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Subject clitics and clitic recycling: locative sentences in some Iberian Romance languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1998

VÍCTOR M. LONGA ,
GUILLERMO LORENZO  and
GEMMA RIGAU
VÍCTOR M. LONGA
Affiliation:
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
GUILLERMO LORENZO
Affiliation:
Universidad de Oviedo
GEMMA RIGAU
Affiliation:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
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Abstract

The first concern of this article is an analysis of locative sentences in the Iberian Romances. It is argued that both the existential (〈HAVE〉) and the stative (〈BE〉) construction derive from a single abstract verb. Their differences are based in the presence vs. the absence of an incorporation process over an otherwise identical lexical structure. The second topic of the paper is a study of the behavior of pronominal clitics within these sentences. It is observed that while Catalan has a rich paradigm of clitics (accusative, dative, locative, partitive), languages like Asturian, Galician and certain Spanish dialects resort to a ‘recycling’ strategy in order to palliate the deficiencies of their clitic paradigms. In this respect, we will show how accusative clitics are used as partitive, locative, and even subject clitics. We also propose some of the principles which constrain the application of this strategy. Finally, an Appendix is devoted to certain uses of the accusative clitics as modal markers, also within locative sentences. These uses are closely related with the behavior of certain clitics in Northern Italian dialects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 125 - 164
Copyright
1998 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We are grateful to A. Bartra, J. M. Brucart, K. Hale, J. W. Harris, M. L. Hernanz, S. J. Keyser, N. Martí, W. O'Neil, C. P. Otero, C. Picallo, F. Roca, J. Solà-Pujols, X. Villalba and two anonymous JL referees for their comments and support. This research was supported by a grant from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela to Victor M. Longa, grants from FICYT and DGICYT (PB93-0887-C03-02) to Guillermo Lorenzo, and grants from DGICYT (PR 94-106; PB93-0893-C04-01) and Generalitat de Catalunya (EE93/2-241; 1995SG/00486) to Gemma Rigau. Thanks are due to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Víctor M. Longa) and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy of MIT (Guillermo Lorenzo and Gemma Rigau) for providing us with the opportunity to be Visiting Scholars during 1993–94. The names of the authors in this work are alphabetically ordered.