Clitic doubling, person and agreement in French hyper-complex inversion

Richard S. Kayne

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

    Abstract

    The paper claims that Hyper-Complex Inversion (HCI) is an instance of clitic doubling that is subject to a person restriction not found with more familiar cases of clitic doubling. This restriction is argued to result from an incompatibility between the postverbal subject clitic (SCL) of HCI and the demonstrative structure associated with first and second person pronouns. That demonstrative structure also plays a role in asymmetries that hold concerning the possible silence, in certain cases, of third person pronouns, but not first or second person pronouns. HCI shares with past participle agreement the property that it is incompatible with an unmoved lexical direct object, in a way that presents a challenge to Agree, if Agree is taken to be available even in the absence of movement. The SCL of HCI sentences can sometimes climb out of an embedded infinitive, in a way related to the Comp-area character of its landing site.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Title of host publicationRomance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14. Selected papers from the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Stony Brook, NY
    EditorsLori Repetti, Francisco Ordonez
    PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
    Pages153-183
    Number of pages31
    ISBN (Electronic)9789027263896
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 2018

    Publication series

    NameRomance Languages and Linguistic Theory
    Volume14
    ISSN (Print)1574-552X

    Keywords

    • Agreement
    • Demonstrative
    • Doubling
    • Inversion
    • Person

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Language and Linguistics

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