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Sound, Syntax and Contact in the Languages of Asturias
Edited by Guillermo Lorenzo
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 36] 2022
► pp. 45–72

Chapter 3
Semantic anchoring

Evidence from Asturian clitic placement

| University of Central Florida

In Asturian, and differently from its western Iberian neighbors (i.e., Galician and European Portuguese), enclisis (or postverbal clitics) is also attested in embedded contexts. This syntactic structure is shown to give rise to a [+epistemic] reading of the content in the embedded clause, an interpretation that may be anchored either to the speaker, to the matrix subject, or to an intermediate subject. Following previous work, I show that both the different clitic patterns attested and the [±epistemic] anchoring these patterns give rise to can receive a principled account under the analysis entertained. In turn, this chapter contributes to further our understanding of how syntax works in parallel with semantics to derive these syntactic structures and their interpretation.

Keywords: enclisis, epistemicity, syntax-semantics interface, embedded clauses, left-periphery, Asturian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous approaches to enclisis/proclisis alternations
  • 3.Fin° and clitics: A cartographic account of enclisis/proclisis
  • 4.The role of Fin° in deriving enclisis/proclisis in matrix and embedded contexts
  • 5.Force°/Fin° selection and semantic [epistemic] interpretation
  • 6.Further evidence: Multiple embedding in Asturian
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 1 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.36.03fer
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