Proleptic constructions in Modern Greek
Anastasia Tsilia
November 2023 

We investigate the semantics of an attitudinal construction in Modern Greek, where an attitude verb may take an accusative object followed by a CP (e.g. ‘Maria wants Yanis.ACC_i [CP pro_i only love her]’). Drawing on literature (Kotzoglou 2002; Kotzoglou and Papangeli 2007; Kotzoglou 2017) arguing that the accusative object is base-generated in the matrix clause, we propose that this is an instance of prolepsis. Importantly, unlike proleptic constructions described in other languages, the proleptic object can have de dicto readings, despite being base-generated in the matrix clause. We propose an analysis in terms of semantic lowering, along the lines of Dawson and Deal (2019), arguing that semantic lowering is not restricted to extensional, but can also apply to intensional types of pronouns. Finally, we describe an additional semantic restriction on the proleptic object, as well as discuss the implications of the Modern Greek case for the broader function of prolepsis and the syntax-semantics interface.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/007929 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 27
keywords:	syntax-semantics interface, prolepsis, quasi-ecm, de dicto, de re, semantic lowering, causal constructions, semantics, syntax
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