The significance of parasitic gap licensing by pronominal cliticization in Spanish
Colin Davis, Luis Miguel Toquero-Pérez
August 2022 

While non-subject DPs in Spanish typically appear post-verbally, pronominal arguments often must be displaced to a pre-verbal position. Previous research has observed that this process, which is commonly referred to as pronominal cliticization, has characteristics of A-movement in Spanish and related languages. However, in this paper we describe and analyze the fact that in the Iberian Spanish of rural Valladolid, such cliticization also has a canonical A-bar property: the licensing of parasitic gaps (PGs). We argue that such cliticization in this particular variety is derived by composite A+A-bar movement, which has traits of both movement types. Spanish also has a clitic doubling construction, in which the expected gap left behind by the clitic’s movement is filled by a co-referent full DP. We show that PG-licensing by clitic doubling fails, and suggest that this phenomenon involves pure A-movement, unlike the composite movement of non-doubled clitics. We also show that PG-licensing by pronominal cliticization behaves precisely as expected in a number of other ways, focusing on PGs in multiple movement contexts. In Iberian Spanish, both a direct object and an indirect object can be cliticized. We show that the patterns of PG licensing in multiple cliticization contexts mirror those seen in multiple A-bar movement configurations in English explored by previous work, and verify similar predictions about contexts where pronominal cliticization and WH-movement co-occur.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/006757 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	WCCFL 40 proceedings
keywords:	parasitic gaps, pronouns, clitics, a/a-bar distinction, multiple movement, spanish, semantics, syntax
Downloaded:	420 times

 

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