On the Semantics of Pronominal Clitics and some of its Consequences
- Autores: Denis Delfitto
- Localización: Catalan journal of linguistics, ISSN-e 2014-9719, ISSN 1695-6885, Vol. 1, 2002 (Ejemplar dedicado a: The Grammar of Clitics), págs. 41-69
- Idioma: inglés
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- Dialnet Métricas: 1 Cita
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Resumen
Recent work on the acquisition of the binding conditions suggests that pronominal clitics (PCs) encode the presence of an unsaturated argument position. In other words, PC-constructions encode functional abstraction: the argument position related to the PC is re-opened. This interpretation represents a radical departure from traditional analyses (in virtually every syntactic framework, including HPSG and Principles&Parameters), which take PCs to reduce the valence of the predicate to which they are linked, either in the lexicon (HPSG) or in syntax (P&P). In this contribution, I will provide conceptual and empirical motivation for this radical reinterpretation of PC-constructions, by claiming that it considerably enhances the prospects of explanatory adequacy in (at least) the following domains: (a) the acquisition data relative to Principle B Effects in Romance languages; (b) the familiar vs. bound-variable interpretation of PCs; (c) the diachronic relationship between clitic left-dislocation constructions (CLLD) and PC-constructions;
(d) the properties of Romance CLLD which are still in need of a deep conceptual account, like the (optional) presence of a resumptive clitic and the recursive nature of the topic projections in the left-periphery.
