Chapter 5
A deletion account of referential null objects in Basque Spanish
I propose a deletion analysis for null D(irect) O(bject)s in the Spanish of the Basque Country, based on a D(efiniteness)-feature on DO clitics and on Basque-Spanish v. When the DO clitic has a D-feature, as is the case with lo(s)/la(s), its features form a proper subset of the features of v, and deletion of the clitic ensues in terms of a chain reduction à la Nunes (2004), as proposed in Roberts (2010). Importantly, DOs with human antecedents are not deleted because they undergo leísmo. I argue that le does not have a D-feature and, therefore, its features are not a proper subset of the features of v, thus precluding deletion.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The distribution of referential null objects in B-Spanish
- 3.Analysis
- 3.1The nature of accusative vs. dative clitics
- 3.2A deletion analysis of null objects
- 4.Final remarks
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Notes
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References