Anti-repair effects under ellipsis: diagnosing (post)

Anti-repair effects under ellipsis: diagnosing (post)-syntactic clitics in Spanish
It is a long standing assumption about Clitic Doubling (CD) constructions that clitics are
syntactically active objects. Although many approaches debate on the status of clitics as
agreement markers or as bona fide pronouns (Jaeggli 1986, Sportiche 1996, Uriagereka 1995,
among others), their presence in syntactic derivations did not arise as an issue (with the
exception of Depiante 2004 and Zdrojewski 2008). In this paper, we present some new facts
regarding extraction (focus fronting), ellipsis, and CD in River Plate Spanish that show that
some doubled clitics have to be analyzed as dissociated morphemes in Embick & Noyer’s
(2001) sense.
In this dialect a focus fronted DP can be optionally doubled by a clitic, as can be seen in (1)
(see Di Tullio & Zdrojewski 2006).
(1) A MARÍA (la)
critiqué.
ACC María
CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG criticized.1SG
‘I criticized MARÍA.’
This kind of doubling exhibits two repair properties that are central for the present
discussion: it ameliorates WCO effects (2a) and repairs Subject Condition violations (2b), a
fact that has not been noticed before.
criticó
sui
padre.
(2) a. A
MARÍAi *(lai)
ACC
María
CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG criticized.3SG POSS.3.SG father
‘Heri father criticized Maríai.’
b. A MARÍA me
dijiste
que [aprobar*(la)]
es imposible.
ACC María
CL.DAT.1.SG said.2.SG that pass.INF-CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG is impossible
‘You said to me that to pass MARÍA is impossible.’
Crucially, the repair effects performed by CD in (2) are cancelled when ellipsis applies, as is
shown in contexts of fragment answers, a kind of TP-ellipsis with focus fronted remnants (see
Saab 2010). See (3):
(3) a. A: ¿Sui
madre lai
ama
a
MARÍAi?
POSS.3.SG mother CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG love.3.SG ACC María
‘Does heri mother love MARÍAI?
B: * No, a ANA ama
su i
madre
not ACC Ana love.3.SG POSS.3.SG mother
b. A: ¿Dijiste
que [aprobarla
a
ANA] es imposible?
said.2.SG that pass.INF-CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG ACC Ana is impossible
‘Did you say that to pass ANA is impossible?’
B: * No, a
MARÍA dije
que [ aprobar t] es imposible
not ACC María said.1.SG that pass.INF is impossible
(3a) shows that the fragment displays WCO effects as in usual cases of focus fronting,
despite the correlate is doubled by a clitic, and the fragment in (3b) exhibits a typical violation
of the Subject Condition. Thus, the contrast observed between (2) and (3) allows us to
conclude that ellipsis prevents CD from applying.
Let us now compare these cases of focused CDed DPs with Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD),
a kind of extraction that requires obligatorily the presence of a resumptive clitic (Cinque 1990,
a.o.). In non-elliptical contexts, CLLD exhibits the same amelioration effects observed with
CD in (2): it obviates WCO effects (4a) (see Cinque 1990, a.o.) and allows extraction from a
preverbal sentential subject (4b).
(4) a. A Maríai, sui
padre lai
criticó.
ACC María POSS.3.SG father CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG criticized.3SG
‘Maríai heri father criticized heri.’
b. ?A María, creo
que aprobarla
es difícil.
ACC María believe.1.SG that pass.INF-CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG is hard
‘María, I believe that to pass her is hard.’
Notwithstanding this, in elliptical contexts, CLLD differs from focused CDed DPs. This fact
can be seen in cases of TP-ellipsis, because its remnants have the properties of CLLDed
phrases (see Saab 2010).
(5) a. A
Maríaj suj
padre laj
criticó
y a Anai
ACC María POSS.3.SG father CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG criticized.3.SG and ACC Ana
también sui
padre lai
criticó.
also
POSS.3.SG father
CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG
criticized.3.SG
‘María her father criticized her and Ana too her father criticized her.’
b. Cree
que [ aprobarla
a
Ana] es imposible y
believe.3.SG that pass.INF-CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG ACC Ana is impossible and
que [aprobarla]
es imposible.
a
María también cree
ACC María also
believe.3.SG that pass.INF-CL.ACC.3.FEM.SG is impossible
‘She believes that to pass Ana is impossible and she also believes that to pass María is
impossible’
Crucially, under TP-ellipsis, the obviation of WCO effects (5a) and the amelioration of
Subject Condition violations (5b) displayed by CLLD are not affected. Notice that, from the
comparison between the examples in (3) and (5), we can conclude that the fragments in (3)
behave as if the clitic has never been there. Indeed, this is the gist of our proposal: CD is a kind
of PF-resumption whereas CLLD is syntactic resumption. Ellipsis, a PF phenomenon, only
bleeds PF resumption.
Hence, the disappearance of CD’s repair effects on WCO and subject island extraction seen
in (3a) and (3b) is explained because the clitic cannot be inserted at PF if ellipsis applies. On
the contrary, resumptive clitics in CLLD, given their syntactic nature, remain unaffected under
ellipsis (see (5a) and (5b)), because a PF mechanism cannot bleed a syntactic one.
Finally, as for the obviation of WCO effects observed in (2a), we propose that it is obtained
by a smuggling analysis (Collins 2005) of focused doubled DPs described in two steps: there is
an initial predicate remnant movement to a Spec,XP position in the left periphery (6a),
followed by the extraction of the focused DP object from the remnant as in (6b).
(6) a. [XP [TP ti la criticó A MARÍA]k [X’ Xº [TOPP sui madre [TOP’ TOPº tk]]]]
b. [FOCP A MARÍAj [FOC’ FOCº [XP [TP ti la criticó tj ]k [X’ Xº [TOPP sui madre [TOP’ TOPº tk]]]]
This last step does not produce any WCO because the DO never crosses the possessive
pronoun. This movement from a remnant (i.e., a specifier position) is not possible in the nondoubled version. Thus, we get then a new generalization on extraction: smuggling in River
Plate Spanish is allowed only if the object is doubled by a clitic. If this is correct, the contrast
with respect to Subject Condition effects in (2b) can be thought of in the same way: extraction
from a specifier is allowed only if CD applies.
REFERENCES: Cinque, G.. 1990. Types of A’-dependencies. Cambridge, MA.: MIT press./ Collins,
C.. 2005. A Smuggling Approach to Raising in English. Linguistic Inquiry 36: 289-298./ Depiante,
M.. 2004. Morphological vs. Syntactic Clitics: Evidence from Ellipsis. Paper presented at the
Coloquio de Morfosintaxis, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1-2 July. / Di Tullio, Á. & P.
Zdrojewski. 2006. Notas sobre el doblado de clíticos en el español rioplatense: asimetrías entre
objetos humanos y no humanos. Filología XXXVIII-XXXIX: 13-44. / Embick, D. & R. Noyer.
2001. Movement Operations after Syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 555-595. / Saab, A. 2010. Silent
interactions: Spanish TP-ellipsis and the theory of island repair. Probus 22: 73-116./ Zdrojewski, P.
2008. ¿Por quién doblan los clíticos? Restricciones morfosintácticas sobre la duplicación
pronominal en el español rioplatense, MA Dissertation, Universidad Nacional del Comahue.