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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2017: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 31, Bucharest
Edited by Alexandru Nicolae and Adina Dragomirescu
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 355] 2021
► pp. 335–356

Dative clitics in Romanian ditransitives

| University of Bucharest
| University of Cologne

This chapter presents a novel analysis for Romanian ditransitives. Based on empirical findings, we develop a derivational account building on the internal make-up of the two internal arguments. The account departs from the observation that clitic doubling (CD) of indirect objects (IO) and Differential Object Marking (DOM) of direct objects (DO) interact in an interesting and unexpected way: while unmarked DOs bind IOs irrespective of Clitic Doubling of IOs, counterparts where DOM-ed DOs bind CD-ed IOs are degraded; however, CD-ed+DOM-ed DOs fare much better. These facts seem to arise as a consequence of the interaction between DOM-ed DOs and CD-ed IOs which have similar internal make-up (they both carry a [Person] feature) and compete for the same probe, with the closer blocking agreement of the other. When DO cliticizes, these intervention effects no longer arise.

Keywords: ditransitives, differential object marking, clitic doubling
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.One problematic configuration
  • 3.The featural make-up of IOs and DOM-ed DOs
    • 3.1A [iPerson] for DOM-ed DOs
    • 3.2A [Person] feature for Goal DPs
  • 4.A syntactic account of the experimental data
    • 4.1Unmarked DOs and CD-ed IOs
    • 4.2DOM-ed DOs and CD-ed IOs
    • 4.3CD-ed + DOM-ed DOs and CD-ed IOs
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.355.17tig
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