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Points of Convergence in Romance Linguistics: Papers selected from the 48th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 48), Toronto, 25-28 April 2018
Edited by Gabriela Alboiu and Ruth King
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 360] 2022
► pp. 97–110

Chapter 5
A deletion account of referential null objects in Basque Spanish

| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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.
Keywords: null objects, leísmo, clitics, agreement, definiteness-feature, chain reduction, Spanish, Basque, contact
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The distribution of referential null objects in B-Spanish
    • 2.1The relevance of case
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1The nature of accusative vs. dative clitics
    • 3.2A deletion analysis of null objects
  • 4.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.360.05vaz
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