ (ii) Si è parlato/*parlati. (Compare: Gianni ha/*è parlato) ‘One has spoken.’ However, the non-agreement in the type of case illustrated by (ii) is historically motivated under the present analysis, given that it could never have been the case that essere was a copula in this construction (that is, in the case in which the participle is from an A-selecting verb). This use of essere results from the historical levelling of auxiliary selection, in favour of E, in all reﬂexive and related constructions. As regards (i), this simply represents a continuation of the general case illustrated by (25), but with impersonal subject si as opposed to a personal subject. 15 To the effective dissemination of this rule can be attributed the divergence between Italian and French as regards indirect object reﬂexive clitics.

210

Notes

7 Participial Absolutes 1. Typically this will produce a control-type of structure, with an item outside the participial clause controlling into that clause. 2 Here the participial clause una vegada jugat presumably could be classiﬁed as involving an instance of ‘arbitrary’ PRO, analogously to the participial clause in the following example from Belletti (1992:43): Finito un lavoro, è piacevole prendersi una vacanza. ‘Having ﬁnished a task it is nice to take a holiday.’ 3. This obviously requires an additional stipulation excluding the case when the past participle occurs with a perfect auxiliary. Burzio (1986:152) provides such a stipulation. 4. A position that is in effect analogous is adopted by Levin and Rappaport (1986:654) in respect of adjectival past participles. They contend that the past participle morphology blocks the externalization of the subject q -role, with the result that an unergative participle will fail to assign a q -role to either the matrix subject in a predicative construction (for example, *The customer seemed shouted) or to the modiﬁed noun in an attributive construction (for example, *a cried child). 5. The active analysis of this type of clause is motivated primarily by the overt accusative case that is observable under cliticization, as in (11) above. Alternatively, the verb might be regarded as passive, as claimed by Egerland (1996:229–63). A passive analysis would be more attractive for languages like Spanish, Portuguese, French and so on, where there is no accusative clitic data corresponding to Italian (11). 6. So in fact was the passive type of case (Salutata da tutti, Maria lasciò la sala ‘Having been greeted by everybody, Maria left the room), although this possibility is not relevant to present concerns. 7. Actually, this assumption would not be applicable generally, given example (18) below, as well as Spanish (22) and (23), all of which instantiate precisely this pattern. Note also the agreement exhibited in the earlier secondary predicate type of construction (examples (12) and (13)) and also the agreement in the PRO type of construction with verbs like vivere ‘live’: (i)

Vissuta in povertà, Maria morì il 2 febbraio 2002. (Loporcaro 2003: 219) ‘Having lived in poverty, Maria died on 2 February 2002.’

Loporcaro (apparently following Dini 1994) classiﬁes vivere as unaccusative, although in fact avere appears to be the commoner perfect auxiliary with this verb – compare religious/biblical examples such (ii) and (iii) below: (ii) Il Salvatore ha vissuto in povertà. ‘The Saviour lived in poverty.’ (iii) un prete che ha vissuto in povertà ed è morto povero ‘a priest who lived in poverty and died poor’

Notes

211

Plausibly, vivere could well be classiﬁed as unergative, as in fact are most of its cognates in other Romance languages. 8. Here Burzio is assuming the classic ‘case transmission’ theory, whereby a null expletive in the high preverbal subject position (spec-IP/TP) is responsible for case licensing on a postverbal subject (see 5.2). 9. For the Italian verbs, I assume selection of perfect auxiliary avere to indicate unergative status: (i)

Il re ha abdicato. ‘The king has abdicated.’ (ii) L’erba ha attecchito. ‘The grass has taken root.’ (iii) Il latte ha bollito. ‘The milk has boiled.’ (iv) Il lago ha tracimato. ‘The lake has overﬂowed.’ As far as the Spanish examples are concerned, I classify the relevant verbs as unergative on the grounds that (i) their Italian and French equivalents are assigned avere/avoir and (ii) they fall within the unergative semantic spectrum on Sorace’s (2000) auxiliary selection hierarchy. Given the unreliability of the bare subject diagnostic discussed in Chapter 4, there is in fact no principled Spanish-internal basis for classifying verbs as unaccusative or unergative. 10. In addition to the examples in the text, it is also worth noting cases such as the following: Terminato il ministro di parlare, si udì un tuono e il tomporale fu tremendo. ‘The minister having ﬁnished speaking, a clap of thunder was heard and the storm was terrible. In this use, terminare is either unergative or transitive (depending on how di parlare is analysed), but in any case is not unaccusative. 11. This classiﬁcation seems reasonable in view of the facts that (i) its equivalents in Italian and French select perfect auxiliary avere/avoir) and (ii) it falls into the unergative semantic spectrum on Sorace’s Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy.

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Index Accent bare subjects and, 101 direct objects and, 65 partitive cliticization and, 62 prevented from falling on verb, 32, 37–8, 62 see also Focus Accomplishment terms diagnostics for, 205 n. 23 frequently classiﬁed as unaccusatives, 53, 179, 181, 186 participial absolutes and, 179 partitive cliticization and, 195 n. 19 perfect auxiliary A and, 120–2 perfect auxiliary alternations and, 141–2 perfect auxiliary E and, 140–3, 161, 179 presentational uses of, 66–7 resultant states and, 140–1, 181, 184 semantic decomposition of, 118–19 Achievement terms as denoting the inception of a state, 118, 140–1, 149, 181, 184 bare subjects and, 102, 185–6, 198–9 n. 18 frequently classiﬁed as unaccusatives, 53, 102, 179, 181, 185, 186, 199 n. 18 participial absolutes and, 179 partitive cliticization and, 195 n. 19 perfect auxiliary A and, 120–2 perfect auxiliary alternations and, 141–2

perfect auxiliary E and, 140–3, 145, 161, 179 presentational uses of, 66–7 see also State terms Activity terms agentive, 57, 59, 66–9, 93 diagnostics for, 119 identiﬁcational information structure and, 59 Latin deponents and, 134 non-agentive, 57, 60, 66–7, 69 participial absolutes and, 179–80 partitive cliticization and, 57– 60, 195 n. 19 perfect auxiliary A and, 67, 69, 118 perfect auxiliary alternations and, 141–2 perfect auxiliary E and, 119–21 presentational uses of, 59, 66– 7, 69 unergativity and, 57, 60, 93 see also Contextualization Adjectival past participles reﬂexive verbs and, 115–16 restricted to unaccusative verbs, 139, 206 n. 43, 210 n. 4 unergative, 139–40, 207 n. 53 see also E-verbs: as copulas Adjunct condition, 42 extraction, 50–1 Agentivity diagnostics for, 9 perfect auxiliary selection and, 121, 144, 207 n. 53 Agreement long-distance, 108, 110, 165–6, 188 n. 17 projections, 5, 19–20, 109–10, 164–5, 167, 175–6, 188 n. 16, 203 n. 10, 209 n. 11

220

Index

see also Past participle agreement Alexiadou, Artemis, 108 Algunos versus unos, 199 n. 22, 201 n. 29 Anagnostopoulou, Elena, 108 Aranovich, Raúl, 70 A(rgument)-positions, 3, 41, 54, 67, 202 n. 4 Aristotle, 86, 91 Arteaga, Deborah, 190 n. 5 Aspectual class participial absolutes and, 179 partitive cliticization and, 67 perfect auxiliary selection and, 118–24 see also Accomplishment terms; Achievement terms, etc. Associates case and, 4, 20, 108 compared with transitive direct objects, 65 deﬁned, 17 deﬁnite, 24–6, 31, 191 n. 12 extraction from, 45, 57, 60–2, 69 form informational unit with verb, 36–7 introduced by universal distributives, 22–4 narrowly focused, 32, 35–6 need not be deep objects, 65 passive, 30 pragmatically indeterminate, 38 presented, 32–5 see also Agreement: longdistance; Binding; Unaccusative; Unergative Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH), 75, 122, 188 n. 15, 190 n. 4, 204 n. 15, 211 n. 9 A-verbs as perfect auxiliaries, 12, 109– 14, 119–24, 142–4, 160–1, 169, 171, 185, 193 n. 20 (see also Accomplishment terms; Achievement terms; Activity terms)

221

past participle agreement with, 163–5, 168–70, 185, 208 n. 8, 209 n. 9 small clauses and, 131–2, 168, 185 Avere, see A-verbs Avoir, see A-verbs Baltin, Mark, 3, 53, 68 Bare subjects as unaccusative diagnostic in Spanish, 70, 92–5, 101–2, 185–6, 198–9, 211 n. 9 conjoined, 99–101, 196 n. 2 contrasted with overtly quantiﬁed subjects, 79–80, 88, 90 default existential interpretation of, 71, 74, 96–7 empty determiners/quantiﬁers and, 12, 71, 73 event arguments and, 71, 74 informational richness requirement on, 100–2 locative subjects and, 73, 76–7 modiﬁed, 99–101, 196 n. 2, 201 n. 27, n. 28 of unergative verbs, 75–7 presentational verbs and, 200 n. 23 preverbal, 100–1 semantico-pragmatic constraints on the distribution of, 78–95, 101, 185 syntactic distribution of, 70–1 universal, 75, 96–7, 102 see also Accent; Achievement terms; Contextualization; Empty Category Principle; Ergative Analysis; Government; Individuallevel predicates; Partitive case; Quantiﬁcation; Stagelevel predicates; State terms

222

Index

Belletti, Adriana on bare nouns, 72, 74 on deﬁniteness effects, 20–2, 193–4 n. 6 on inversion, 22, 41, 43 on participial absolutes, 175–6 on partitive cliticization, 40–3, 54, 67, 193 n. 1 on partitive (inherent) case, 13, 20–2, 72, 74, 165, 188 n. 17, 192 n. 18, 203 n. 7 on past participle agreement, 5, 164–5, 167 on perfect auxiliary selection, 109 on reﬂexives, 204 n. 17 on relation between syntax and intonation, 195 n. 17 Bennis, Hans, 166, 187 n. 4 Bentley, Delia on deﬁniteness effects in Sardinian, 31 on perfect auxiliary selection, 122–4, 202 n. 1, 206 n. 39 on ne-cliticization, 56–7, 195 n. 20 Benveniste, Emile, 4, 109 Benzing, Joseph, 12 Bernstein, Judy, 73 ‘Be’-verbs, see E-verbs Biberauer, Theresa, 19 Binding of associate/postverbal subject, by expletive, 107–9, 165 of clitic, by subject, 104, 203 n. 13 of object position, by clitic, 164 of trace, by subject, 4, 104, 107, 164 theory, 108 see also Past participle agreement Birner, Betty, 191 n. 12 Bouchard, Denis, 19 Bowers, John, 187 n. 4 Brambilla Ageno, Franca, 137, 157

Brentano, Franz, 91, 199 n. 23 Brother-in-law, 188 n. 14 Burzio, Luigi and the term ‘ergative’, 187 n. 2 on accusative case, 177 on impersonal si, 158, 202 n. 2 on participial small clauses, 174 on partitive cliticization, 51–2 on past participle agreement, 164, 165 on perfect auxiliary selection, 104, 107, 111–13, 159 Cardinaletti, Anna, 44 Carlson, Greg N, 63, 71, 75, 82, 198 n. 16 Case accusative, 2, 4, 22, 166–7, 174, 176–7, 180, 183, 188 n. 16– 17, 210 n. 5 failures of, 175–8 nominative, 4, 20–2, 108, 110, 165, 176, 183, 188 n. 17 transmission, 108, 211 n. 8 see also Partitive (inherent) case Catalan, see Participial absolutes; Partitive cliticization; Past participle agreement C-command, 3, 9, 53–4, 110, 166, 188–9 n. 16, n. 17, 196 n. 4, 203 n. 13 Cennamo, Michela, 202 n. 1 Centineo, Giulia, 203 n. 13, 205 n. 25, n. 33, 206 n. 46 Chierchia, Gennaro, see Subject-affectedness Chomeur, 6 Chomsky, Noam on chains, 176 on control into adjuncts, 10 on ne-extraction, 189 n. 18 on raised features, 11 on relation between expletives and associates, 108–9 on L-marking, 42

Index

see also Agreement: longdistance; Subject q -role: assignment of Cinque, Guglielmo on ne-extraction, 3, 13, 44 on participial absolutes, 4 on unaccusative adjectives, 64, 209 n. 13 on wh-extraction, 44 Cocchi, Giulia, 4, 109–10, 117, 159 Combien extraction, 45 Comrie, Bernard, 131 COMP-trace effect, see Nullsubject languages; Government Condition on Extraction Domains (CED), 42, 44–5, 47–9, 51, 182, 193 n. 4 Contextualization activity terms and, 59–60, 93, 102 bare subjects and, 77, 90–5, 102, 185 partitive cliticization and, 57, 59–60 presentational information structure and, 59 Contreras, Heles, 3, 12, 71, 73, 96, 196 n. 3 Control, see PRO Conventionalization, see Perfect auxiliary selection Corominas, Joan, 151 Cummins, Sarah, 19 Deep object analysis, 2–3, 6, 8, 15, 37, 40, 64–5, 101, 159, 167, 170, 173, 182–3 Deﬁnite descriptions attributive–referential distinction and, 89 pragmatic constraint on, 24–6, 38 uniqueness of reference and, 27–8 see also Associates; Postverbal subjects

223

Deﬁniteness effects focus and, 22, 27 in English, 20, 25 in French, 20, 25 in Italian, 21–2, 27 in Spanish, 22–3 partitive case and, 20–2, 27–8, 182 pragmatic rather than syntactic, 38, 182 Degree achievements, 205 n. 21 Deponent, 132–4, 139 Diesing, Molly, see Mapping Hypothesis Dini, Luca, 172 Direct objects and control into adjuncts, 9–10 as deﬁned by Burzio, 202 n. 4 expletive, 177 in Relational Grammar, 7, 52–3 unaccusative subjects as, 2–4, 9, 15, 21 see also Partitive cliticization Dispositional combinations, 80–1 Donnellan, Keith, 89–90 Dowty, David, 118, 195 n. 20, 205 n. 21 DP (determiner phrase) hypothesis, 71, 73 Egerland, Verner, 210 n. 5 Emission verbs, 123 Emphatic stress, 101, 191 n. 10 Empty Category Principle (ECP) bare subjects and, 12–13, 71 deﬁned, 71 partitive cliticization and, 13 see also Postverbal subjects En-avant, 193 n. 1 EPP (Extended Projection Principle), 108 Ergative Analysis bare subjects and, 3–4 contrasted with Unaccusative Hypothesis, 5–8, 15, 187 n. 1 explained, 1–5 past participle agreement and, 165, 167–8

224

Index

Ergative Analysis cont. perfect auxiliary selection and, 103, 107, 109, 160 Essere, see E-verbs Être, see E-verbs Event arguments, 71, 74, 200 n. 24 E-verbs as copulas, 132, 134–42, 157, 160, 168, 184–5, 207 n. 49 as passive auxiliaries, 109–14, 117, 119–24, 160–1, 163, 166, 169 as perfect auxiliaries, 107, 109– 11, 138, 142, 169, 171, 185 (see also Accomplishment terms; Achievement terms; Activity terms) past participle agreement with, 162–3, 165–7, 168–9, 185 Experiencer–stimulus verbs, 95– 6, 102, 148 Experiential perfect, 146, 149 Expletives EPP and, 17–18, 108 in English, 17, 20, 24–5, 30 in French, 17, 19–20, 23–6, 30–8, 190 n. 5 nominative case and, 20 null, 107–8, 190 n. 2, 6, 211 n. 8 passives and, 13, 20, 31, 34–6, 38 se-moyen and, 31, 34–5 spec-IP (spec-TP) and, 18–19 spec-vp and, 19 unaccusatives and, 31, 33, 38 unergatives and, 33, 38 see also Associates; Piedmontese; Sardinian; Topic–comment division Extensional contexts, 97 Extraction, see ne-extraction; whextraction, etc. Eyrthórsson, Thorallur, 122–4, 202 n. 1, 206 n. 39 Factivity, 49–50 Features, see Movement Fiengo, Robert, 3, 5, 68, 193 n. 1

Focus accentuation and, 32, 37–8, 201–2 n. 32 clause-ﬁnal placement and, 22, 26, 36–7, 101, 192 n. 16 narrow, 32–3, 35–7, 56–9 partitive cliticization and, 56–60 phrase, 3, 22, 29, 41–3, 54, 67 postverbal subjects and, 22, 29, 43, 45, 68 wide (sentence), 29, 32, 43, withheld from verb, 31–2, 37, 60, 62, 65 see also Deﬁniteness effects French, see Expletives; Partitive cliticization; Past participle agreement; Perfect auxiliary selection Galician, 103 Garrido, Joaquín, 75, 77, 98, 188 n. 15, 197 n. 13 Government bare subjects and, 12, 71, 73–4, 101 COMP-trace effect and, 73–4, 190 n. 14 into speciﬁer, 46–51, 68 standard GB conception of, 196 n. 4 Grice, H. Paul, 89–90 Gruber, Jeffrey, 9 Haber, see A-verbs ‘Have’-verbs, see A-verbs Herschensohn, Julia, 190 n. 5 Hidden arguments, see Event arguments Huang, James, 193 n. 4 Hyperonym, 96–7 Identiﬁcational, 43, 59 Impersonal si bound from subject position, 202 n. 2 compared with Latin passive, 159

Index

past participle agreement and, 209 n. 14 perfect auxiliary selection and, 110, 158–9, 161, 202 n. 2, 209 n. 14 Inde, 39, 60 Individual-level predicates bare subjects and, 71, 74, 97, 102 deﬁned, 96 partitive cliticization and, 63–4 In situ, 2, 11, 126, 165–6, 183, 187 n. 3 Internal arguments, 48–9, 50–1, 126, 202 n. 31 Intransitive passive, 138, 156–7 Inversion expletive, 13, 17–38, 60–2, 68 narrow focus and, 32, 35–7 presentational, 33, 68 stylistic, 45 unergative, 19 see also Null-subject languages Italian bare subjects and, 198 n. 15 see also Deﬁniteness effects; Participial absolutes; Partitive cliticization; Past participle agreement; Perfect auxiliary selection Italo–Romance dialects: perfect auxiliary selection in, 202 n. 1 Kayne, Richard, 5, 45, 109–10, 117, 164 Koopman, Hilda, 44 Kratzer, Angelika, see Event arguments Kripke, Saul, 89–90 Kuroda, Shige-Yuki, 63 Labelle, Marie, 18 Laca, Brenda, 197 n. 12 La Fauci, Nunzio, 138 Lambrecht, Knud, 64, 193 n. 22, 195 n. 21, 199 n. 23 Lapesa, Rafael, 137

225

Larson, Richard, 187 n. 4 Lasnik, Howard on control into adjuncts, 188 n. 16 on EPP, 18 on government, 196 n. 4 on partitive (inherent) case, 4, 13, 20, 72 Latin, 39, 131–4, 138–9, 143, 153, 156, 159, 168–9, 198 n. 15 Legendre, Géraldine, 19, 122, 189 n. 20 Levin, Beth, 4, 11, 114, 139, 177, 194 n. 8, 210 n. 4 L-marking, 42, 44, 67, 193 n. 5 Locative subjects, 73 Lois, Ximena, 71, 74, 99, 196 n. 4 Longobardi, Giuseppe on bare arguments, 71, 99, 201 n. 27 on extraction, 3, 40, 44, 46–9, 68 on Diesing’s Mapping Hypothesis, 201 n. 31 Lonzi, Lidia, 56, 64, 66, 193 n. 21, 194 n. 8 López Díaz, Enrique, 75 Loporcaro, Michele, 7, 172–3, 208 n. 1 Lyons, John, 187 n. 2, 199 n. 18 Mapping Hypothesis, 201 n. 31 Marandin, Jean-Marie, 189 n. 20, 208 n. 8 Masullo, Pascual, 71, 197 n. 13 Maximal projection, 54, 196 n. 4 McNally, Louise, 191 n. 9, n. 12, 197 n. 11 Mendikoetxea, Amaya, 70 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 169 Middle voice, 138, 156 Milsark, Gary, 63, 199 n. 22 Movement of expletives, 19 of features, 11 of subject, 2, 67, 164–5, 176, 183 of verb, 19, 41, 108, 175–6, 178 out of small clauses, 168, 185

226

Index

Ne-cliticization, see Ne-extraction Ne-extraction adnominal pattern of, 39–40, 42, 46–7, 192 n. 18 as successive cyclic, 47, 68 c-command and, 3, 53–4 compared with wh-extraction, 44–7 from argument positions, 41 from L-marked positions, 42, 44, 67 preverbal subjects and, 193 n. 1 see also Partitive cliticization Nuclear stress rule, 191 n. 8 Null-subject languages immunity of, to COMP-trace effect, 14–16, 74 inversion in, 19, 32–4, 61, 65, 195 n. 16 Object q -role and presented discourse function, 34, 65, 68 and unaccusative subjects, 4, 15, 18, 174 Palmer, Frank R., 130 Participial absolutes agreement in, 176 as unaccusative diagnostic, 172–3 in Catalan, 173 in Italian, 172–6, 178–180 in Spanish, 172–3, 178–9 perfect auxiliary selection and, 52–3, 179 unergative subjects in, 178–80 see also Accomplishment terms; Achievement terms; Aspectual class; Case: failures of; PRO; Relational Grammar; Subject q -role Partitive (inherent) case bare subjects and, 13, 71–2, 74–5 ECM constructions and, 72, 75

licensing of, 13, 20, 72 position, 22, 26, 165 see also Deﬁniteness effects Partitive cliticization diagnoses presentational capability, 60–7, 184 from direct objects, 52–3, 65– 6, 68 from passive subjects/ associates, 13, 57, 60–62, 65, 184 from unaccusative subjects/ associates, 56–7 from unergative subjects/ associates, 55–7, 183 in Catalan, 39, 55, 58, 61–3, 68 in French, 57, 61–2, 68 in Italian, 55–8, 61–4, 66–7 in Relational Grammar, 7, 52–3 perfect auxiliary selection and, 66–7, 69, 111, 115–18 syntactic theories of, 40–54 see also Accomplishment terms, Achievement terms, etc.; Aspectual class; Empty Category Principle; Ergative Analysis; Focus; Individuallevel predicates; Neextraction; Reﬂexives; Stagelevel predicates Passives bare subjects and, 12–13 compared with unaccusatives, 11–14, 65, 68, 184 past participle agreement and, 163, 166, 209 n. 11 perfect auxiliary selection and, 11–12, 112–14, 117, 153, 157– 8, 168, 184 presentational capability of, 36, 38, 68, 184, 195 n. 16 reﬂexive, 34–5, 38, 62, 194 n. 15 see also Associates; Expletives; Partitive cliticization; Postverbal subjects; Reﬂexives; Subjectaffectedness

Index

Past participle agreement in Catalan, 170 in French, 170 in Italian, 170 in Latin, 168–9 in Spanish, 162–3, 169–70, 209 n. 11 movement-based theories of, 164–7, 183 non-standard, 209 n. 9 postverbal subjects and, 165–7 single rule of, in early Romance, 168–9 standardization and, 170 two systems of, in modern Romance, 167 see also A-verbs; E-verbs; Impersonal si; Participial absolutes; Passives; Reﬂexives Perfect auxiliary selection conventionalization of, 131, 141–3, 145, 149, 151, 155–6, 161, 185 disambiguating function of, 144, 207 n. 53 Franco–Italian mismatches in respect of, 111–7 historical perspective on, 129–59 in modern French, 12, 103–4, 111–17, 123–4, 131, 141–5, 149, 160 in modern Italian, 103–6, 111– 17, 119–23, 127–9, 141–5, 147–8, 150–1, 154–5 in Old French, 12, 134–8, 142, 149, 150, 153 in Old Italian, 134–7, 149, 150–2, in Old Spanish, 136–7, 141, 143, 150 no complete synchronic generalization for, 130, 160– 1, 184 semantic theories of, 118–29, 160, 205 n. 33 syntactic theories of, 104–11, 116–17, 130

227

see also Agentivity; Ergative Analysis; Impersonal si; Passives; Raising verbs; Reﬂexives; State terms; Subject-affectedness Perfect of recent past, 149 Perfect of result accomplishments/achievements and, 146–9, 155 deﬁned, 131 in the Middle Ages, 135, 149, 155, 161 Perlmutter, David M. and the Unaccusative Hypothesis, 5–6 on control into adjuncts, 189 n. 19 on grammatical relations, 194 n. 7 on partitive ne, 7, 52–3, 68 on perfect auxiliary selection in Italian, 7, 202–3 n. 5 Phenomena verbs, 121–3 Picallo, M. Carme, 40 Piedmontese, 31 Pinto, Manuela, 27, 29, 43, 59, 191 n. 15, 201 n. 31 Pollock, Jean Yves, 45 Portuguese, 70, 103, 134, 185, 210 n. 5 Postverbal subjects Condition on Extraction Domains and, 42, 44, 182 deﬁnite, 2, 21–2, 27–9, 42, 193 n. 6 government and, 73–4, 190 n. 14 Empty Category Principle and, 74, 182 introduced by universal distributives, 21, 22–4 object-like behaviour of, 14–16, 34, 65, 196 n. 6, 203 n. 14 passive, 21, 23, 36, 166, 191 n. 7, 195 n. 16 presented, 32–4 see also Binding; Focus; Past participle agreement; Unaccusative; Unergative

228

Index

Pountain, Christopher, 158 Presentational capability, 33, 36, 38, 61–3, 69, 184, 195 n. 16 information structure, 33–5, 59, 64, 66, 200 n. 23 unaccusatives, 33, 38, 61, 63, 68, 184, 200 n. 23 unergatives, 33, 38, 61, 66, 68 versus ‘logically unstructured’, 200 n. 23 see also Accomplishment terms, Achievement terms, etc.; Bare subjects; Inversion; Object q role; Partitive cliticization; Passives Prior mention, 25, 191 n. 11 Pro, see Expletives: null PRO in adjunct clauses, 9–11 in participial clauses, 174–6, 180, 183, 210 n. 1, n. 2, n. 7 Probe–goal theory, see Agreement: long-distance Projection Principle, 51 Quantiﬁcation bare subjects and, 84–90 default existential, 71 existential, 78–81, 83, 85, 87– 8, 125 redundant, 88–90 universal, 82, 84–7 Quine, Willard Van Orman, 80, 82–4, 88 Radford, Andrew, 187 n. 4, n. 7 Raising, see Movement Raising verbs (predicates), 103, 107, 111–13, 116, 127, 188 n. 9 Rappaport Hovav, Malka, 4, 11, 114, 139, 177, 194 n. 8, 210 n. 4 Referentially opaque contexts, 83 Reﬂexives ergative, 115, 203 n. 14 inherent, 115, 157, 180, 203 n. 14

intransitive, 111, 114–16, 131, 152–3, 156–9, 162, 202 n. 3 ‘omission’ of pronoun with, 137–8 partitive cliticization and, 115 past participle agreement and, 162–4, 204 n. 17 perfect auxiliary selection and, 103–4, 111, 114–17, 131, 156–9 transitive, 111, 115–16, 131, 157–8 see also Adjectival past participles Reinhart, Tanya, 115, 118 Relational Grammar ‘arc’ phraseology in, 5, 202–3 n. 5 contrasted to GB/Minimalism, 5–8 overview of, 5–6 participial absolutes and, 7, 173 partitive cliticization and, 7, 52–3 perfect auxiliary selection and, 7, 202–3 n. 5 ‘tail’ phraseology in, 188 n. 10 ‘Remain’ verbs aspectual ambiguity of, 146–7, 155 ‘cease’ meaning of, 150 Resultant-state constraint, 53, 140, 179, 181, 186 Richards, Marc, 19 Richards, Norvin, 167 Rizzi, Luigi on binding relations, 203 n. 9 on COMP-trace effect, 74 on ne-extraction, 54, 193 n. 1 Rohlfs, Gerhard, 205 n. 25 Rosen, Carol, 130, 205 n. 24 Russell, Bertrand, 28–9, 89 Sardinian, 31 Se-moyen, see Expletives Sentence-radicals, 83 Siloni, Tal, 115, 118 Sm versus some, 199 n. 22, 201 n. 29

Index

Sorace, Antonella, 19, 189 n. 20 see also Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH) Spanish difﬁculty of classifying verbs as unaccusative in, 211 n. 9 see also Bare subjects; Deﬁniteness effects; Past participle agreement; Perfect auxiliary selection; Reﬂexives: intransitive Spec, see Speciﬁer Speciﬁer –head relation, 164–5, 196 n. 5 of agreement projection, 175 of focus phrase, 42–3, 67 of IP/TP, 2, 17, 19, 73, 190 n. 5, 203 n. 8, 211 n. 8 of vp, 19, 166, 187 n. 4, 190 n. 1 of VP, 41, 187 n. 4 see also Government Sportiche, Dominique, 44 Stage-level predicates bare subjects and, 71, 97–8, 102 deﬁned, 96 partitive cliticization and, 64, thetic judgments and, 63 see also Event arguments State terms achievement senses of, 145–53, 155–6, 179 bare subjects and, 95–9 diagnostics for, 146, 148, 154 partitive cliticization and, 67 perfect auxiliary selection and, 141, 145–56, 161 presentational uses of, 66–7 pseudo-, 153–5 Subjacency, 193 n. 3 Subject-affectedness expletivization and, 125–7 passives and, 124–5 perfect auxiliary selection and, 124, 127–9 reﬂexivization and, 125–8

229

Subject q -role assignment of, 8–9, 15, 175, 177 blocking of, 139, 174–5, 180, 183–4, 209 n. 13, 210 n. 4 Suñer, Margarita, 64 T(ense), 54, 166, 203 n. 8 That-trace effect, see COMP-trace effect Theme q -role, 156 Thetic judgments, 63–4, 199–200 n. 23 Togeby, Knud, 174 Topic–comment division deﬁnite subjects and, 35 individual-level predicates and, 63 passives and, 34–5 prevented by expletives, 37 universal distributives and, 24, 35 Torrego, Esther, 72–3, 76–7, 92, 194 n. 10 Unaccusative adjectives, 64, 209 n. 13 associates, 4, 30, 45 deﬁned, 2 diagnostics, 15, 18, 69–70, 107, 173, 180, 183–4 Hypothesis, 5–6, 11, 15, 103 postverbal subjects, 2, 10, 15, 21–2, 40, 45–8, 101, 165 syntax, 31, 33, 60, 101, 107, 193 n. 21 Unergative associates, 18–20, 30, 38, 45 deﬁned, 2 postverbal subjects, 2, 15, 22, 26, 40–7, 51–2, 54, 67, 73–4, 101, 167, 194 n. 6 syntax, 18, 30 –unaccusative alternations, 65, 72–3, 76–7, 193 n. 21, 194 n. 9, n. 10 see also Direct objects: expletive; Inversion Unfocusable verbs, 32, 38

230

Index

Uniqueness interpretation, see Deﬁnite descriptions Universal bare subjects, see Bare subjects distributives, see Associates; Postverbal subjects; Topic– comment division quantiﬁer, see Quantiﬁcation Van Valin, Robert Jr, 179, 195 n. 20 Vendler, Zeno, 145 Verb raising, see Movement: of verbs

Vincent, Nigel, 158, 168 VP-internal subject hypothesis, 18, 67 vp shells, 19, 167, 187 n. 4, 190 n. 1 Ward, Gregory, 191 n. 12 Weak existential interpretation, 59 Wh-extraction, 44–50, 73–4, 164 Zubizarreta, María Luisa, 191 n. 8

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Assertion (Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition)

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Minority Languages, Education and Communities in China (Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities)

Grammatical Categories: Variation in Romance Languages (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics)

Linguistic Meaning, Truth Conditions and Relevance: The Case of Concessives (Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Languages and Cognition)

Explicit Communication: Robyn Carston's Pragmatics (Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition)

Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction

The Rhaeto-Romance Languages (Romance Linguistics)

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Maintaining Minority Languages in Transnational Contexts: Australian and European Perspectives (Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities)

The Inflected Infinitive in Romance Languages (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics)

Emotions in Multiple Languages

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Language and Education in Japan: Unequal Access to Bilingualism (Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities)

Pragmatics across Languages and Cultures (Handbook of Pragmatics)

Careers in Foreign Languages

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Language and Education in Japan: Unequal Access to Bilingualism (Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities)

Studies in American Indian Languages (Library Reprint)

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Talk in Two Languages

Immigrant languages in Europe

Tense And Aspect in Romance Languages: Theoretical And Applied Perspectives (Studies in Bilingualism)

Researching Specialized Languages (Studies in Corpus Linguistics)

The Word in Arabic (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics)

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