Cover not available
Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2013: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' Amsterdam 2013
Edited by Enoch O. Aboh, Jeannette Schaeffer and Petra Sleeman
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 8] 2015
► pp. 119–158

On the syntax of datives in unaccusative configurations

| University of Bucharest
The paper examines a class of Dative-Nominative psych constructions based on light unaccusative verbs. Unaccusative Datives contrast with Datives in ditransitive structures. One sharp difference is the obligatory presence of the Dative clitic, while the clitic is optional in ditransitive structures. A second difference regards nominalizations. Dative constructions of ditransitives permit nominalizations, but the nominalization of unaccusative psych constructions is impossible. We analyze these unaccusative configurations as applicative constructions, with the Dative licensed by an expletive applicative head. The Dative merges as a Goal/Location in a position where it cannot value case. The clitic is required to pull the Dative out of the vP, to a position where case may be valued. The clitic also contributes a Person feature, so that the Experiencer interpretation of this Dative is derivationally constructed. Nominalization is impossible because the functional structure of the nominalization is not rich enough to accommodate the obligatory clitic.
Published online: 2 December 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.8.08cor
References (61)
References
Alboiu, Gabriela. 2002. The Features of Movement in Romanian. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Manitoba.Google Scholar
Anagnastopoulou, Elena. 1994. Clitic Doubling in Modern Greek. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Salzburg.Google Scholar
Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2006. “Clitic Doubling.” In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, ed. by Martin Everaert, and Henk van Riemsdijk, 519-581. Malden: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arad, Maya. 1998. “Psych-Notes.” In UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 10, ed. by John Harris, and Corinne Iten, 203–223. London: UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences.Google Scholar
Avram, Larisa, and Martine Coene. 2009. “Null Objects and Accusative Clitics in Romanian.” Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics XI (1): 233-252.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Barss, Andrew, and Howard Lasnik. 1986. “A Note on Anaphora and Double Objects.” Linguistic Inquiry 17: 347-354.Google Scholar
Beaver, John. 2011. “On Affectedness.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19: 335-370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beek, Janneke ter. 2008. Restructuring and Infinitive Complements in Dutch. Ph.D. dissertation. Utrecht: LOTGoogle Scholar
Belletti, Adriana, and Rizzi, Luigi. 1988. “Psych-verbs and Theta-theory.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6: 291-352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bianchi, Valentina. 2006. “On the Syntax of Personal Arguments.” Lingua 116: 2023-2067. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bleam, Tonia. 2003. “Properties of the Double Object Construction in Spanish.” In A Romance Perspective on Language Knowledge and Use, ed. by Rafael Núñez-Cedeño, Luis López, and Richard Cameron, 233-252. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boeckx, Cedric. 2001. Mechanisms of Chain Formation. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Boskovič, Jelko. 2007. “On the Locality and Motivation of Move and Agree.” Linguistic Inquiry 38 (4): 589-644. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bouchard, Denis. 1992. “Psych Constructions and Linking to Conceptual Structures.” In Romance Languages and Modern Linguistic Theory, ed. by Paul Hirschbühler, and Konrad Koerner, 22-44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna, and Ur Shlonsky. 2004. “Clitic Positions and Restructuring in Italian.” Linguistic Inquiry 35: 519-557. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. “Derivation by Phase.” In Ken Hale: A Life in Language, ed. by Michael Kenstowicz, 1-52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cornilescu, Alexandra. 2000. “The Double Subject in English and Romanian.” In Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax, ed. by Virginia Motapanyane, 265-295. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
. 2001. “On the Interpretation of the Prepositional Accusative in Romanian.” Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics 3: 1-15.Google Scholar
. 2006. “On Clitic Doubling and Parasitic Gaps in Romanian.” Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, LI (1): 23-42.Google Scholar
. 2009. “Restructuring Strategies of the Romanian verb fi ‘be’ and the Analysis of Existential Sentences.” In Proceedings of the Workshop Null Subjects, Expletives, and Locatives in Romance, ed. by Georg Kaiser, and Eva-Maria Remberger, 199-231, Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft Univeristät Konstanz.Google Scholar
Cornilescu, Alexandra, and Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin. 2008. “Clitic Doubling, Complex Heads and Interarboreal Operations.” In Clitic Doubling in the Balkan Languages, ed. by Dalina Kalluli, and Liliane Tasmowski, 289-319. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cuervo, Maria Cristina. 2003. Datives at Large. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Deal, Amy Rose. 2011. “Possessor Raising.” Linguistic Inquiry 44 (3): 391-432. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delfitto, Denis. 2002. “On the Semantics of Pronominal Clitics and Some of its Consequences.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics 1: 41:69Google Scholar
Diaconescu, C. Rodica, and Maria Luiza Rivero. 2007. “An Applicative Analysis of Double Object Constructions in Romanian.” Probus 19 (2): 171-195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen. 1994. The Syntax of Romanian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Susan. 2000. Diachronic Perspective of the Catalan Clitic System and other Aspects of Catalan Syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Potsdam.Google Scholar
Georgala, Effi, Waltraud Paul, and John Whitman. 2008. “Expletive and Thematic Applicatives.” In Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 26), ed. by Charles B. Chang, and Hannah J. Haynie, 181-189. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Georgala, Effi. 2012. Applicatives in their Structural and Thematic Function: A Minimalist Account of Multitransitivity. Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Gierling, Diana 1996. “Further Parallels between Clitic Doubling and Scrambling.” In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Eastern States Conference on Linguistics (ESCOL), ed. by Anthony Green, and Virginia Motapanyane, 113-123. New York: CLC Publications.Google Scholar
Grohmann, Kleanthes. 2003. Prolific Domains; on the Anti-Locality of Movement Dependencies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harada, Naomi, and Richard Larson. 2009. “Datives in Japanese.” In Proceedings of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics II, ed. by Ryosuke Shibagaki, and Reiko Vermeulen. MITWPL 54: 109-120.Google Scholar
Hazout, Ilan. 2004. “The Syntax of Existential Constructions.” Linguistic Inquiry 35: 393-430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Virginia. 2002. “Adhering Focus.” Linguistic Inquiry 33: 164-172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Irwin, Patricia. 2012. Unaccusativity at the Interfaces. Ph.D. dissertation. University of New York.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1990. Semantic Structures. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kalluli, Dalina. 2000. “Direct Object Clitic Doubling in Albanian and Greek.” In Clitic Phenomena in European Languages, ed. by Frits Beukema, and Marcel den Dikken, 209-244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1975. French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 2001. “A Note on Clitic-Doubling in French.” In Current Studies in Italian Syntax. Essays Offered to Lorenzo Renzi, ed. by Guglielmo Cinque, and Giampaolo Salvi, 189-212. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Krivochen, Gabriel Diego. 2014. “Clitics, Procedural Elements and Spanish Syntax.” ReVEL 12: 22 [[URL]].Google Scholar
Landau, Idan. 1999a. Elements of Control. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
. 1999b. “Possessor Raising and the Structure of the VP.” Lingua 107: 1-37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. The Locative Syntax of Experiencers. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard. 2010. “On Pylkkänen’s Semantics for Low Applicatives.” Linguistic Inquiry 41: 701-704. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manzini, Rita, and Leonardo Savoia. 2002. “Clitics: Lexicalization Patterns of the So-called 3rd Person dative.” Catalan Journal of Linguistics I: 117-155.Google Scholar
Martin, Francisco Jesus. 2012. Deconstructing Catalan Object Clitics. Ph.D. dissertation, University of New York.Google Scholar
Matushansky, Ora. 2002. Movement of Degree/Degree of Movement. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Moro, Andrea. 1997. The Raising of Predicates: Predicative Noun Phrases and the Theory of Clause Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Papangeli, Dimitra. 2000. “Clitic Doubling in Modern Greek: A Head-Complement Relation.” UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 12: 473-498.Google Scholar
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2002/2008. Introducing Arguments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberge, Yves, and Michelle Troberg. 2009. “The High Applicative Syntax of the Dativus Commodi/Incommodi in Romance.” Probus 21 (2): 249-289 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Ian. 2010. Agreement and Head Movement, Clitics, Incorporation and Defective Goals. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Săvescu, Oana. 2009. A Syntactic Analysis of Pronominal Clitic Clusters in Romance. The View from Romanian. Ph.D. dissertation, University of New York University.Google Scholar
Sigurðsson, H. Ármann. 2012. “Minimalist C/case.” Linguistic Inquiry 43: 191-227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sportiche, Dominique. 1998. “Clitic Constructions.” In Partitions and Atoms of the Clause Structure. Subjects, Case and Clitics, ed. by Dominique Sportiche, 244-307. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stowell, Timothy. 1983. “Subjects across Categories.” The Linguistic Review 2: 285-312.Google Scholar
Tigău, Alina, 2010. The Syntax and Interpretation of the Direct Object in Romance and Germanic. Bucharest: Bucharest University Press.Google Scholar
Torrego, Esther. 1998. Object Dependencies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Uriagereka, Juan. 1995. “Aspects of the Syntax of Clitic Placement in Western Romance.” Linguistic Inquiry 26: 79-124.Google Scholar
. 2005. “On the Syntax of Doubling.” In Clitic and Affix Combinations: Theoretical perspectives, ed. by Lorie Heggie, and Francisco Ordóñez, 343-374. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (19)

Cited by 19 other publications

Bar-Asher Siegal, Elitzur A. & Karen De Clercq
2019. From negative cleft to external negator. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 228 ff. DOI logo
Batllori, Montserrat, Elisabeth Gibert-Sotelo & Isabel Pujol
2019. Changes in the argument and event structure of psych verbs in the history of Spanish. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 249 ff. DOI logo
Bernstein, Judy, Francisco Ordóñez & Francesc Roca
2019. On the emergence of personal articles in the history of Catalan. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 88 ff. DOI logo
Blümel, Andreas & Marco Coniglio
2019. What kind of constructions yield what kind of constructions?. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 131 ff. DOI logo
Miriam Bouzouita, Anne Breitbarth, Lieven Danckaert & Elisabeth Witzenhausen
2019. Cycles in Language Change, DOI logo
Breitbarth, Anne, Lieven Danckaert, Elisabeth Witzenhausen & Miriam Bouzouita
2019. Cycling through diachrony. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
De Clercq, Karen
2019. French negation, the Superset Principle, and Feature Conservation. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 199 ff. DOI logo
Fischer, Susann, Mario Navarro & Jorge Vega Vilanova
2019. The clitic doubling parameter. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 52 ff. DOI logo
Fuß, Eric
2019. When morphological and syntactic change are not in sync. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Garzonio, Jacopo & Silvia Rossi
2019. Weak elements in cycles. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
Kinn, Kari
2019. Bare singular nouns in Middle Norwegian. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 109 ff. DOI logo
Moreno, Mitrović
2019. Quantificational cycles and shifts. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 155 ff. DOI logo
Ojea, Ana
2019. EPPSatisfaction on Discourse Grounds: The Case of Locative Inversion. Syntax 22:2-3 ► pp. 248 ff. DOI logo
Ojea, Ana
2023. Estructura informativa y orden de palabras en las cláusulas de relativo restrictivas. Verba: Anuario Galego de Filoloxía DOI logo
Poletto, Cecilia & Emanuela Sanfelici
2019. On the relative cycle. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 177 ff. DOI logo
van Gelderen, Elly
2019. Cyclical change and problems of projection. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. 13 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2019. List of abbreviations. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. ix ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2019. Series preface. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. vii ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2019. Copyright Page. In Cycles in Language Change, ► pp. iv ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 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.