Clitics as predicate-makers. A case study of clitic doubling in Rioplatense Spanish
Andrés Saab
August 2024 

Among the myriads of Spanish varieties, Rioplatense Spanish is well-known for having an extended pattern of clitic doubling (CD), both for accusative and dative arguments. Adapting van Urk’s featural approach to A-movement, I propose that doubling clitics are probes, i.e., pure syntactic indexes triggering Agree+A-movement. I show that this thesis is robustly confirmed by old and new tools for diagnosing A-movement (reconstruction, WCO, binding, ellipsis, agreement and so on). At LF, the index is read off as a mere stranded l -abstractor triggering predicate abstraction. The abstracted predicate is, then, semantically saturated by the doubled object. I distinguish clitics in CD sentences from clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD), which, following Cinque (1990), I model as bound variables. As I show in detail, many astonishing distributional differences between CD and CLLD are accounted for by making this basic division between probe-clitics and variable-clitics. In this regard, the theory implies a new typology of clitics, according to which, in addition to their already acknowledged status as variables or as mere agreement markers, clitics can also serve as predicate-makers (i.e., l -abstractors). NB: In revision since 2021... And now in temporary pause because of the Syntax affair.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008342 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Under revision (since 2021 in part my fault!)
keywords:	clitic doubling, a-movement, predicate abstraction, rioplatense spanish, semantics, morphology, syntax
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