Object agreement marking and information structure along the Quechua-Spanish contact continuum
Direct object clitics in Spanish are morphological markers at the interfaces of syntax, phonology, morphology, and information structure (Zwicky, 1985; Ordóñez & Repetti, 2006; Belloro, 2007; Spencer & Luís, 2012). They play an important part in argument morphology in Spanish and are subject to variability in bilingual acquisition (McCarthy, 2008). In this paper we explore the morphology-syntax-information structure mapping of direct object clitics in clitic structures in a range of speakers that includes Quechua-dominant bilinguals and Spanish monolingual individuals along a continuum of language contact situations. Our findings indicate clear dissociation between syntactic properties and marking of morphological features. They also indicate a progression from default gender marking in clitics to a scalar system of clitic forms based on animacy and informational value along the continuum of speakers. Finally, while clitics in liberal clitic doubling varieties receive a focus interpretation (Sánchez, 2010; Sánchez & Zdrojewski, 2013), our data indicate that in some Spanish contact varieties they denote the primary object and secondary topic (Sánchez, 2003; Dalrymple & Nikolaeva, 2011; Mayer, 2008, 2013, forthcoming). The findings of this exploratory study support the view that while clitics exhibit common syntactic properties across a continuum of speakers, they may vary in morphological marking and informational value.
References (84)
References
Aissen, J. (2003). Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 211, 435–483.
Arregi, K. (2003). Clitic left dislocation is contrastive topicalization. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 9(1), 31–44.
Belletti, A. (2005). Extended doubling and the VP periphery. Probus, 171, 1–35.
Belloro, V. (2007). Spanish clitic doubling: A study of the syntax-pragmatics interface. PhD. Dissertation, SUNY.
Bleam, T. (1999). Leísta Spanish and the syntax of clitic doubling. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Delaware.
Bonet i Alsina, M.E. (1995). Feature structure of Romance clitics. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 131, 607–647.
Bossong, G. (1985). Empirische Universalienforschung, Differentielle Objektmarkierung in den neuiranischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr.
Bossong, G. (2003). Nominal and/or verbal marking of central actants. In G. Fiorentino (Ed.), Romance objects: Transitivity in Romance languages (pp. 17–49). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Camacho, J., & Sánchez, L. (2002). Explaining clitic variation in Spanish. In M. Amberber & P. Collins (Eds.), Language universals and variation (pp. 21–41). Westport, CT/London: Praeger.
Cardinaletti, A. (2002). Against optional and null clitics: Right dislocation vs. marginali-zation. Studia Linguistica, 561, 29–57.
Casielles-Suárez, E. (2004). The syntax-information structure interface: Evidence from Spanish and English. London: Routledge.
Cecchetto, C. (1999). A comparative analysis of left and right dislocation in Romance. Studio Linguistica, 531, 40–67.
Cecchetto, C. (2000). Doubling structures and reconstruction. Probus, 12(1), 93–126.
Cerrón-Palomino, R. (1987). Lingüística quechua. Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos ‘Bartolomé de las Casas’.
Cerrón Palomino, R. (2003). Castellano andino: Aspectos sociolingüísticos, pedagógicos y gramaticales. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
Choi, J.K. (2000). [-Person] direct object drop: The genetic cause of a syntactic feature in Paraguayan Spanish. Hispania, 831, 531–543.
Comrie, B. (2003). When agreement gets trigger-happy. Transactions of the Philological Society, 231, 50–61.
Cuervo, M.C. (2003). Datives at large. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Cusihuamán, A. (2001). Gramática quechua. 2nd edition. Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos ‘Bartolomé de las Casas’.
Dalrymple, M., & Nikolaeva, I. (2011). Objects and information structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Di Tullio, A., & Zdrojewski, P. (2006). Notas sobre el doblado de clíticos en el español Rioplatense: Asimetrías entre objetos humanos y no humanos. Filología, 11, 13–44.
Escobar, A. (1978). Variaciones sociolingüísticas del castellano en el Perú. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
Escobar, A.M. (1990). Los bilingües y el castellano en el Perú. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
Escobar, A.M. (2000). Contacto social y lingüístico: El español en contacto con el quechua en el Perú. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
Fernández-Ordóñez, I. (1994). Isoglosas internas del castellano: El sistema referencialdel pronombre átono de tercera persona. Revista de Filología Española, 741, 71–125.
Franco, J. (1993). On object agreement in Spanish. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California. [Distributed by GSIL Publications, USC Linguistics].
Franco, J., & Huidobro, S. (2008). Ethical datives, clitic doubling and the theory of pro. In J. Bruhn de Garavito & E. Valenzuela (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 10th Hispanic linguistics symposium (pp. 215–224). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
García Tesoro, A.I. (2010). Español en contacto con el tzutujil en Guatemala: Cambios en el sistema pronominal átono de tercera persona. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 133–156.
Granda, G. de. (1988). Notas sobre retenciones sintácticas en el español de Paraguay. Lexis, 121, 43–67.
Harris, J. (1995). The morphology of Spanish clitics. In H. Campos & P. Kempchinsky (Eds.), Evolution and revolution in linguistic theory: Essays in honour of Carlos Otero (pp. 169–197). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Jaeggli, O. (1986). Three issues in the theory of clitics: Case, doubled NPs, and extraction. In H. Borer (Ed.), The syntax of pronominal clitics (pp. 15–42). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Kayne, R. (1975). French syntax: The transformational cycle. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Kayne, R. (1989). Null subject and clitic climbing. In K. Safir & O. Jaeggli (Eds.), The null subject parameter (pp. 239–261). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Kayne, R. (1991). Romance clitics, verb movement, and PRO. Linguistic Inquiry, 221, 647–686.
Klee, C., & Caravedo, R. (2005). Contact-induced language change in Lima. In D. Eddington (Ed.), Selected proceedings of the 7th Hispanic linguistics symposium (pp. 12–21). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Lambrecht, K. (1994). Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
Landa, A., & Franco, J. (1992). Objetos nulos en el castellano del País Vasco (CV): Dos estatus para dos interpretaciones. ASJU International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology, 31, 777–792.
Landa, A., & Franco, J. (1999). Converging and diverging grammars. International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology, 33(2), 569–581.
Lardiere, D. (1998). Dissociating syntax from morphology in a divergent L2 end-state grammar. Second Language Research, 141, 359–75.
Lardiere, D. (2005). On morphological competence. In L. Dekydtspotter, R.A. Sprouse, & A. Liljestrand (Eds.). Proceedings of the 7th generative approaches to second language acquisition (GASLA 2004) (pp. 178–92). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Leonetti, M. (2007). Clitics do not encode specificity. In G. Kaiser & M. Leonetti (Eds.), Proceedings of the workshop “Definiteness, specificity and animacy in Ibero-Romance Languages” (pp. 111–140). Konstanz: Universität Konstanz.
Lipski, J. (1994). Latin American Spanish. London/New York: Longman.
López, L. (2001). On the (non)complementarity of θ-theory and checking theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 461, 657–701.
López, L. (2009). A derivational syntax for information structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Luján, M. (1987). Clitic-doubling in Andean Spanish and the theory of case absorption. In T. Morgan, J. Lee, & B. VanPatten (Eds.), Language and language use: Studies in Spanish (pp. 109–121). Washington: University Press of America.
Luján, M., & Parodi, T. (1996). Clitic doubling and the acquisition of agreement in Spanish. In J. Gutiérrez-Rexach & L. Silva-Villar (Eds.), Perspectives on Spanish linguistics (pp. 119–138). Los Angeles: UCLA.
Mayer, E. (2006). Optional direct object clitic doubling in Limeño Spanish. In M. Butt & T. King Holloway (Eds.), Proceedings of the LFG06 conference (pp. 310–327). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Mayer, E. (2008). Clitics on the move: From dependent marking to split marking. In M. Butt & T. King Holloway (Eds.), Proceedings of the LFG08 conference (pp. 352- 372). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Mayer, E. (2010). Syntactic variation of object arguments in Limeño Spanish Contact Varieties. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Australian National University.
Mayer, E. (2013). Floating agreement in American Spanish leísta dialects. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(2), 152–169.
Mayer, E. (forthcoming). Spanish clitics on the move: Variation in time and space. Mouton de Gruyter.
Mayer, E., & Delicado, M. (2015). Continuity and contact-induced change in Peruvian Spanish contact varieties: The case of prepositional differential object marking. In M. González -Rivera & S. Sessarego (Eds.), New perspectives on Hispanic contact linguistics in the Americas (pp. 99–120). Madrid/Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Iberoamericana.
Mayer, M., & Mayer, M. (1992). One frog too many. New York: Dial Press.
McCarthy, C. (2008). Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: An argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research, 24(4), 459–486.
Nikolaeva, I. (2001). Secondary topic as a relation in information structure. Linguistics, 391, 1–49.
Ordóñez, F. (1998). Post-verbal asymmetries in Spanish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 161, 313–346.
Ordóñez, F., & Repetti, L. (2006). Stressed enclitics? In J.P. Montreuil (Ed.), New analyses on Romance linguistics, Volume II: Phonetics, phonology and dialectology (pp. 167–181). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ormazabal, J., & Romero, J. (2013). Differential object marking, case and agreement. Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics, 2(2), 221–239.
Pérez, J. (2000). Distribución y estructura interna de los clíticos del español: Análisis de cuatro fenómenos desde la Morfología Distribuida. Lexis, 24(2), 259–281.
Rivero, M.L. (1980). On left-dislocation and topicalization in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 11(2), 363–393.
Roberts, I. (1991). Excorporation and minimality. Linguistic Inquiry, 221, 209–218.
Rodríguez Mondoñedo. M. (2007). The syntax of objects: Agree and differential object Marking. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Rooryck, J. (2000). Configurations of sentential complementation: Perspectives from Romance languages. London: Routledge.
Saab, A. & P. Zdrojewski. (2010). Syntactically inert clitics: A paradox involving clitic doubling and its resolution. Paper presented at
Romania Nova IV
, Campos de Jordão, São Paulo, November 8.
Sánchez, L. (2010). La aparente opcionalidad del doblado de clíticos en el español limeño. Cuadernos de la ALFAL, 11, 94–105.
Sánchez, L. (2015). Right peripheral domains and informational structure in Southern Quechua. In A. Muntendam & M. Manley (Eds.), Quechua expressions of stance and deixis (pp. 287–322). Leiden: Brill Studies in Indigenous Languages of the Americas.
Sánchez, L., & Zdrojewski, P. (2013). Restricciones semánticas y pragmáticas al doblado de clíticos en el español de Buenos Aires y de Lima: La variación en la gramática del español actual. Lingüística, 29(2), 271–320.
Spencer, A., & Luís, A.R. (2012). Clitics: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sportiche, D. (1996). Clitic constructions. In J. Rooryck & L. Zaring (Eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon (pp. 213–276). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Suñer, M. (1988). The role of agreement in clitic-doubled constructions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 6(3), 391–434.
Suñer, M., & Yépez, M. (1988). Null definite objects in Quiteño. Linguistic Inquiry, 19(3), 511–519.
Uriagereka, J. (1995). Aspects of the syntax of clitic placement in Western Romance. Linguistic Inquiry, 261, 79–123.
Villalba, X. (2000). The syntax of sentence periphery. PhD Dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Weber, D. (1989). A grammar of Huallaga (Huánuco) Quechua. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Zagona, K. (2002). The syntax of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zdrojewski, P. (2013). Spanish DOM as a case of lacking case. Paper presented at the
Differential object marking workshop
, University of Tromsø, May 23-24, 2013.
Zdrojewski, P., & Sánchez, L. (2014). Variation in accusative clitic doubling across three Spanish dialects. Lingua, 1511, 162–176.
Zubizarreta, M.L. (1998). Prosody, focus and word order. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Zwicky, A. (1985). Clitics and particles. Language, 611, 283–305.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Sánchez, Liliana, José Camacho, Elisabeth Mayer & Carolina Rodríguez Alzza
2022.
Gender Agreement in a Language Contact Situation.
Languages 7:2
► pp. 81 ff.
Rodríguez-Ordóñez, Itxaso
2021.
Stylistic Variation and the Role of Dialect Contact in theleísmoof Basque-Spanish.
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14:1
► pp. 81 ff.
Sánchez, Liliana & Elisabeth Mayer
2018.
Typological Differences in Morphological Patterns, Gender Features, and Thematic Structure in the L2 Acquisition of Ashaninka Spanish.
Languages 3:2
► pp. 21 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.