Chapter published in:
Hispanic Linguistics: Current issues and new directions
Edited by Alfonso Morales-Front, Michael J. Ferreira, Ronald P. Leow and Cristina Sanz
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 26] 2020
► pp. 95–118

The seem-class verb paradigm and restructuring in Romance

| Georgetown University

This paper examines clitic climbing in contexts featuring Spanish parecer ‘seem’, a verb that has been claimed to lack restructuring altogether in Spanish (Gallego, 2009; Torrego, 1996; Zagona, 1982). The paper identifies several contexts favoring clitic climbing with parecer. In particular, 3rd person clitic climbing is favored with psychological predicates and functional elements such as negation, temporal priority adverbs, and left dislocated elements. It is argued that Spanish parecer is a bona fide example of restructuring (R-parecer). This paper offers an account of R-parecer in terms of Cinque’s (2004, 2006) approach to restructuring. Moreover, this paper also investigates whether R-parecer is subject to Cinque’s (2004, 2006) rigidly ordered functional hierarchy of the clause. It is shown that Spanish parecer and French sembler ‘seem’ deviate from Cinque’s functional hierarchy. The paper concludes that we must leave open the possibility that lexical verbs may also give rise to restructuring in Romance.

Keywords: clitic climbing, restructuring, seem-class verb paradigm, Romance, Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Observations on Spanish parecer
    • 2.1Syntactic properties of Spanish parecer
    • 2.2Previous studies on parecer
  • 3.Spanish parecer and restructuring
    • 3.1Restructuring in Romance syntax
    • 3.2Cinque’s restructuring approach
    • 3.3Restructuring in contexts featuring Spanish parecer
    • 3.4 Parecer and experiencer arguments
  • 4.Cinque’s functional hierarchy and R- parecer
    • 4.1Ordering of functional heads in Cinque’s hierarchy
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.26.05cru
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