Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns
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TITLE "Pronouns, clitics and Empty Nouns: ‘Pronominality’ and licensing in syntax"
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Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.
Series Editor Werner Abraham University of California at Berkeley University of Vienna Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Advisory Editorial Board Guglielmo Cinque (University of Venice) Günther Grewendorf (J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt) Liliane Haegeman (University of Lille, France) Hubert Haider (University of Salzburg) Christer Platzack (University of Lund) Ian Roberts (University of Stuttgart) Ken Safir (Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ) Lisa deMena Travis (McGill University) Sten Vikner (University of Aarhus) C. Jan-Wouter Zwart (University of Groningen)
Volume 46 Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns: ‘Pronominality’ and licensing in syntax by Phoevos Panagiotidis
Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns ‘Pronominality’ and licensing in syntax
Phoevos Panagiotidis University of London
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
8
TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Panagiotidis, Phoevos Pronouns, Clitics and empty Nouns : ‘pronominality’ and licensing in syntax / Phoevos Panagiotidis. p. cm. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, issn 0166–0829 ; v. 46) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Pronominals. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general--Noun. 3. Grammar, Comparative and general--Clitics. 4. Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax. I. Title. II. Linguistik aktuell ; Bd. 46. P279.P36 2002 415--dc21 isbn 90 272 27675 (Eur.) / 1 58811 1032 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)
2001052865
© 2002 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Foreword
I Pronouns in syntax . The scope and topics of this study . The framework and some background assumptions C 1 On the complex structure of pronouns . Idiosyncrasies of pronouns . Intransitive determiners as functional heads . Pronouns and φ-features . Nouns as pronouns . A noun inside every pronoun . Appendix: Delineating the data C 2 Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns . Preamble . Adjectives and pronominal nouns . Pronominal clitics and null nouns . Radical ellipsis: Empty arguments . A Grand Unification? . Appendix: Nominalisation versus noun ellipsis C 3 On the nature of empty nouns . Open issues . Empty nouns are not phrases
Table of contents
. Empty nouns and pro . A theory of empty nouns C 4 Pro and empty pronouns . The situation so far . Why pro is not composed out of (at least) a null noun . EPP and head movement . On verbal D (DV) and verbal Num . Summary
C 5 Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories . A propos of eN . Semantic licensing of eN . The functional–lexical distinction . Selection and licensing . Notational variants and conclusion C . The bigger picture . Open questions and loose ends Bibliography Index
Foreword
Embarking upon doctoral research is both more difficult and more pleasant than one would think, at least than what I thought back in October 1997, feverish, exhausted and late for registration. It takes unexpectedly much money, acute detective skills in order to track that obscure working paper, initiative and cautiousness simultaneously, perseverance almost proverbially so – all those things. It is also an extremely lonely enterprise: the inherent paranoia of campus life – ghettos dedicated to knowledge, scholarship, research and a score of subtly related but unpleasant activities and attitudes – does not make things any easier. Nevertheless, my doctoral research turned out to be smoother than I would think, too. First of all, up to March 2000 it was generously and usually punctually funded by IKY (State Scholarships Foundation of Greece). I would not have been able to have pursued my studies without the Foundation’s support and I can hardly be too grateful to them. This book is a revised and partly reworked version of my PhD thesis, submitted at the University of Essex in September 2000. A sincere thank you goes to the series editor Prof. Werner Abraham for accepting this study to be published in the Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today series. The real joy of conducting doctoral research, apart from growing up, understanding and learning, is largely the result of the people you meet, in person or over the Internet, people who can share ideas with you, be friends or just help. It is to these people I want to express gratitude or, at least, thanks. Roger Hawkins, my supervisor, is the person I owe the most during my PhD years. He has been subtly encouraging and deterring in carefully administered (i.e. not equal) doses. His comments would always be lean, sharp and to the point. He has been a source of knowledge, inspiration and encouragement without ever becoming overwhelming. He has been extremely patient in dealing with panic attacks, illusions of grandeur and cryptically composed drafts, papers and memos: hundreds of pages of them.
Foreword
I would then like to thank all the people who were kind and interested (or just patient) enough to share their ideas with me, comment on my work and offer ample encouragement; I am indebted to them all: Martin Atkinson, Karen Froud, Anastasia Giannakidou, Heidi Harley, Io Manolessou, Eric Mathieu, Jamal Ouhalla, Laura Rupp and Arhonto Terzi. Ellen-Petra Kester sent me her book and comments just in time to spark off the problematics that led to Chapters 2 and 3 (for better or worse), Artemis Alexiadou kindly trafficked large amounts of her unpublished work over the post and the Internet helping me immensely and Cecilia Poletto sent me the drafts of her recent book back in 1998 and discussed with me strange and wonderful facts about North Italian dialects. The School of Psychology in Birkbeck College, University of London, offered me employment when nobody else would and when I needed it most by summoning me to author and teach their Psychology of Language course. All the people in the School, staff and (amazing) students, were friendly and extremely supportive (especially the Head Simon Green), but special thanks have to go to Heather K. J. van der Lely, a supportive ‘boss’ and wonderful colleague. Back in Essex, Louisa Sadler, the Head of the Department, saw that I would get travel expenses to conferences where I presented papers and Marion Doran, the Department’s executive officer, would always make the onus of blue tape lighter while broadening my sci-fi horizons. I also wish to thank the following people for guiding me through the intricacies and delights of their native languages: Pattama Viriyasirikul (Thai), Shiro Ojima and Norio Nasu (Japanese), Mohammad Al-Hamad and Eidah AlMalki (Arabic), Željka Paunović (Serbo-Croatian). Andrew Radford’s detailed comments on an earlier version of Section 2 in Chapter 3 proved valuable; I am also grateful to David Adger, Misi Brody, Anna Cardinaletti, Guglielmo Cinque, Annabel Cormack, Marcel Den Dikken, Claudia Felser, Giuliana Giusti, Theodore Marinis, Asya Pereltsvaig, Anna Roussou, Andrew Spencer, Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli and Hans van de Koot for their comments and encouragement. The following also kindly sent me unpublished work, for which I wish to thank them: Valerie Baggaley, Cedric Boeckx, Luigi Burzio, Alexis Dimitriadis, Denis Delfitto, Morris Halle, Mike Jones, Hilda Koopman, Sze-Wing Tang, Irene Philippaki-Warburton and Luis Silva-Villar. A special thanks is also due to the following friends; for being friends here (as well) during these four years: Pierre Millinge, Karl Johnston, Stratis
Foreword
Papaioannou, Dolan Halbrook, Wong Bee Eng, Sarah Liszka and Florencia Franceschina. Before finishing, a special and big thank you goes out to Joe Emonds and Bob Borsley, my PhD examiners and tireless purveyors of reference letters, for their comments, discussion and support. It would all still be as complete and creative as the question addressing the ‘possible relationships between CPs and DPs’ (my initial, sketchily rendered research area) hadn’t it been for Ioanna. This book, like my thesis, is dedicated to my parents Mary (Mαίρη) and Apostolis (Απoστόλης), for being my first teachers and also to Dimitra Theophanopoulou-Kontou and Neil Smith, for being more than teachers in deep gratitude.
Colchester, April 2001
I
Pronouns in syntax
. The scope and topics of this study . The framework and some background assumptions
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. The scope and topics of this study This study is an enquiry into the internal structure of pronouns. It aims to show that, despite considerable diversity in their surface representation, pronominals can be given a unified representation in syntax. The implication of this finding for the more general relation between functional and lexical categories will also be considered. Here ‘pronominal’ is a cover term which includes strong, weak and clitic pronouns (the tripartition drawn by Cardinaletti & Starke 1999); nevertheless, in Chapter 2 it will be extended to include the related elliptical nominal expressions as well. It will be shown there that the unification of these elements is not only desirable but possible and necessary as well. Unlike most previous studies dealing with the internal structure of pronominals, I will argue that all of them (including, crucially, pronominal clitics) have a complex structure involving an abstract nominal. Central to such a thesis is a detailed and systematic refutation of the concept of intransitive determiner, as in Abney (1987), on empirical, theoretical and conceptual grounds. If all determiners, like all functional heads, necessarily have a lexical head inside their complement, such a head can be no other than a noun. Indeed, the pivotal concept behind the arguments here is that all pronominals involve an empty noun. Moreover, empty nouns are noun heads listed in the lexicon. A word of caution is in order here: by the term empty noun I mean non concept-denoting nouns, nouns including the English one, and unlike jar, horticulturist and sweetness. Of course, empty nouns can be overt or phonologically null, but in both cases they will be shown to be listed in the lexicon and to encode non concept-denoting features in Chapter 3. Although the lack of denotation of empty nouns will be argued to trigger pronominal reference of the nominal phrase they are in, I do not wish to argue that all instances of pronominal reference, or ‘pronominality’ as it will be called more neutrally here, are due to the presence of an empty noun. Cases in question will be shown to include null subjects in null subject languages like Spanish, Italian and Modern Greek. Hence, Chapter 4 will be dedicated to this and related issues. Finally, Chapter 5 will discuss the second point raised in the subtitle of this study. Using the internal structure of pronouns as a sort of ‘litmus paper’, the relationship between functional and lexical heads inside their Extended Projections (Grimshaw 1991) will be explored. Moreover, the manner in which the notions selection and licensing in syntax can be formulated will be
Pronouns in syntax
discussed and a more restrictive alternative, building on Ouhalla (1991), will be offered. Although the external distribution of pronouns inside the clause (as arguments or topics) or inside other nominal expressions (e.g. as possessives) is by itself an exciting and complex issue, we will have very little to say about it here. Similarly, a discussion of the binding properties of pronominals will remain outside the scope of this study, as well. Thus, the reader should not expect a thorough or in depth discussion of the positioning of pronominals; when necessary, the treatment of such issues will be kept brief and dependent on well-known contributions on these matters.
. The framework and some background assumptions . The framework The framework that will be assumed here is that of Principles and Parameters in the spirit of the Minimalist Program. We take ‘minimalism’ to roughly mean a quest for parsimony in theoretical axioms and methodological tools as well as the trimming down of a theoretical framework, not any particular version of linguistic theory (Chomsky 1998: 5). At the same time, a set of recently developed analyses and concepts in the ‘minimalist’ literature (and especially Chomsky 1993 and Chapter 4 in Chomsky 1995) will be adopted here without further discussion. The main assumptions made are highlighted in the rest of this subsection, although not exhaustively. Others will be dealt with as they arise in the course of discussion. .. From Numeration to Merge and Move A lexicon, the repository of what has to be learned, is assumed. Although its exact structure is not of particular relevance here, it is presumed to contain lexical items that encode phonological and other features (more on this below). Atomic properties generally relevant to the interface levels are expressed in terms of features. There exists an operation that selects lexical items from the Lexicon (whether these are ‘morphemes’, ‘words’ or just ‘bunches of features’) to form a Numeration which is in turn manipulated by two operations: Merge and Move. Merge puts two items together and is recursive. It manipulates items created by a previous application of it and/or items taken from the Numeration.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
As discussed in 2.2.1 below, here we will take the former entities to be ‘phrases’ and the latter ‘heads’. In other words, only heads are always lexical items, phrases can be created by Merge. Merge operates in a binary fashion: it takes two elements and yields a new one. Standard X′ terminology will be employed throughout for expository purposes. An operation Move merges a copy of an item already in the derivation formed by Merge. No such thing as traces or indices are assumed, all but the topmost c-commanding copy are silent at PF. The identical copies created by Move form a Chain. Move will be taken to be exclusively triggered for the purposes of feature checking. Move brings the ‘offending’ feature and a matching checker into a local configuration, either that of Specifier–Head or Head–Head. .. Interface levels and feature checking The interface levels of the language system with Conceptual–Intentional systems (‘cognition’), called LF, and with the Articulatory–Perceptual systems (that control articulation, vocal and manual, and perception, aural or visual, of language), called PF, are the only levels of representation. In other words, constraints (or ‘rules’) apply only at PF and LF. Given that features uninterpretable at LF are taken to be included in the feature make-up of certain lexical items (but see the end of Chapter 5) and that some of them, called ‘strong,’ must be eliminated as soon as they are introduced in the derivation, ‘checking’ and elimination of the offending item (uninterpretable or strong) by a matching interpretable feature is assumed: feature checking. The features to be sent off to PF are separated from the rest by an operation called Spell Out. The relative order of constituents at Spell Out (pace Morphology, perhaps on the way to PF) is what we ‘get’ in speech and signing. Further operations are needed for the derivation to ‘converge’ at LF, that is, so that no LF-uninterpretable features reach LF. If a ‘strong’ feature needs checking, the operation Move has, by hypothesis, to take place before Spell Out; ‘weak’ uninterpretable features can wait (and must wait) for the ‘covert’ component of Syntax, the one after application of Spell Out, and thus not affecting PF order of constituents. The term ‘ungrammatical’ will be candidly used (see strong objections in Chomsky 1993: 27) to include two kinds of unacceptable sentences: both nonconvergent (‘crashing’) derivations at LF (and, possibly vacuously here, PF) and offending expressions after LF. An example of the second kind is the dead, with the dead one as its intended meaning, as will be shown in Chapter 2.
Pronouns in syntax
.. The DP hypothesis Our focus being on nominal expressions, it is important to state our preliminary assumptions about the structure of nominal phrases. The DP hypothesis (Abney 1987) will be adopted without discussion. Determiners are of X0 status (given the assumptions here, because they are listed in the lexicon) and head argument nominal phrases (Stowell 1991; Longobardi 1994). Given that all lexical categories (at least N, V and A) are predicative (Higginbotham 1985), a nominal constituent such as members of the Senate in she appointed them [members of the Senate] need not be a DP. At least one projection between D and N will be assumed, NumP (as proposed in Ritter 1991; Rouveret 1991 and elsewhere). Adjectival phrases will be taken to be specifiers of NumP throughout, but nothing hinges on this. . Further assumptions .. Heads and features As mentioned above, it will be taken for granted here that lexical items are bundles of features. These bundles are heads (X0), whereas phrases are constructed by Merge by putting a head or phrase together with another head or phrase. Of course, all derivations will consequently have to start off as the merging of two heads, X and Y. If it is X that projects, then Y will, trivially, have also a YP status, whereas the XP will be [XP X Y]. The stipulative nature of such a statement is perhaps possible to eliminate, but such considerations go beyond the scope of this study. We will presume that only two kinds of features exist: phonological (PFrelated) and semantic (LF-related). We will postulate that formal features do not exist as a separate class and that they are ultimately LF related. Of course, semantic features can be either interpretable or uninterpretable – I remain agnostic on whether uninterpretable PF-related features exist and, if not, where this asymmetry comes from. Checking of uninterpretable by interpretable features induces agreement (concord) phenomena, some agreement is often visible in PF representations. As necessary in any theory of grammar, some heads encode (extralinguistic) concepts, like jar, horticulturist and sweetness and other lexical items do not. In Chapter 5 we will side with those researchers who argue that the set of functional heads (which is not co-extensional with that of non concept-denoting ones, see Chapter 3) are bundles of features categorically dependent on a lexical one. In view of this and the absence of concept-denoting
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
features on them, functional heads are identified exclusively by their interpretable semantic features. This point is crucial for the understanding of what follows and will have to be illustrated. Take a feature [plural], a number feature. Whereas some researchers would be happy to accept that number features can be encoded in any available locus within the nominal phrase (on determiners, nouns, a special Num head etc.), we will take a more rigid stance here and assume interpretable number features to be invariably encoded on a Num head. Any number marking on determiners (like these in these jars) is due to an uninterpretable number feature on the determiner and the ensuing concord. Hence, T heads are such by virtue of the tense feature they encode, Asp heads by virtue of their aspectual features and so on: heads are not slots in a template that can freely ‘accommodate’ features. .. Selection A second point that will be postulated is that selection is obligatory. ‘Selection’ will remain a rather vague notion for the time being and we will discuss and clarify it in Chapter 5. Until the discussion and refinements there, the statement ‘selection is obligatory’ is intended as a cover-all term to capture the ungrammaticality of *the and, by extrapolation, we and you as intransitive determiners in the face of examples like we phonologists don’t talk to you semanticists. Assuming for exposition that some determiners, like the, these and we can ‘select’ nouns, they must invariably do so, even if no phonologically overt noun is present. A different view that would postulate ‘two of everything’ (two lexical entries for we, for instance, one transitive and the other intransitive) will be shown to be untenable in Chapter 1. .. Variation Finally, variation will be taken to reduce to properties of functional heads, the features of which are selected from a pool made available by Universal Grammar (Borer 1984; Wexler & Manzini 1987; Ouhalla 1991), not ‘on/off’ structural parameters. There exists no grammatical variation triggered by lexical heads. This last point being a delicate one, some explanation is required. Under the presupposition that no such thing as formal features exist, we must account for the fact that gender agreement within the DP is absent in English but present in French. We cannot claim that French gender features are formal features and English ones purely semantic ones. What will be offered instead is the following alternative: generally, French, but not English (pace he and she, see Chapter 1), possess uninterpretable gender fea-
Pronouns in syntax
tures on D(eterminer) and A(djective) entries. Thus we do not need to postulate a ‘formal’ versus ‘purely semantic’ contrast: grammatical operations are not triggered by formal features but by strong and uninterpretable semantic features.
C 1
On the complex structure of pronouns
. . . . . .
Idiosyncrasies of pronouns Intransitive determiners as functional heads Pronouns and φ-features Nouns as pronouns A noun inside every pronoun Appendix: Delineating the data
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
.
Idiosyncrasies of pronouns
Pronouns vary a great deal cross-linguistically. First of all, the kind and type of features that can be marked on them display a significant diversity crosslinguistically. A case in point is the stark contrast between the Mandarin Chinese pronoun ta, which arguably only encodes ‘3rd person’ but no gender or number, and the Thai pronoun kuu′ which, according to Cooke (1968: 13 and elsewhere), expresses the following: a male and possibly adult Speaker addressing a male and possibly adult Addressee, as well as an attitude of intimacy and non-restraint. In the following sections and chapters, we will take features encoded on pronominal forms to be tell-tale signs of their internal structure – an assumption apparently made by language learners to a certain extent, as well. A second point where pronouns differ cross-linguistically is in whether phonologically null pronominal forms are available or not in a given grammar. So, the grammar of English obviously has no phonologically null forms in subject position, whereas that of German and Icelandic has phonologically null pronominal forms in non-argument subject positions and languages like Italian and Spanish have phonologically null referential subject pronouns (for discussion see Rizzi 1986; Y. Huang 1995). We will focus on the types of null pronominals in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. A third point where pronouns vary is their binding properties. English she/her must be free in its ‘governing category’, according to the Lectures on Government and Binding (Chomsky 1981) formulation of binding Principle B. Quite differently, Dogrib ye must be bound in its ‘governing category’ but must be disjoint in reference from the binder, Turkish kendisi may or may not be bound within its ‘governing category’ and Japanese zibun must be bound, but not necessarily within its ‘governing category’ (Enç 1989). As already pointed out in the Introduction, we are hardly going to touch on issues pertaining to binding here. Fourthly, pronouns can occupy the positions ordinary nominal phrases do; compare I saw her and Jeremy saw Jessica. In addition, pronouns may occur in positions that other nominal phrases are excluded from (as in she likes all the postmen versus she likes them all versus *she likes the postmen all) or be excluded from positions other nominal phrases can appear in: she took (in) the chair (in) compared to she took (*in) them (in) (Johnson 1991; Cardinaletti & Starke 1999). We will have very few things to say about the different positions pronouns can occupy, mainly in Chapters 2 and 3.
On the complex structure of pronouns
Finally, there is evidence that the categorial status of pronouns is not uniform cross-linguistically (Fukui 1987; Noguchi 1997; Corver & Delfitto 1999; Cardinaletti & Starke 1999). This will be a central topic in the discussion that follows. Having considered some points on which pronouns vary, we must also stress that there are a number of cross-linguistic similarities. A first one is the presence of overt Person specification and their overt marking for φ features, even if nothing else in that language is marked for φ features, as is the case in English (Ingram 1978). More interestingly, it seems to be an absolute universal that pronouns refer but do not denote. Ultimately, this very property will be a necessary component of an attempted definition of what pronouns are. As Abney (1987: 284) puts it, pronouns “though they refer, they do not describe: they do not provide a predicate over individuals, but merely mark grammatical features.” More specifically, pronouns do not bear ‘descriptive’ semantic features that encode a concept. For instance, the nouns cat or intolerance encode particular concepts, those of being a cat or intolerant, apparently encoded by ‘descriptive’ semantic features. This is certainly not the case with she or we, which do not denote by virtue of their lexically encoded meaning. Arguably, their referent is picked up after LF by procedures at the C(onceptual)– I(ntentional) systems; the computational system inside the language module supplies C–I systems with Person and φ features ‘as a guide’. So, the disambiguation of her, for example, by the C–I systems will be restricted by the fact that this pronoun can only refer to a feminine individual – and possibly other factors such as the presence of a c-commanding operator and so on. Crucially, the property that sets pronouns and pronominal forms apart among nominals is that they do not encode concepts but rather constitute semantic variables constrained by their φ (or other) features. The reader is referred to Chapters 5 and 9 of Heim & Kratzer (1998) for an interesting discussion of pronouns, both referential and bound variables, as well as the restricting role of φ features. We will refer to this property of pronouns – informally: that they refer but do not denote – as pronominality henceforth. Considering that some pronouns, more precisely those called ‘strong pronouns’, have been argued to have a structure identical to that of other nominal phrases (Cardinaletti & Starke 1999), the main question of this chapter is going to be the following: What makes pronouns ‘pronominal’? What makes pronouns, in all their diversity, function as semantic variables? In this chapter, we will seek the answer to this question by investigating the internal structure of
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
pronominal expressions. But before doing so, we must convincingly argue for the existence of such ‘internal structure’ for pronominals. . DPpron = D: pronouns as intransitive Determiners (Abney 1987) As pointed out in Section 2.1.3 of the Introduction, the DP hypothesis (of various progenitors but popularised via Abney 1987) will be assumed throughout. Nevertheless, Abney’s analysis of pronouns makes a paradoxical start to our investigation into the internal structure of pronouns, as – according to it – pronouns have no internal structure: pronouns are bare determiners, ‘intransitive’ D heads. Thus, we linguists in example (1) has essentially the same structure1 as both the linguists and these linguists: articles and demonstratives2 are both members of the Determiner category (1) [DP We linguists] tend to be quite parsimonious. (2) [D We] tend to be quite parsimonious
As for constructions like (2), Abney assumes them to be DPs consisting of a single D(eterminer) head but, unlike Postal (1969) – to which we return below, with no nominal complement at Deep Structure. The pronominal D in (2) hosts all the features the trivial DP it heads encodes: Person and Number, in the case of (2), Gender as well wherever applicable. A D head is “the actual site of the noun phrase’s grammatical features (and in particular does not simply agree with the noun, after the manner of a modifier)…” (Abney 1987: 283; emphasis mine). Interestingly, even researchers who do not embrace the idea that D is the site of all φ features in the DP, such as Ritter (1991, 1995), nevertheless agree that in the case of (at least some) pronouns, this is exactly the case: all φ features are hosted on an intransitive D head (Ritter 1995: 420– 422). We shall return to this idea later in this chapter. Abney’s conception of pronouns as intransitive Determiners, D heads without a nominal complement, accounts in a way both parsimonious and straightforward for pronominality. Pronouns are different from other DPs because they lack a nominal complement. The head of this complement, an NP projection, is a N(oun), which invariably carries descriptive features: nouns are tacitly assumed to always denote concepts like nouns such as cat, bliss, piety and republic. Although, we will be at great pains throughout this study to show this idea to be wrong, it certainly provides an almost seamless link between the intransitivity of pronominal determiners, the hypothesis that DPpron = D, and the lack of descriptive content of pronouns: pronominal DPs
On the complex structure of pronouns
lack descriptive content, at the same time they lack an NP projection. If N carries the DP’s descriptive content, pronominality is simply the absence of concept-denoting features in a DP. This DP has to be disambiguated at LF. Essentially, Abney’s conception of the structure of DP is the following: D encodes φ features, whereas N the concept denoted, the descriptive content. If N is not there, then the trivial DP (DP = D) is a pronoun. Italian illustrates this well. The DP la pellicola consists of a D la, that is marked for Gender and Number, and the N pellicola, that ‘carries’ the concept ultimately denoted by the DP: ‘film’. An intransitive D la would be predicted to be a pronoun according to the above – indeed it is: the third person singular feminine clitic pronoun. Unfortunately, the ‘intransitive Determiner hypothesis’ is not uncontroversial. Its strong version, namely that all pronouns are intransitive Determiners, cannot be maintained for a variety of predominantly empirical reasons, as many researchers have demonstrated (Fukui 1987; Felix 1990; Rouveret 1991; Radford 1993; Zwarts 1993; Cardinaletti 1994; Ritter 1995; Chomsky 1995; Noguchi 1997; Cardinaletti & Starke 1999; Corver & Delfitto 1999; Koopman 2000): at least some pronouns seem to have a complex structure. In the rest of this chapter we will build and expand on the existing literature in an attempt to prove that, not only all pronominal forms have complex structure, but also that this follows from the fact that there can exist no such thing as an intransitive Determiner. As to why Determiners cannot be intransitive, the answer will be along the following lines: Determiners are functional heads and, if there were intransitive determiners, then they would be the only functional heads that do not (ultimately) need a lexical complement, as Abney himself observes (1987: 285): “determiners may differ from other functional elements in that determiners appear sometimes without complements.” I will extensively argue in Chapter 5 that Determiners do not differ from other functional heads in this respect.
. Intransitive determiners as functional heads Before moving into the discussion of the empirical problems of Abney’s intransitive D hypothesis, let us briefly review some theoretical anomalies it introduces. In order to do so, we will compare Abney’s analysis to that of Postal’s (1969), which we are going to explore, revise and adopt.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Functional heads rarely surface alone There is a paradox involved in the postulation of such an entity as an ‘intransitive determiner’. Determiners are functional heads. Functional heads are typically known to be dependent on other functional heads and – ultimately – a lexical one. This is visible even at the PF level: most functional heads are either phonological clitics, like the D the or the T will for instance, or affixes of some sort, like the T that surfaces as /-d/. Other functional heads are phonologically null, detectable only by their ‘impact’ on LF interpretations; for example, the null C(omplementiser) that is in complementary distribution with the C that (Rizzi 1990) is a case in point. This observation holds to a large extent for all languages. There seem to be good grounds for one to argue that this ‘dependence’ of functional heads is not a solely PF phenomenon. Whether related to phonological dependence or not, there appears to exist a profound dependence of functional heads on, ultimately, lexical ones. Moreover, this dependence – we will argue in Chapter 5 – is one of the fundamental and, perhaps, defining properties of Universal Grammar. Until then, let us describe the situation. Functional heads do not appear without being – ultimately – complemented by a lexical one. This is trivially correct for affixal and null functional heads. It is also correct for non-cliticising ones, as well. A moment’s reflection is enough to provide evidence for this. Apparent counterexamples either involve traces (like in this is the towni [Opi we are heading to ti]) or are cases of ellipsis3 (like in It is unthinkable that our country can err but one can entertain the possibility that it might e). If Abney is right and intransitive determiners do exist, then not only is it the case that there exists a third configuration (alongside movement and ellipsis) in which determiners can surface without a complement but also, crucially, that intransitive determiners are base-generated as such. In other words, while in ellipsis or movement of the complement the functional head was merged with some sort of constituent which failed to show up in situ at PF, in the case of intransitive determiners, this is not the case. In (2), the subject of the clause is just we, a Determiner. It is this claim that we will scrutinise in the following section.
On the complex structure of pronouns
. Selection by Determiners Even if intransitive determiners exist, it is not the case that all determiners can be either intransitive or not. Evidently, the definite article can never be ‘intransitive’ in English, as in (3a) below. Other determiners must be intransitive and no complement is tolerated, as in (3b–e).4 (3) a. b. c. d. e. f.
She saw the *(the bright angel) She saw it (*bright angel) She saw him (*bright angel) She saw me (*bright angel) She saw you (*bright angel) She saw them (%bright angels)
One possible way to account for the contrasts in (3) is in terms of allomorphy (Postal 1969). In (3a) and (3b), the and it seem to have identical feature specifications: probably just a [Def] feature and a singular number feature (which is uninterpretable, as will be shown in Section 3.2). Cases like that in (3d) seem to be possible to capture by some sort of universal ban on complementing or modifying 1st person indexicals5 (Ken Hale, as quoted by Noguchi 1997). Examples like (3c, e–f) are less straightforward. (3f) is possible (with a ‘demonstrative’ flavour, R. Hawkins, p.c.) in only some dialects of English. Somehow similarly, translations of (3e) are perfectly grammatical in German, Dutch (Panagiotidis 1998),6 Serbo-Croatian (Ž. Paunović, p.c.) and Danish (Pierre T. Millinge, p.c.). In both cases, whether a determiner can be (optionally) ‘intransitive’ can hardly be reduced to semantic properties. This statement seems to be true for the apparently general impossibility of (3c), too. In any case, we can simply stipulate that for such and such reason the selects a complement, whereas I/me, you (sing.) and non-person (singular) pronouns do not select a complement. A pretty standard GB assumption is that if something is not selected then it is not licensed, an assumption that can possibly be recast in minimalist terms (see, for instance, Chomsky 1995, on the role of the θ module in a checking framework). In other words, bright angel(s) is not selected in examples (3b–f), and thus ungrammatical; it is selected in (3a) and it is grammatical. More importantly still, selection is obligatory: it is not the case that selectors may or may not select. The apparent optionality that verbs like eat display with respect to whether they select an object or not – the I ate spanakopitas versus I ate alteration, in other
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
words – is illusory and its reasons must be sought elsewhere: compare the ‘eat’ situation above to I devoured spanakopitas versus *I devoured.7 The descriptive generalisation can be stated as follows then: (4) Selection is obligatory: if X can select Y then X must select Y.
The only exception, then, to this generalisation is plural indexicals (we/us and plural you) and demonstratives.8 As illustrated in (1) and (2) for we – repeated below for convenience – these may or may not take a complement, or so it seems. (1) [DP We linguists] tend to be quite parsimonious. (2) [D We] tend to be quite parsimonious
In order to preserve the descriptive generalisation in (4), we are forced to go for the ‘two of everything solution’. According to this ‘solution’, the we/us in (1) is a different lexical entry to we/us in (2). Let’s distinguish them by numerical indices: we/us1 and we/us2. We/us1, in (1), can select noun phrases and must select noun phrases, we/us2, in (2), cannot select noun phrases: it is an ‘intransitive’ determiner. Similar facts will hold for you (plu.), this/these, that/those and, in some dialects they/them. This is an a priori undesirable way to deal with the situation, due to its lack of conceptual elegance. Apart from this, though, there is a more serious problem. If we/us1 and we/us2 are two different lexical entries, chances are they have different feature specifications. These feature specifications must be learnable and the only difference between we/us1 and we/us2 that seems to be learnable is their selectional properties: We/us1 selects a nominal phrase, we/us2 nothing at all. But, why? The most feasible answer is to claim that we/us2 is inherently pronominal, while we/us1 is not; we/us1 is just a version of the specified for 1st person plural. Such a lexical distinction, though, would contradict Abney’s designation of pronominality as lack of descriptive content and recast it as a feature on D. The presence of this feature would then somehow entail ‘intransitive’ status for we/us2 and similar determiners. But Abney’s analysis actually requires both we/us1 and we/us2 to be versions of the specified for 1st person plural; what would make the DP = D pronominal in (2) would be the lack of a noun phrase, the lack of descriptive content – not a special ‘pronominal’ feature on D. Moreover, ‘pronominal’ features on determiners or elsewhere explain nothing about the nature of pronominal reference (see also Section 5.1); they are ad hoc.
On the complex structure of pronouns
The above discussion can be summarised as follows: a small group of determiners is unique among the rest of the functional heads for not requiring a lexical head in its complement. A subset of this group, plural indexicals and demonstratives in English, are even more peculiar in that, contra (4), they are the only lexical entries to have optional selectional properties: they may either select a particular complement or appear as intransitive. This peculiarity of the subset in question cannot plausibly be made to follow from some semantic property. Alternatively, we may say that plural indexicals and demonstratives do abide by (4) comprising an ‘intransitive’ and a ‘selecting’ entry each, as discussed above. This in turn would refute Abney’s assumption that lack of descriptive content of a DP is what triggers pronominal reference at LF. Both options are undesirable. . There is always a complement (Postal 1969) Postal (1969) was the first to argue that pronouns – or rather, their surface forms – are “articles,” what we nowadays call Determiners. Observing the contrast between (1) and (2) he proposed that we in (2) takes a (pronominal) noun like ‘one’ as a complement in Deep Structure. This noun is later deleted, during the course of the derivation. In this way, no ‘flexible’ selectional properties have to be stipulated for just some determiners (plural indexicals, we/us and you (plu.) and demonstratives). In other words, pronouns are considered to be akin to ellipsis in a way. In fact, Postal introduces some terminology of his own which, although not taken up, is indicative of his approach. What we usually call ‘pronouns’, like we in (1) and (2), he calls ‘articles’ and reserves the term ‘pronoun’ for the deleted nominal complement only. In Section 4 we will see that this ‘Npronoun’ or ‘pronominal noun’ is anything but covert in a number of cases. His approach has been quite influential and the idea that pronominal determiners are ‘articles’ was taken up by Jackendoff (1977: 106) and, of course, Abney (1987). The idea that a (null) noun exists inside every pronoun and that it is responsible for pronominal reference will be the working hypothesis of this chapter and a key idea in this study.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Pronouns and φ-features In the previous section we discussed Abney’s analysis of pronouns as intransitive determiners. We also reviewed the theoretical complications, especially regarding selection by determiners, that such a view introduces. In this and the following section we will present some empirical arguments for both the complex structure of pronouns and the presence of nouns inside pronominal DPs. . On the locus of Person features inside the DP A salient characteristic of pronouns is that they are marked for Person features, apparently exclusively among nominals. Person can be informally defined as the grammatical category that indicates discourse roles. For the purposes of our inquiry here “person” will be treated to the extent it is encoded grammatically and not on a semantic/pragmatic level, as such discussion would be way beyond the scope of our purposes here. Benveniste (1966) observes that the usual tripartite division of grammatical persons, 1st for the Speaker, 2nd for the Hearer and 3rd for everybody else is not an accurate account of the way person is actually encoded. He asserts that only 1st and 2nd persons are relevant to the actual function of Person, which is – according to him – to “resolve the problem of interpersonal communication” (“resourdre [le problème] de la communication intersubjective” p. 254).9 In other words, Person has a discourse function of a deictic nature. This is not the case with the “unmarked” 3rd Person (or what he calls nonpersonne) as it is ‘objective’ in the sense that all denoting noun phrases are in the 3rd Person. Finally, Benveniste observes that 3rd Person pronouns serve as “abbreviating substitutes” (“substituts abbréviatifs” p. 256) for objects of the real world. This sharply differentiates them from indexicals, 1st and 2nd person pronouns, that “both denote and index (or presuppose/create) the participants in the speech act” (Silverstein 1986: 169). Let us now follow Halle (1997: 429) and posit two features to grammatically encode the notion of Person: [±Participant in Speech Event] (or [±PSE]) and [±Author of Speech Event] (or [±ASE]).10 These two features can be combined in four possible ways:
On the complex structure of pronouns
(5) Person revisited11 [+PSE] [–PSE]
[+ASE] 1st person 1st person exclusive
[–ASE] 2nd person 3rd person
Observe that what we call ‘3rd person’ is actually a lack of any Person features,12 in line with Benveniste’s observations. As the presence of a “3rd person feature” would be redundant on all the thousands of DPs that serve as Rexpressions in languages that trigger agreement with ‘3rd person’ – usually of a default nature – like Italian, Hungarian13 or Russian, this is a welcome result. It follows that ‘3rd person’ is the ‘default’ member of the set, apart from being overwhelmingly the most frequent. Henceforth, the term “non person” is to be understood as what is traditionally known as ‘3rd person’. Having decided the actual feature representation of Person, we must now identify the locus of Person features. Recall that all pronouns where Person is marked are claimed to be (at least) overt pronominal determiners, so I presume that the zero hypothesis would be to locate Person features ([ASE] and [PSE]) on D heads; this has been the standard assumption, too (Abney 1987: 283; Ritter 1995: 420–421; but see Rouveret 1991). This intuitively natural assumption can be made robust if one considers (1) once more, repeated below for convenience: (1) [DP We linguists] tend to be quite parsimonious.
The constituent linguists, a NumP as will be seen in the following section, cannot plausibly be claimed to encode Person, although it encodes plural number and – of course – the concept ‘linguist’. It takes the D we versus, say, the or these to decide the person (1st) of the DP. We can then safely assert that Person, in the form of [ASE] and [PSE] features, is encoded on D. An additional argument towards this assertion could well be Ritter’s (1995: 421) observation that Person entails definiteness, but not the other way round; we know that definiteness is located on determiners, perhaps in the form of a feature [Def]. Indeed, Bloomfield (1938: 225–226) considers definiteness and person to be mutually exclusive. I think that we could plausibly claim that [ASE] and [PSE] are associated with ostension/deixis and seem to belong to the same natural class with definiteness and deictic features, all located on Determiners (Panagiotidis 2000b): consider the affinity among [ASE]14 D we, definite D the and deictic D these as just hinted with reference to (1).
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. On the locus of Number features inside the DP Number features cause an interesting ‘interpretational twist’ on pronouns, when interacting with Person features. This in turn provides an important diagnostic for Number features not being encoded on D – as Abney’s claim would be. Before getting to this point, we should determine the locus of Number features. Chomsky (1995: 235–241) divides grammatical features into intrinsic and optional. Intrinsic features are features that are an inseparable part of a lexical entry, whereas optional features are specified by the operation that forms the numeration. Number features certainly belong to this second class, they are optional in other words. Let us first adumbrate this in a clearer fashion by giving an example of the intrinsic versus optional distinction. In a language like Italian, the lexical item pellicola comes obligatorily with a [feminine] gender specification, as is obvious in cases of agreement with D and A: la vecchia pellicola and not *il vecchio pellicola, where both article and adjective fail to show agreement with the noun. On the other hand, a lexical item like pellicola can, of course, be in the singular or in the plural, i.e. either of the two numbers available in that language: singular pellicola vecchia or plural pellicole vecchie. Turning to the question of where Number features are actually encoded, Chomsky offers two possible options. A first one is that optional features are selected and “assigned to the word as it enters the numeration” – in other words, we do not need an extra functional head to host them: Number features will be added on the N head as it enters the numeration. An extra functional Num head is a second option: Number features sit on a head of their own. (6) and (7) illustrate the two options for the noun pellicola, assuming here for reasons of exposition, that a [Sing] feature encodes singular number and a [Plu] one plural.15 In (6), the version in which optional Number features are added on the N head is illustrated, in (7) the version in which number features are features on a special functional head. (6)
pellicola
pellicole
FILM
FILM
[Fem]
[Fem]
N
N [Sing]
[Plu]
On the complex structure of pronouns
(7)
NumP
NumP
Num
[Sing]
N
pellicola
Num
[Plu]
N
pellicole
FILM
FILM
[Fem]
[Fem]
There seems to exist some independent evidence to support the more ‘configurational’ view, the one illustrated in (7), where number features are encoded on a separate head, Num, which merges with the N as part of the syntactic computation, after the numeration. Ritter (1991) shows that only the postulation of an intermediate Num head between D and N can fully capture the complex relationship between ‘free state’ and ‘construct state’ structures in Hebrew. Moreover, an intermediate Num head could be one possible landing site for Romance ‘partial N-movement’ as discussed in Cinque (1994). Panagiotidis (2000b) claims that strength of Num in Modern Greek is the key to explaining the behaviour of demonstrative positioning when not DP-initial. Crucially, if number features can be optionally added to nouns, as in (6) above, then nothing would prevent them from being optionally added to D, or to any other head inside the DP, in principle. On the other hand, if number features are encoded on a Num head, then this is not an option and number marking on determiners must be a result of agreement with Num. In order to refine this view, we have to state that number features cannot be interpretable on D even when they appear to be somehow marked there, like on these compared to this; the fact that this and these are marked for number is the result of agreement with Num, which bears the interpretable number features. A careful reader will notice that the implication throughout the discussion so far is that interpretable semantic features are encoded exclusively on certain heads. Such an assumption about grammar goes at least back to Hellan (1986), see also Muysken & Van Riemsdijk (1986: 25). On the other hand, uninterpretable (Chomsky 1995) or unvalued (Chomsky 1998) versions of
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
semantic features can appear on other heads, as well. So, the locus of interpretable Number features is Num, although uninterpretable Number features may well be encoded on other heads, such as D, and are probably responsible for agreement phenomena. Additionally, as we saw, there seems to exist empirical evidence for a Num head, which is consistent with the idea that interpretable features have fixed loci, an idea that will be a working hypothesis throughout this study (see Section 2.2.1 of the Introduction). Another very interesting observation relevant to the discussion above would be that uninterpretable versions of formal features show up on heads that c-command the head that encodes the interpretable version. So, D encodes uninterpretable number features but not N. We will, hopefully, put this observation in perspective in Chapter 5. . Interaction of Number with Person: plural indexicals The presence of Number on pronouns poses a long recognised problem (Sasse 1993: 670–671; Harley & Ritter 1997, 2000). Consider: (8) (on some TV debate) a. Speaker A: I represent the Militia for the Liberation of the Confederation. b. Speaker B: You represent racist killers. c. Speaker A: We only target social parasites. d. Speaker B: I’d rather you were country singers, then.
In this civil exchange of views above, we can observe a well-known but still very interesting anomaly with respect to reference of person pronouns. First, observe the contrast between (8a–b) and (8c–d): the latter are not ‘the plural’ of the former in any way. Though (8a) encodes the Speaker, (8c) does not encode a multitude of speakers; in fact in both cases the Speaker is the same and singular. Less clearly but similarly, singular you in (8b) refers to the Addressee (dubbed ‘Speaker A’) but plural you in (8d) does not refer to a multitude of addressees: it refers to the ‘Militia for the Liberation of the Confederation’ and it is highly unlikely that the whole of the Militia is present in order to be addressed. In (8c), we means ‘Speaker and others’, in (8d) plural you means ‘Addressee and others’. Plural number does not multiply the entities that [ASE][PSE] and [PSE] refer to, but rather makes those entities part of a larger group. Let us consider this issue in more detail: I in (8a) is specified for both [ASE] and [PSE] features and singular you in (8b) for a [PSE] one. Moving to
On the complex structure of pronouns
(8c), we observe that the [ASE] feature and the apparent [plural] number feature do not jointly define the reference of we: number features do not modify person features; we refers to the speaker plus other people. Put differently, at least one member of the set of referents for we must fulfil the [ASE] specification. In the case of (8d), the [PSE] feature is not modified by the plural feature in order for a multitude of addressees to be the actual referent of plural you. This seems to be the usual situation regarding the referents of plural you and it is not always true that all its referents are participating in the speech event. In both (8c) and (8d), a plural number specification just adds referents next to the referent specified by the [ASE] and [PSE] features. Now, in the real world, a group of speakers is a highly implausible situation, while a group of addressees is no such rarity. That is why Sasse (1993: 671) and Harley & Ritter (1997) assume a different status for we and plural you. The idea is that, whereas we always means ‘speaker and other individuals’, you can mean either ‘addressee and other individuals’ or ‘many addressees’. Notice that the ‘many addressees’ situation is actually a subset of the ‘addressee and other individuals’ one and that no grammatical system is known that distinguishes between these two situations. Interestingly, we can also mean ‘many speakers’ in very specific cases: Imagine some Greek tragedy (or even a play by T.S. Eliot, for the sake of exposition) with the chorus split in two and conversing (in chorus, of course). The first semichorus addresses the second and the we of this first semichorus is indeed one that means many speakers. Similar facts hold about their addressees, the second semichorus: you here means ‘many addressees’. It becomes evident that even this very special and certainly rare situation does not contradict the formulation of both we and you as referring to sets of people with at least one speaker or addressee as a member: in the semichorus of speakers it still holds that they are a group and that there exists at least one speaker therein,16 the same for the semichorus of addressees. The point that must be stressed here is that person and number features do not interact with each other in order to jointly define the potential referents of plural 1st and 2nd person pronouns. Recall that this is roughly what happens between person features, as shown in the table under (5). An [ASE] [PSE] feature specification does not refer to, say, the author of speech event plus a participant but to Speaker: the two features interact and co-operate to give a ‘joint’ referent, their meaning is a joint ‘effort’. On the other hand, person and number combine in a compositional fashion. Thus, the referents of plural indexicals (we and you) are not sets of speakers and addressees respec-
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
tively but rather sets of people with at least one speaker or addressee as a member: Number features interact with [ASE] and [PSE] features in a way entirely different to the way [ASE] and [PSE] features interact with each other. If person and number features lead separate lives and combine compositionally through syntax, it can reasonably be proposed that they are located on different syntactic heads, a hypothesis that would make the idea that LF interpretable number features are encoded on Num and not D more robust. The morphology of most languages does not clearly reflect this generalisation, although exceptions, cases of morphological dissociation between person and number, do exist. An interesting example of such a dissociation17 between number and person can be found in Potawatomi, an Algonquian language. Consider the following examples, from Halle & Marantz (1993: 143):18 (9) a.
k-wapm-a thou-see-him ‘thou see him’ b. k-wapm-a-wa thou-see-him- ‘you see him’
What we have here is the person morpheme k- separated from the one for Number (-wa), not just by the V, but by an object clitic/agreement marker as well. Still, the interpretation of the distant k…wa morphemes amounts to a plural ‘you’. Summarising: person and number neither behave in a unitary fashion nor interact with each other to yield a single meaning – a situation contrasting to the way the two features [ASE] and [PSE] that encode person ‘cooperate’. Person supplies discourse information and Number information about multitude; their combined interpretational outcome is compositionally defined, a matter of LF, and possibly pragmatic enrichment of LF (as in the semichoruses situation above). Person and Number are not indistinguishably tied together through the computation. Number [plural] features just add meaning to that of person and do not modify it. Crucially, this is a natural consequence of number and person being located on distinct heads (Num and D respectively, in the nominal domain – see Alexiadou (2000) and Chapter 4 here for a similar situation inside the verbal domain). Accordingly, plural person pronouns comprise a ‘loose’ combination between Person and Num-
On the complex structure of pronouns
ber features, as seen in their semantics and the morphology of languages like Potawatomi in (9). . Gender as an intrinsic feature of nouns Gender can usually be seen marked morphologically on the noun in most languages that exhibit it. Consider the following Modern Greek example, with both nouns belonging to the -a declension: (10) nominative genitive
Masculine patera-s patera
Feminine kithara kithara-s
The way nominative and genitive are formed differs minimally with gender as the sole criterion. On the other hand this is not of course true for all languages with rich gender systems; French and – primarily – German are two examples of languages where gender is not typically morphologically marked on the noun. Despite this diversity regarding the surface manifestation of gender marking inside the DP, there are good reasons to believe that gender features form an inextricable part of lexical entries for nouns. Some of these reasons are discussed in detail in Corbett (1991) and Harris (1991). First of all, gender is always related to semantic properties of the noun: animacy, sex and so on – where applicable. There are no languages attested with gender systems of a purely formal nature, that is where the actual semantic properties of nouns are completely irrelevant.19 Second, there are languages – Slavic is a case in point – that have no overt articles, but still exhibit a rich gender system involving agreement not only with adjectives but with verb forms as well.20 Third, adjectives can agree in gender with nouns in the absence of a determiner: consider the lack of contrast between the two instances of the Italian example below: (11) a.
la
pellicola vecchia
the. film. old. b. pellicola vecchia film. old.
We can then reasonably assume that gender is not a feature primarily encoded on Determiners, the same way it is not primarily encoded on adjec-
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
tives. In more technical parlance, gender features are not interpretable on either D or A, gender can be marked there only as the result of agreement – the checking of uninterpretable features by interpretable ones, according to our framework here. Roughly, gender agreement in (11) is somehow related to the checking of uninterpretable/unspecified gender features on D la and A vecchia by the interpretable feature on pellicola. A natural question here, given also the discussion in 3.2 about number features, is whether Gender can also be claimed to be encoded on a separate functional head. Indeed, this is the stand some researchers have taken (Picallo 1991). However there are good reasons to think this is not the case. To start with, gender features are very good candidates for intrinsic features of N heads, in fact we have already assumed them to be intrinsic features of N heads – cf. (6) and (7). This is not without justification: a noun’s gender has to be learned and is intimately related to the actual lexical entry of the noun. In order to make this clearer, let us compare gender with number features. Any given noun can have any number specification available in the grammar: singular, plural, dual, paucal… This is not so with gender, nouns come specified for gender. Moreover, even nouns like mass nouns that, at least in principle, should resist modification by an expressly singular or plural Num, show a robust crosslinguistic tendency to allow this with a simultaneous shift in meaning. Nouns such as coffee and tea are cases in point: in coffee is good for you a default mass interpretation is encoded, an interpretation that can be ‘destroyed’ when the noun coffee actually combines with a Num: a coffee for me and three teas for our English friends here – by now coffee means ‘cup of coffee’ or similar and identical facts hold for three teas. We will revisit this phenomenon in Chapters 2 and 3 but, for the time being, suffice it to say that number features, encoded on Num by hypothesis, combine relatively freely with nouns, even nouns they would not be expected to combine with. This is not the case with gender features. When there is some ‘free’ combination of gender features with a noun, we are better off arguing that there are two different lexical entries for the noun in question. For instance, take poste (masc.), meaning ‘TV/radio set’, and poste (fem.) meaning ‘post’ in French. If gender is encoded on a separate Gen head here, then this Gen head has two very peculiar properties: a. In the vast majority of cases it can only select some lexical entries but not others, on either completely idiosyncratic criteria (feminine tables, neuter girls, masculine weather and so on) or very transparent lexical semantic ones (feminine mothers, neuter things, masculine uncles).
On the complex structure of pronouns
b. When this Gen head can select a noun freely, it can also assign a completely different meaning to it. Unless, of course, the noun has an animate referent (cf. il gatto versus la gatta, male versus female cat, in Italian). Hence, selectional properties of Gen heads involve a tremendous amount of complexity and seem to be overwhelmingly idiosyncratic. Of course, this is no reason to refute their existence, even though idiosyncrasies are assumed in grammatical theory to be the job of the lexicon. What makes the existence of Gen heads even more suspect is the fact that Gender seems to be inextricably blended with declension class features and their realisations in heavily inflected languages. Take the Greek examples in (10) as discussed in the beginning of this section: even though both nouns in the table belong to the same declension class, in which occasions the final -s actually occurs reduces to the gender of the noun. In order to correctly inflect the noun for case, information about both class and gender are required. On fairly standard assumptions about morphosyntax, one might want to assume that these two kinds of features are encoded on the same head, N, and have to be learned to a large extent.21 . The nature of gender and the gender of English Our having shown that gender features in a DP are encoded on an N head is crucial for our argument throughout this study. That’s why we need to deepen and further strengthen our arguments in favour of such a view. In order to do so and, prima facie, paradoxically enough we are going to inquire into gender in the grammar of English. The characterisation ‘paradoxically’ can be justified given the scarcity of gender marking on nouns in English: only singular non-person pronouns and some animate nouns are marked for gender. Moreover, no gender agreement takes place inside the DP (Corbett 1991),22 no “morphological assignment” in Corbett’s terms. Gender in English is directly related to sex (masculine and feminine – for males and females) and inanimacy (neuter), although “English formerly had a morphological assignment system” (Corbett 1991: 101). In previous work (Panagiotidis 1998) I have argued that English gender features are radically different to those in languages like Romance, Slavic, Bantu etc. The argument there was that gender features are syntactically inactive until LF in English, thus not formal but purely semantic. Nevertheless, it is important to clarify why gender features in English are syntactically inac-
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
tive. In a checking framework the answer would be: because nothing else carries uninterpretable gender features inside the DP and/or the clause. Thus, no checking operations are triggered. In principle, interpretable gender features in English are no different than gender features in Kiswahili, German or Tamil: they are noun classificatory features (Corbett 1991; Spencer 2000). English can thus offer us a window into the nature of gender features. Let us concentrate on nouns marked for gender in English. (12) actor hero wolf %manager
actress heroine she-wolf manageress
(13) boy slave bore
boyhood slavery boredom
Gender morphology is derivational morphology: idiosyncratic, with gaps and (more or less) semantically translucent. In fact, there exists some interesting evidence from neurolinguistic research for the ‘derivational’ nature of English gender. Druks & Froud (in press) discuss a case of agrammatism manifesting itself as ‘(formal) feature blindness’. An English-speaking agrammatic patient has been observed to constantly fail to recognise grammatical affixes and – generally – inflectional morphology. Nevertheless, he is reported to encounter no problems whatsoever with gender affixation. As Druks & Froud note (p. 41): “Derivation, being a purely lexical process, is said to be better preserved in agrammatism than inflection, which is syntactically relevant affixation. […] in English: the difference between actor and actress has no grammatical relevance and, therefore, gender affixation in English is derivational.” Having established that (English) gender is derivational, suppose we reverted to the hypothesis for a Gender head. Then we would also be hardpressed to assign ‘head’ status to the features that trigger the derivational morphemes in (13) and that could be classified under a ‘State’ label (boyhood being the state of being a boy etc.). Such a thing would be undesirable as the role of (functional) heads would be trivialised. I believe to have demonstrated that gender features are intrinsic features of N heads. Their affinity with declension class and other ‘derivational morphology’ features has been touched upon. Whether we are correct or not to believe that the ‘formal-semantic’ distinction of features is not a primitive but
On the complex structure of pronouns
rather a question of distribution of (un)interpretable features, it should be clear that gender is located on N. . Summary So far I have tried to establish that the rich φ specification of pronouns in a lot of the world’s languages is a result of DP-internal structure comprising at least one more head besides the fairly uncontroversial D. Based on the above discussion, we can adopt the following loci for the features that manifest themselves on pronoun forms: (14) Person (1st & 2nd)
D (‘pronominal determiner’) Num N
ü
Number
ü
Gender
ü
The surprising result is that some sort of noun is involved in all those pronominal forms that encode gender. In the case of English, if she encodes a feminine gender feature, it is one identical to that of the nouns in (12) – there is a noun hidden somewhere in she, next to a Num head (she is singular) and – possibly – a Determiner.23 Natural questions are: a. Are these ‘pronominal’ nouns ever made manifest via ‘derivational morphology’ features other than gender? This is going to be answered in the next section. b. Are pronominal nouns only parts of pronouns? Can they appear in other syntactic environments? This is investigated in the next chapter. c. What exactly and how many pronominal nouns are? What is their function? This issue will be discussed in Chapter 3. d. Do pronominal nouns always form parts of pronouns? Why? This question is going to be addressed and answered in Chapters 4 and 5.
. Nouns as pronouns Abney’s intransitive D hypothesis can cater in a very straightforward way for those pronominal systems that form closed classes, i.e. for those pronominal
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
systems that have a limited number of members to which no new additions can be made (cf. Emonds 1985: Ch. 4; Abney 1987: 64–65). At the same time, there are numerous languages reported that seem to possess an open pronominal system: Japanese (Fukui 1987; Noguchi 1997; Nolan 2000), Thai (Cooke 1968), Burmese (Cooke 1968), Malay (Wong Bee Eng, p.c.). We are also going to discuss the behaviour of a nominal that behaves pronominally in a language that possesses Determiner pronouns: the English pronominal noun one. . Open pronominal classes The discussion in this section will be mainly illustrated with examples from Japanese, by far the best studied language with an open pronominal system, and Thai, due to some extraordinary characteristics its pronominal system exhibits. In order to get ‘hands-on’ experience of what it means for a pronominal system to be open, consider the Table 1 from Cooke (1968) listing only a fraction of the pronominal paradigm of Thai, namely 1st person (singular) pronouns:24 (15) First person pronouns
Of course, this table – the result of extensive fieldwork – is not fully endorsable for a variety of reasons. First of all, the assignment of multiple values to features (‘++’ meaning intensely positive, ‘+’ meaning positive, ‘/’ meaning unmarked and ‘–’ meaning negative) is questionable on both theoretical and empirical grounds. For instance, the simplest of the empirical problems is that there do not seem to exist minimal pairs contrasting only with respect to a ‘++’ versus a ‘+’ or a ‘/’ feature values in (15) above. Second, some of the characteristics of individual lexical entries are clearly pragmatic and relate to their usage and are not grammatically encoded: this seems to be the case regarding the ‘contrast’ between raw′ (1) and raw′ (2) for instance. To provide an analogue of the situation as portrayed in (15), imagine a grammar of French that would go into some detail regarding the exact ‘specification’ (including discourse and other external factors) of polite vous. Of course, the sheer size and complexity of the 1st person paradigm is enough to invalidate beyond remedy an account along the lines of all the eighteen pronouns in (15) being (intransitive) Determiners. Moreover, at least some of Cooke’s “semantic features” seem to be grammatically encoded, most probably as a sort of ‘derivational morphology’ features on the lexical entry, similar to the feature responsible for -hood in boyhood.
On the complex structure of pronouns
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
There are three very intriguing characteristics of Thai pronouns. The first is that some forms are actually ambiguous for person. So, raw′ can be either 1st or 2nd person, khaw can be either 1st or non-person. This property is astonishing; given the discussion in Section 3.1, we expect pronominal paradigms to encode person if nothing else. How can a pronoun be ambiguous between an indexical (1st and 2nd person) and a non-person reading? We will return to this issue in Section 5.1 when the nature of pronominal reference will be discussed. For the time being, note that this intriguing property becomes less surprising when we look at lexical items like one, as in the ‘royal’ one feels compelled to… to refer to oneself or ‘impersonal’ you as in you never know what kind of people will read your papers. The second oddity is that there exist pronouns that are loanwords – ‘úa′ and ‘aj in (15), from Chinese and English respectively. Both are 1st person pronouns, although felicitous in only very specific discourse situations. Only members of open classes, especially nouns and adjectives, can usually be loanwords and, probably, never functional items. The possibility of borrowing lexical items into a lexical class is then highly suggestive of this class being an open one – like nouns and adjectives. Finally, Thai pronouns can be modified like nouns, by demonstratives and numerals. So, the following (from Cooke 1968: 10) is grammatical in Thai: (16) phőm′ nîi me this
In a similar fashion, Japanese pronouns (another language that shares the first and third property above with Thai) are modifiable by adjectives (17a), possessives (17b) and demonstratives (17c):25 (17) a.
tiisai kare small he b. watasi-no kare my he c. kono kare this he
Pronouns in these and other languages thus display typical syntactic characteristics of nouns. First, they form an open class and fulfil the non theory-internal criteria Emonds (1985: Ch. 4) posits for open class membership: there are a lot more than thirty of them,26 new lexical items can be borrowed, a number of
On the complex structure of pronouns
lexical items exist that roughly express the same semantic content and cannot be distinguished from each other on purely syntactic criteria. So, the lexical items in (15), all meaning ‘speaker’, are probably differentiated among themselves the way the members of the trio freedom-fighter, guerrilla, terrorist are, certainly not according to syntactic criteria as is the case for I (nominative) versus me (accusative) or je (nominative clitic/weak pronoun) versus me (accusative clitic/weak pronoun) versus moi (strong pronoun) in French. The criteria that determine the ‘correct’ choice from the list in (15) are stylistic and pragmatic. The same is true for Japanese pronouns (Fukui 1987; Noguchi 1997) and, by extrapolation, for all open pronominal systems. Second, they are modifiable by the usual nominal modifiers as we saw in (16) and (17). In fact, this very piece of evidence leads Fukui (1987) and Noguchi (1997) – following an insight of Kuroda’s – to assert that pronominal forms are nouns in Japanese. Again, we can extrapolate to all pronouns belonging to open systems and consider them all nouns. . An overt pronominal noun in English It could be argued that the fact that Thai and Japanese pronouns are really nouns, say NPs, proves nothing about pronouns in general. Perhaps some languages use (intransitive) determiners and some nouns to express pronominal reference. This cannot be true if Abney’s construal of pronominality as ‘lack of descriptive content’ holds; from his perspective nouns must have descriptive content. Nevertheless, if we relax this construal a bit and admit that nouns can lack descriptive meaning, maybe we have a way forward. Perhaps there are languages with D-pronouns and languages with N-pronouns (an idea also discussed in Noguchi 1997), a matter of parameter setting. Even if such a parameter exists, it cannot be of the ‘on/off’ sort: there exist N-pronouns in languages with a fully fledged D-pronoun system. One of them is English and the pronominal noun in question is one. One possesses at least the following two interesting properties that identify it with pronominal nouns (N-pronouns) like those of Thai and Japanese. First, one can appear inside the complement of a determiner (18a), be modified by an adjective (18b), and be marked for plural (18c) – like any other nominal. So, for instance, we could substitute one for a noun, say paper or cat, in the examples below and still get grammatical sentences. Predictably, the standard analysis is that one is a nominal (Jackendoff 1977; Emonds 1985; Kayne 1994).27
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
(18) a. [This one] is from New Jersey. b. [A new one] is sometimes a challenge. c. You should carefully file [the new ones]!
Second, the DP containing one has no fixed referent, like pronouns. It can refer to contextually salient entities but it lacks descriptive meaning. This should be obvious from examples (18) above, where DPs containing one(s) could refer to anything either animate or inanimate, as long as this entity is countable: one is a “pronominal count noun” according to Radford (1993: 102). Take a new one in (18b), for instance; this nominal phrase can have any ‘singular’ referent pace the restrictions imposed by the indefinite article a and the adjective new. One essentially behaves like the lesser-marked members of the Thai and Japanese pronominal paradigms.
. A noun inside every pronoun So far we have seen that pronouns have a complex structure, they are not intransitive determiners. In fact, some pronominal expressions, like the DP containing one in (18c), have a very transparent internal structure. Other pronominals, like Thai and Japanese ones, consist of at least a noun and involve determiners only under very specific theory–internal assumptions. Moreover, we proposed here that LF interpretable features are encoded on specific heads and not just anywhere available (contra the spirit of Ritter 1995), as heads are not primitives, but bundles of features. Especially in the case of functional heads, this must always be kept in mind, as Emonds (1985: Ch. 4) shows and will be discussed in detail in Chapters 3 and 5. So, what makes a Num head is not some special categorial status but the fact that it hosts number features. If number features can appear freely as part of D or N or some other functional head, then we are looking at a very different – and more complex to learn – model of grammar, where number can be either interpreted on the noun/Num in we linguists, our (1), or straight from the Determiner in (2), when we appears on its own… Given the discussion in Section 3, whose conclusion is summarised under (14), if features make heads, any pronominal form that encodes number is a nominal phrase involving a Num head. Moreover, when gender or other ‘derivational morphology’ features are encoded on a pronominal form, a noun is there as well.28 This noun can be either phonologically null (as in
On the complex structure of pronouns
Postal’s 1969 analysis) or overt (like in Thai and Japanese pronominals as well as English DPs involving one). . What is pronominality? Let us now return to one of the key questions we set out to answer in this chapter, namely what makes pronouns pronominal. Recall that Abney’s solution, that is ‘the radical absence of an NP projection that carries the conceptdenoting (or ‘descriptive’) features of the DP’ is unattainable at least for pronominal DPs with overt nouns (DPs with one, as well as Thai and Japanese Npronouns) and pronouns encoding gender or other ‘derivational morphology’ features. Recall also that Postal (1969) in essence argues for the presence of a pronominal noun in every pronominal DP (interpreting his proposal from a contemporary perspective). The answer to the question therefore appears to be that Postal was right, after all: a pronominal noun inside a nominal phrase causes this nominal phrase (DP) to be interpreted as a semantic variable at LF and beyond. The presence of a pronominal noun is exactly what unifies determiner headed pronouns and N-pronouns, including DPs with one. The next question is then why pronominal nouns trigger such an interpretation at LF. A first approximation is to posit a [pronominal] feature on those special nouns. Descriptively, this is sufficient. Let us illustrate this hypothetical state of affairs by giving the rough structures at Spell Out as well as some features29 for the indexical we (19a), she (19b), a DP headed by one (19c) and the Japanese pronoun kare (19d). (19) Some pronouns a.
DP
D
NumP
we
Num
NP
[ASE] [*plu]
[plu]
e
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
DP
b.
D
NumP
she
Num
NP
[def] [*sing] [*fem]
[sing]
e [fem]
c.
DP
D
NumP
the
AP
[def] new
d.
Num
NP
[plu]
ones
DP
D
NumP
e
Num
NP
[def]
[sing]
kare [masc]
In (19a) we is nothing more than a determiner encoding ‘speaker’ and an uninterpretable number feature – the determiner we agrees in number with Num. The null pronominal noun, marked with an e, is responsible for the pronominal reference of the DP in (19a): recall that there is nothing pro-
On the complex structure of pronouns
nominal about we linguists. The presence of the pronominal noun is forced at least by selectional properties of we. In (19b), we take the phonologically overt form she to be an agreeing D30 but nothing follows from this. It could well be a pronominal noun raised to D, as in Zwarts (1993), Cardinaletti (1994), Panagiotidis (1998). We opt for she as a D for reasons of parsimony; none of the analyses quoted provides fully convincing evidence for an N-to-D movement (à la Longobardi 1994) taking place in this and similar cases. In any event, the locus of the interpretable gender feature [fem] is inside the NP. In (19c) we position the AP at the specifier of Num – this is nothing more than shorthand here, though (see also Chapter 2; for discussion: Kester 1996). Similarly, we put ones fully inflected in the phrase marker but, again, nothing follows from this. Finally, we posit a DP shell for Japanese kare as in Noguchi (1997) but contra Fukui (1987). The motivation is theory-internal and might well be on the wrong track: we take DPs to be referential/arguments and NPs/NumPs to be predicative (Stowell 1991; Longobardi 1994) – more about this assumption in Chapter 4. In our (19d), kare being definite perhaps supports the case for a DP shell, too. In all examples under (19) we refrain from giving a detailed label for the pronominal nouns, simply dubbing them all ‘NP’. This will be rectified in Chapter 3. Now, let us say that e in (19a–b), one in (19c) and kare in (19d) encode a [pronominal] feature (cf. Noguchi 1997: 783). This triggers pronominal interpretation of the respective DPs. Nevertheless, a careful reader will not fail to observe another common trait running through these pronominal nouns: they do not seem to encode any concept related to the real world like cat, bliss, hammer or republic, the way ‘ordinary’ nouns do. Pronominal nouns are devoid of ‘descriptive’ features, encoding ‘minimally’ semantic ones – like gender – at best. Let us now conduct a thought experiment, originally in Panagiotidis (2000): take a DP that is a Referential (R–) expression, say the cat. According to the assumption that a [pronominal] feature exists, the cat could reasonably be claimed to bear a [–pronominal] feature (say, on N). This creates a paradox: 1. the lack of descriptive content of pronouns is the result of the positive setting of a [pronominal] feature on a noun (e, one, kare), which has no descriptive content anyway; 2. the fact that R-expressions do have descriptive content is relevant/due to the negative setting of the same [pronominal] feature.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
In other words, when a DP contains a [+pronominal] feature at LF, it is interpreted as a semantic variable. If, on the other hand, a [–pronominal] feature is encountered, the reference of the nominal expression (DP) is decided on the basis of the concept(s) that the descriptive features it contains encode. So, the cat will have its reference decided by virtue of (among other things) its feature encoding the concept CAT. Having said that, we cannot fail to notice two more logically possible, but rather exotic, options: a. an R-expression that has no descriptive features. This would be marked as [–pronominal] but bear no descriptive features; b. a pronoun that encodes a concept. This would be marked as [+pronominal] and also denote an object, e.g. a pronoun that also means “the cat.” Both a. and b. could be fairly characterised as oxymora. Eventually, the model that seeks to define pronominality by virtue of a [pronominal] feature fails for the reason that this feature, being ultimately independent of the descriptive/concept-denoting features on a noun, could lead to the generation of non-descriptive R-expressions, as in a. above. These would be only vacuously ‘referential’ and their LF representation would most probably be indistinguishable from that of a pronoun. As for “descriptive pronouns” of b., they could perhaps be identified with epithets like the fool or the jerk which seem to share binding properties of both pronominals and R-expressions. This would be in the spirit of Lasnik (1991: 16) who makes a very similar claim. Again, the problem would be why epithets as “descriptive pronouns” cannot be composed from any descriptive features, like CAT for instance, with an added [+pronominal] feature. I have no explanation to offer for this. Consequently, in the face of the undesirable redundancy the [pronominal] feature introduces and in order not to have it discarded, we would need to establish a condition where a [–pronominal] value of it would entail obligatory presence of descriptive features and, probably, vice-versa. Such a condition would only increase redundancy and is undesirable for that reason. Ultimately, what we would like to capture is the fact that descriptive content and pronominality are mutually exclusive: an R-expression is such by virtue of the fact that it denotes a concept, a pronoun is such by virtue of the fact that it does not denote anything but, rather, it is a semantic variable. In other words, denotation or lack thereof of DPs is intrinsically dependent on the descriptive content or lack thereof of the noun. Pronominality is nothing but the lack of descriptive content of a noun. Pronominal reference is a last
On the complex structure of pronouns
resort interpretive strategy when C–I systems can see no concept encoded on the noun of a DP. In a way, this conclusion completes the circle: Abney was right and Postal was right, too: Pronominal reference is the lack of descriptive content, as in Abney (1987), but lack of descriptive content does not necessarily entail radical absence of a noun but, rather, the presence of an impoverished noun, as in Postal (1969). Crucially, this noun does not denote a concept. To put it generally: (20) Pronominal DPs include a noun that denotes no concept
The grammatical nature of these ‘pronominal’ nouns is what we are going to focus on for the rest of this study. We will inquire into their semantic properties and their X′ status. Moreover, we will examine the relationship between the phonologically null variety of such pronominal nouns with pro – the null subject of verbs – and phenomena of ellipsis. Properties of Num and D will be touched upon only to the extent that they interact with those pronominal nouns.
. Appendix: Delineating the data . Complementation versus Apposition Consider the following examples that involve material to the right of the pronoun: (i) We linguists tend to be quite parsimonious (=1) (ii) We, linguists, tend to be quite parsimonious (iii) We, the linguists, tend to be quite parsimonious
As the punctuation indicates, (ii) and (iii) involve intonational breaks, not only after the pronoun but also after the constituent to its right. This constituent can either be an NumP31 (ii) or a DP (iii). Moreover, (ii) and (iii) can be roughly translated as (iv) and (v) respectively, preserving the meaning: (iv) We, that is linguists, tend to be quite parsimonious. (v) We, that is the linguists, tend to be quite parsimonious.
The above contrast readily with the ungrammatical: (vi) *We the linguists tend to be quite parsimonious.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
(vii) *We that is the linguists tend to be quite parsimonious.
Now, in traditional terms, the NP in (i) is restrictive in the sense that it restricts the group of ‘the speaker and others’ we signifies, whereas all the loose constituents that follow the pronoun in (ii–vii) only provide additional information on the already given set of individuals (linguists here) that we refers to by itself.32 This subtle semantic distinction corresponds to different syntactic structures which – in turn – are distinctively mapped to PF. In examples (ii–iii) we is a pronominal DP that lacks a head-complement syntactic relationship with an overt constituent; the DP containing linguists in this examples forces the appositive interpretation somewhere after LF, as there is perhaps nothing in the grammar to tell us that pronoun and phrase are indeed co-referential. . Exclamations and nominalisations Exclamatory, vocative and interjective contexts were excluded from the discussion of which determiners are ‘intransitive’, because they seem to allow a variety of combinations not attested in ‘declarative’ contexts: (viii) a. You silly sods! b. You silly sod! c. Lucky her! (ix) Lucky you!
If we consider (viii) and (ix) as valid sets of data along with everything else, we are faced with quite a few contradictions. Thus, (viii a–b) could be said to illustrate you in plural and singular as a D with NP complements and (viii c) to present sound evidence of non-person forms being merged as Ns and, thus, naturally following an adjective, recall the discussion of (19c). On the other hand, (ix) would amply falsify our first claim, namely that you is a D, as you follows an adjective. Therefore, we leave those environments aside. As for how (viii) and (ix) are explained, we can follow Progovac (1998: 174) and claim they are small clauses of some sort. Moving on to example (x), we realise that such expressions are also a red herring for our discussion. Evidently, the phrase in (x) is akin to those in (xi): nominalisations, unless we would want to claim that adverbials (xi a–b), and inflected verbs (xi c) can appear in N position.
On the complex structure of pronouns
(x) Discover the new you (xi) a. The whys and wherefores of the problem. b. Le demain de l’ humanité The tomorrow of.the humanity c. Ta pistevo the-. believe-1st
English French Greek
Notes . See also Appendix (Section 6.1). . Demonstratives not unanimously so: Brugè (1996), Giusti (1997), Tsimpli & Stavrakaki (1999), Panagiotidis (2000b). . Ellipsis will be dealt with in some detail in Chapter 2. . See the Appendix (Section 6.2) about our choice of data. . But see (16) and Section 4. .
(i) Du You (ii) Jij You
Sprachwissenschaftler hast es bewiesen linguist have it proved saaie taalkundige leest alleen maar boring linguist read only
German Dutch
. I am grateful to Neil Smith for pointing this out to me. . I consider English demonstratives D heads (Panagiotidis 2000b). . The general idea that Person is only marked as “1st” and “2nd” person can be traced back to Bloomfield’s Language (1938: 225–226). From a typological point of view, Forchheimer (1953: 6) makes the following generalisations towards the non-person status of ‘3rd person’: 3rd person agreement is often zero, whereas 1st and 2nd person agreement is overt; many languages have no (nominative) 3rd person pronoun or use demonstratives instead; 1st and 2nd person are often similar in form and inflection but dissimilar from that of 3rd person. . Ingram (1978), Silverstein (1986) and Harley & Ritter (1997, 2000) argue for [±Addressee] instead of [±PSE]. . Languages like Ghomala (Sasse 1993: 670) have systems with a much richer directory of person specifications. Silverstein (1986) and Harley & Ritter (1997, 2000) convincingly argue that such rare and rich systems combine Number and Person features in intricate ways to give the surface effect of possessing more than four person specifications, see also 3.2 and 3.3 below.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Throughout this study, I will take a minus specification for a feature to actually stand for “absence of feature.” This is in the spirit of Ingram (1978: 224), who has done the same in order to capture the typological diversity of pronominal systems. The consequences of that with respect to checking theory remain to be attested, but I find it rather improbable that ‘negatively specified’ features can be checked or check; see Alexiadou (2000) for a proposal. More on ‘3rd person’ as non-person: Corver & Delfitto (1999), Harley & Ritter (2000). . See Den Dikken (2000). . We can be either exclusive or inclusive, so [PSE] must be unspecified. . Harley & Ritter (1997, 2000) on how number (more accurately: ‘individuation’) is encoded in language, the reader is referred there for a more substantial discussion. . Rather than vice-versa, possibly a tell-tale sign that Num is c-commanded by D. . Also argued for by Rouveret (1991: 362–363) for Welsh pronouns and verbal agreement. . They should be viewed with caution, though, as the morphosyntactic status of the examples cited is far from clear. Nevertheless, the fact that Number and Person appear as separate ‘morphemes’ is uncontroversial, even though they combine ‘semantically’ to give an interpretation equivalent to you (pl). . Corbett (1991: 63). . ibid. p.125–126. . For an additional argument, see Giannakidou & Stavrou (1999: 11, 37). Ritter (1993: 795) makes the claim that “gender is a feature on Num in Romance languages and on N in Hebrew” and that an amount of parametric variation is entailed. Her main argument is that in Romance languages Gender is realised together with Number (an optional feature), mainly based on Walloon data. Nevertheless, the question of why gender is still not optional (no matter what the morphological rules are) is not addressed. Thus, we will continue assuming that gender is a, stricto sensu, nominal feature. . We will not discuss anaphor agreement here (Beowulf admires himself/*herself). . Ritter (1995), Koopman (2000) and, taken in a strict fashion, Alexiadou (2000) provide evidence against a D in non-person pronouns. Here, I will side with Stowell (1991) and Longobardi (1994), taking all arguments to be DPs – see Section 3.3 in Chapter 4 for discussion. . I am grateful to Pattama Viriyasirikul for discussing with me the pronouns of her native language in such a careful, detailed and patient manner. Much of the following discussion is the result of these discussions. The usual disclaimers apply. . For discussion: Fukui (1987); Noguchi (1997); Panagiotidis (to appear).
On the complex structure of pronouns
. Emonds (1985: 159) considers 30 to roughly be the maximum number of members for closed classes. This is not a stipulation but a consequence of his Unique Syntactic Behavior – more about the issue in Chapter 3. . But see Kester (1996) who argues it is a functional head above N. . These statements are only accurate for clitic pronouns if they originate from some sort of nominal phrase (Kayne 1989; Kayne 1991; Laenzlinger & Shlonsky 1997; Cardinaletti & Starke 1999; Corver & Delfitto 1999 and Den Dikken 2000): clitics are raised D heads that leave behind the rest of a DP – this view we follow here. See Chapters 2 & 3 for details. . Starred features will signify LF uninterpretable features henceforth. . See Koopman (2000) for a different and very interesting analysis. . But see Section 5.1 and Chapter 4. . See also Postal (1969: 218–219). Abney (1987: 282, ftn. 86) remains agnostic on whether examples like (i) pattern up with the appositives in (ii–vii), which is strange.
C 2
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
. . . . . .
Preamble Adjectives and pronominal nouns Pronominal clitics and null nouns Radical ellipsis: Empty arguments A Grand Unification? Appendix: Nominalisation versus noun ellipsis
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
.
Preamble
In the previous chapter I restated my assumptions and we saw where they led us in relation to the presence of non-descriptive nouns inside pronominal DPs. Recall that these assumptions were the following: LF interpretable features are encoded on specific heads, although agreement-inducing uninterpretable versions of the same features can be encoded elsewhere within the extended nominal projection; thus, person features are encoded on D, number features on Num and gender as well as ‘derivational morphology’ features on N. A second key assumption was that selection in grammar, however formulated, is obligatory; this is stated under (4) in the previous chapter. When applied to pronominals, obligatory selection entails the impossibility of (functional) heads optionally taking a complement or being ‘intransitive’;1 at the same time, pronominals marked for number must have at least a NumP shell and those encoding gender an NP one. On the other hand, Ds like we/us, although not marked for gender, must also involve a NumP and an NP constituent when superficially ‘intransitive’ because, by (4) in the previous chapter, they must select one; such NPs sometimes surface overtly, as examples like we linguists illustrate. Having argued for the presence of an NP constituent in virtually all pronominals, we further identified this ‘pronominal noun’ as the source of pronominality. Non-descriptive (that is, non concept-denoting) nominals trigger pronominal reference of their DP beyond LF; they can be either phonologically overt (like Japanese kare or English one) or not (like the null nominal in ‘pronominal’ we, he/him etc.). This chapter will expand the discussion of ‘pronominal nouns’ in significant ways. First, we are going to review other cases of DPs where pronominal nouns show up. This is a non-trivial task to undertake: if nondescriptive nouns are confined to appearing inside personal pronoun DPs, the case for their existence is considerably weakened and the whole hypothesis acquires an ad hoc flavour: if non-descriptive nouns are idiosyncratic entities associated with personal pronouns only, then they are probably not syntactically represented and their position is in the lexicon along with the rest of grammatical idiosyncrasies. This is why it will be shown that pronominal nouns also appear in noun ellipsis (Section 2), play a crucial role in the strange life of pronominal clitics (Section 3) as well as some forms of null arguments (Section 4). Second, it will emerge that a unification between pronouns and kinds of ellipsis is possible and indeed straightforward if non-
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
descriptive nouns are situated at the heart of all such expressions and their different syntactic and interpretive behaviours are the effect of features of functional heads inside the DP.
. Adjectives and pronominal nouns Let us take a closer look at examples (18b–c) from the previous chapter, repeated here for convenience as (1a–b). In order to fully illustrate the phenomena to be looked into below, (1c) is added. (1) a. [A new one] is sometimes a challenge. b. You should carefully file [the new ones]! c. [The new one] makes a lot of people feel insecure.
We have analysed the bracketed DPs in (1a–b), and – by feasible extension – (1c), as involving a pronominal (= ‘non concept-denoting’) noun one, in line with the standard analyses on the issue (cf. Jackendoff 1977; Emonds 1985; Kayne 1994). The reference of the DP the new ones in (1b) is pronominal in the sense of it being restricted by singular number, the property ‘new’ and definiteness, contributed by the singular Num, the AP new and the D the respectively, but being otherwise free to range over any individual abiding by the restrictions above. In this sense, it is very close to she/her,2 restricted in turn by the feminine gender on its N, the singular number on its Num and the definiteness of its D.3 Furthermore, as in the case of pronouns, the usual contextual restrictions apply. In a way, we can claim that pronominal nouns like one have the property of turning every DP they occur inside into a pronoun. Let us now turn to some cases where adjectives do not modify an overt noun. Is it the case that all those adjectives have been nominalised, possibly pre-syntactically? Or are there cases where pronominal nouns, phonologically null versions of one, can sometimes be involved? Recall that throughout this study we will be assuming that adjectival phrases (APs) modifying a noun are specifiers of a functional head between N and D, either a little n or Num, as in Bernstein (1993), Cinque (1994), Kester (1996), Stavrou (1999), Carstens (2000) and Panagiotidis (2000b).4 Because the scope of our discussion cannot extend to include a reasonably coherent account of the structural position of modifying APs, we will have to be content to adopt the above view; we will
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
thus conventionally place modifying APs in the specifiers of Num in our phrase markers, but few things hinge on this particular choice here. . Noun ellipsis Ellipsis is a complex phenomenon that has been the object of considerable study and controversy within grammatical theory for at least the last 30 years. Very informally, ellipsis is a label for the grammatical phenomenon that involves the elision of a constituent – unlike gapping and stripping that do not involve elision of constituents (see Chao 1988 and Lobeck 1995, among others, for detailed discussion). Some examples will make the point: (2) Ellipses: a. VP Ellipsis:
Politicians can’t rule this country, hence the army will [VP e]. b. Noun Ellipsis: Bertie’s [NumP e] was flagrantly opposed to violence but her group was indifferent. c. Sluicing: They know he’s hiding, but they don’t know where [IP e]. Gapping: They shot Lorca in Andalucia and _ the rest in Barcelona. Stripping: Ali loves to study Hebrew but not _ Arabic.
In this section we are only going to look into noun ellipsis and we are specifically going to focus on noun ellipsis that co-occurs with adjectives. It will be assumed without discussion that ellipsis involves ‘base-generated’ empty constituents, as in Chao (1988), Lobeck (1991, 1995, 1999), Sleeman (1993), Kester (1996, 1996b), Lightfoot (1998) and Boeckx (2000) among others. There is also a competing concept of ellipsis which views the phenomenon as a process that deletes contextually salient constituents at PF, but it arguably fails to capture the quasi-pronominal behaviour of elliptical constituents; see Lobeck (1995: 30–35) and especially Lobeck (1999) for arguments against a PF deletion analysis.5 The quasi-pronominal behaviour of – at least – noun ellipsis will be captured in terms of elliptical DPs involving what we have called a ‘pronominal noun’ and further discussed in Section 2.1.2. For the time being, suffice it to say that unlike gapping and stripping, ellipsis of all three kinds is constrained by the Backwards Anaphora Constraint: elliptical constituents can precede – as in (2b) – but not c-command their ‘antecedents’ (Lobeck 1995: 20–28). Again, the interested reader is referred to Chao (1988) and Lobeck (1995, 1999) for more details.
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
.. The form of noun ellipsis Here are some examples of noun ellipsis from a variety of languages: (3) a.
J’ aime les grises I love the. grey.. b. Amo le grigie love.1st. the.. grey.. c. Quiero las grisas love.1st. the.. grey.. d. Aghapo tis grizes love.1st. the.. grey.. ‘I love the grey ones’
eN.
French
e N.
Italian
e N.
Spanish
eN.
Greek
As is known, adjectives in the languages above agree in gender and number with the noun of the DP. Assume that agreement is – ultimately – the result of constituents with matching features being positioned in a Spec–Head (or other) matching configuration with each other before or at LF (cf. Chomsky 1995; Carstens 2000). If this is roughly accurate, gender agreement on adjectives is mediated by the functional head they are the specifiers of – say Num. This is illustrated in the phrase marker under (4): (4)
NumP
AP A [*number] [*gender]
Num
N [gender]
NP
Num [number]
… N…
At some stage in the derivation, the noun, bearing the gender features, adjoins to the Num head, which, in turn, carries number features. An appropriate Spec–Head configuration with the AP specifier of Num is established and thus the uninterpretable number and gender features of the adjective are checked, this somehow manifesting itself as agreement. For the N to Num (to D) movement see Delfitto & Schroten (1991), Bernstein (1993), Longobardi (1994), Carstens (2000) and Panagiotidis (2000b).
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
Given that in all instances of (3) number agreement is marked on the D and, at least in (3b–d), the adjective, the presence of a Num is made manifest, even if our hypothesis about the position of APs is inaccurate. The same is true for gender: both D and A in all instances of (3) are marked for gender. If there is no pronominal noun, the phonologically null version(s) of which we will henceforth dub eN, as in (3), then there is nothing for the adjectives and the articles to agree with in gender. German is a language that beautifully exemplifies this: in the examples under (5), adapted from Kester (1996), only modifying adjectives show agreement morphology, not predicative ones. Quite expectedly, the adjective in the equivalents of (3), namely in (5b), patterns with the cases where an adjective modifies a full noun (5a) and not predicative adjectives (5c). (5) a.
Gute Suppe macht glücklich good. soup makes happy ‘Good soup makes you happy’ b. Gute eN macht glücklich good. makes happy ‘A good one makes you happy’ c. Diese Suppe ist gut this. soup is good ‘This soup is good’
.. On the interpretation of noun ellipsis Reverting to the examples in (3) and (5b), we observe that, as far as interpretation is concerned, similar facts to those that hold for (1) are true here as well. Starting from the nominal phrase in (5b), that is gute eN, it can refer to anything good. This brings it very close to the nominal phrase a new one in (1a). Turning to (3), all the nominal phrases can refer to anything feminine in grammatical gender, inanimate, animate or human: stones, whales or women. Given that noun ellipsis is a very productive process, not only in languages like Romance,6 Greek and German but also Slavic (Spencer (2000) for Russian), Germanic and Finno-Ugric languages (Kester 1996, 1996b), it seems very unlikely that it involves nominalisations. Of course, as Spencer (2000) and Giannakidou & Stavrou (1999) show for Russian and Greek respectively, some adjectives are nominalised. We will return to criteria that tell noun ellipsis from nominalisations in the appendix of this chapter. Let us now compare personal pronouns with noun ellipsis in order to sketch in more detail their similarities and differences. Before doing so it is
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
worth pointing out that the same observations hold for those English DPs that include one. This should come as no surprise if personal pronoun DPs, one DPs and noun ellipsis all involve some non-descriptive noun. Much of the discussion below is based on Lobeck (1995) and Kester (1996). First of all, DPs displaying noun ellipsis can have pragmatic antecedents and refer back to antecedents over utterance boundaries, either implicit or not. The same is true of pronouns, of course. (6) a. Speaker A: I wish I had a car of my own b. Speaker B: How are you going to pay for it? c. Speaker A: Well, I guess [my mother’s e] is all right, then
It in (6b) refers back to a discourse antecedent in (6a) and it is ultimately disambiguated pragmatically: it can very well refer to the car itself or even a contextually salient loan Speaker A would have to take in order to buy a car. Identical facts hold for the referent of the DP my mother’s – supposing Speaker A’s mother has already got a loan, and so on. Another characteristic shared by both pronouns and elliptical DPs is their ability to take split antecedents – this eventually being a consequence of the fact that they can take contextually salient antecedents and not only DPs in some previous utterance. (7) a.
Jules: J’ai beaucoup de chapeaux belges. I have many of hats belgian ‘I have got a lot of Belgian hats’ b. Jim: Tous mes chapeaux, je les ai achetés moi-même. All my hats I them have bought myself ‘I have bought all my hats myself ’ c. Tom: Donnez-moi les blancs e. give-me the. white ‘Give me the white ones’ d. Luc: Donnez-les moi! Give-them to.me ‘Give them to me’
In the French dialogue above, the (clitic) pronoun les in (7d) can refer to both the Belgian and Jim’s hats. Similarly, the set of white hats in (7c) is – under the right circumstances – made up from hats from both sets: the Belgian ones and those that Jim bought himself.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
A last point about the similarity between pronouns and elliptical DPs is that they can both have sloppy readings. Consider first the potentially ‘lazy pronoun’ reading in the Greek example (8a) below: (8) a.
O Kostas estile ta vivlia tu stin Kuva the Kostas sent the books his to.the Cuba ala I Aliki ta dhorise stus Kurdhus. but the Alice them donated to.the Kurds ‘Costas sent his books to Cuba but Alice donated them to the Kurds’ b. O Kostas estile ta vivlia tu stin Kuva the Kostas sent the books his to.the Cuba ala i Aliki dhorise ta palia e stus Kurdhus but the Alice donated the old to.the Kurds ‘Costas sent his books to Cuba but Alice donated the old ones to the Kurds’
In (8a), two readings are possible. According to the strict one, Costas sent his books to Cuba and then Alice intervened somehow and subsequently had them donated to the Kurds. The other reading is the ‘sloppy’ one: Costas sent his books to Cuba and Alice donated her own books to the Kurds. Now, the same state of affairs is available for (8b) as well as its English translation (appropriately contextualised, Bob Borsley, p.c.): under a strict reading, Costas sent his books to Cuba and Alice had a subset of old books thereof donated to the Kurds. Under a sloppy reading, Costas sent his books to Cuba and Alice donated her own old books to the Kurds. Having delved into the similarities between pronouns and elliptical DPs, we cannot fail to spot two crucial differences between them: first, pronouns can be bound; elliptical DPs cannot and they behave as R-expressions. Consider: (9) [The men] think that women are staring at [them eN]. (10) [The men] think that women are staring at [John’s eN].
In (9) the men and the pronominal DP them can refer to the same men, something also predicted by Principle B of the binding theory in its classic formulation: the men c-commands them but the pronoun has no antecedent inside its binding domain. In (10), though, the men and elliptical DP John’s cannot refer to the same men, even if this group of men is indeed John’s (imagining that John is a sergeant, a gang leader, or similar). The elliptical
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
consituent John’s eN behaves as an R-expression and does not tolerate any ccommanding antecedent. A second very curious but telling fact, is the following: consider again (6b–c) and (7c–d): whereas the pronoun it in (6b) can refer to the desired new car in (6a), the elliptical DP in (6c) can only refer to another car. Similarly, Tom in (7c) asks for all the hats, both the Belgian ones and Jim’s by using the clitic pronoun les, but Luc in (7d) refers to the subset of white hats – out of Belgian and Jim’s hats combined: it seems that pronouns and noun ellipses have different ‘referential’ properties. Do these facts compromise the validity of our analysis? I believe they do not. A first point is that pronouns, at least in English, are conveniently underspecified and thus can accommodate a DP antecedent, and after LF, antecedent and pronoun can be construed as referring to the same entity. On the other hand, elliptical DPs already contain some sort of concept-denoting modifier, such as an adjective or a referential modifier, such as a possessor DP. Thus, the problem of ‘non co-reference’ is not in principle one of elliptical DPs as a class but, rather, of what the semantic import of adjectives, possessors and determiners inside the elliptical DPs is with respect to binding restrictions. In order to illustrate this point, consider the following two German examples (from Lobeck 1995: 112–113): (11) a.
Hans sagt der Mann war gestern nicht hier, aber den eN Hans said the man was yesterday not here but the. habe ich gestern gesehen. have I yesterday seen ‘Hans said the man was not here yesterday, but I saw him yesterday’ b. Peter und ich haben die Männer gesehen, und ich habe Peter and I have the men seen and I have einen eN sogar fotografiert. a. even photographed ‘Peter and I have seen the men, and I have even photographed one’
Observe the interpretational contrast between the elliptical DP den eN in (11a) and einen eN in (11b). den eN is indistinguishable from a pronoun, at least in terms of interpretation, and it refers back to the very man Hans saw yesterday. On the other hand, the elliptical DP in (11b) has the partitive ‘feel’ of examples like (7c) and (8b). As the example above clearly shows, though, this ‘co-referent versus partitive’ contrast has nothing to do with choice of the pronominal noun (eN) but, rather, with the semantics of the determiners
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
heading the elliptical DPs:7 definite der versus ‘indefinite’ einen. In addition, if, roughly speaking, binding principles8 apply to referential expressions in argument positions only (Cinque 1990; Rizzi 1990; Reinhart & Reuland 1993), it is only natural that constituents below DP, especially nouns, are not visible to binding principles. Nouns, as is known, are not themselves referential (Higginbotham 1985; Chierchia 1996) or, a fortiori, arguments – so binding cannot be relevant in deciding their distribution, anyway.9 Even when the pronominal noun (eN) has some recognisable antecedent in the utterance or discourse, it will be one below the NumP level, a noun. Consider a situation in which (12b = 3a) could be a suitable answer: (12) a.
Tu aimes cette robe -là? you like this. dress there ‘Do you like that dress over there?’ b. J’ aime les grises e N. I love the. grey.. ‘I like the grey ones’
The ‘real’ antecedent of eN in (12b) here is the feminine noun robe in (12a); it is neither the noun plus the singular Num – the number in the DP under (12b) is plural – nor the noun plus the singular Num plus the demonstrative D. Note also that in no reasonable way is the referent of the elliptical DP in (12b) a subset of the individual referent in (12a) – see also endnote 7. I hope that it has been shown that elliptical DPs behave like pronouns, to the point of being indistinguishable from them in instances like (11a) in both form and interpretation. In all cases, both classes of DPs are built ‘around’ a noun that denotes no concept: both kinds of DPs are then semantic variables in the sense of Heim & Kratzer (1998). The referents of these DPs are decided according to the semantic restrictions imposed by features on the heads inside them, like gender, definiteness, number as well as the descriptive features of adjectives or the referents of possessors. Pronouns are easier to make coreferent with other material, compared to most elliptical DPs. This is not because of some inherent ‘pronominal’ property but because of the ‘underspecification’ of the pronouns in European languages and, possibly, parametrisation of binding: according to Lasnik (1991), both (9) and (10) are fine with the two DPs co-referent in Thai.10 As for the ‘underspecification’ factor, the interpretation of most (nonperson) Indo-European pronouns is restricted by only two or three features: definiteness, number, gender… Following the discussion above, one would
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
predict that N-pronouns of languages like Japanese (see previous chapter) that carry many more features (Nolan 2000), including what we dubbed ‘derivational morphology’ features, should be harder to make co-referent with, like elliptical DPs in (6c) and (10). The prediction appears to be borne out (Shiro Ojima, p.c.; Stephen Nolan, p.c.): it is very difficult11 to interpret most Japanese pronouns as bound by nominal phrases. This is probably not because of their being bare NPs (as Noguchi 1997 argues) but rather because of the number of ‘derivational morphology’ features they encode, like honorific, gender and politeness (Nolan 2000). . English: noun ellipsis versus one So far we have brought under a unified analysis noun ellipsis, DPs with one and pronouns. They all involve non-descriptive nouns, what we have also dubbed ‘pronominal nouns’, one or phonologically empty nouns (eN). Intriguingly, we have presented hardly any instances of noun ellipsis with adjectives in English: (2b), (6c) and (10) all involved noun ellipsis with a possessor. We will not have anything more to say about noun ellipsis with a possessor or quantifiers as it is not clear what category the null constituent belongs to in these cases. Before proceeding, though, it must be stated that this exclusion is not on theoretical but, rather, technical grounds; in other words, we will not claim that adjectives play a privileged role in licensing noun ellipsis.12 The reason we chose to focus on noun ellipsis occurring with adjectives here has just been implied: if APs are specifiers of a NumP, then the elided material inside the DP apparently involves the limited ‘space’ of Num and NP, thus constraining possible hypotheses and rendering them more readily testable. As Lobeck (1991, 1995) and Kester (1996) point out, noun ellipsis with adjectives is very restricted in English and elliptical DPs with adjectives have only a very narrow choice of interpretive options, unlike what we saw with respect to Romance languages (3) and German (5b). Why should this be so? Consider first the instances in which elliptical DPs with adjectives are possible in English in the following section. .. Instances of noun ellipsis with adjectives in English We can distinguish three kinds of noun ellipsis with adjectives in English’: ‘human’, ‘mass’ and ‘superlative’.13 There also seems to exist an ‘abstract’ sort (e.g. the land owners were afraid of the new, tales of the unexpected), where the DP stands for the abstract notion the adjective expresses, but elliptical DPs
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
with abstract interpretation are not very productive in English, unlike the situation in Dutch and German (Kester 1996: 227–257). In other languages, like Greek, they seem to be the result of nominalisations (Giannakidou & Stavrou 1999) – which certainly seems to be the case for English, as well (Quirk & Greenbaum 1982: 242). ... ‘Human’ noun ellipsis. In these constructions, the elliptical DP can only be interpreted as plural generic with human referents. Examples of ‘human’ noun ellipsis are the given in (13a): (13) a.
the (very) poor eN the (almost) undecided eN the (rarely) parsimonious eN b. * the poors * the undecideds * the parsimoniouses c. * a poor * an undecided * a parsimonious d. a poor one/poor ones an undecided one/undecided ones
All instances of (13a) are interpreted as referring to a non-specific group of rich, undecided and parsimonious people respectively. They cannot be nominalisations, like, say, the Reds, because they are unable to carry plural morphology (13b), a sure sign of them not being nouns. Moreover, they can be modified by grade and other adverbs (13a), this being a property of adjectives. Moreover, they cannot appear in the singular (13c), something that has led Lobeck (1991) and Kester (1996), respectively, to assume that the null noun is either licensed by a [+plural] D or inherently specified for the features [+human][+generic][+plural] (cf. Rizzi 1986). We will see that this is not necessary. Note that when one(s) is used instead of eN (13d), then the referent(s) of the respective DPs have no interpretive restrictions: they can be animate, inanimate, generic, specific or definite – pace pragmatic factors and the choice of determiners, adjectives and so on: (13d) appears to be the ‘real’ parallel of noun ellipsis in other languages.
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
... ‘Mass’ noun ellipsis. Another environment where noun ellipsis with adjectives is possible in English is when the DP refers to an uncountable or mass entity. Consider the following examples (adapted from Kester 1996: 268): (14) a. Which mustard do you prefer, [English eN] or [French eN]? b. This recipe requires plain flour, not [self raising eN]. c. You should never mix old wine with [new eN].
In all examples under (14), the bracketed elliptical DPs refer to mass entities. No singular or plural readings are possible as the entities referred to are uncountable and, crucially, none of these examples involves any overt material with partitive interpretation. This last point is important in the light of Sleeman’s (1993) analysis of ellipsis (see also endnote 7), according to which eN must be licensed by a quantificational or partitive specifier, either AP or QP. It is not the case that any of the adjectives in (14) has non-trivial quantifying properties. At the same time, a partitive quantifier like some is of course compatible with eN as the ‘mass’ reading of the grammatical DP in (15) demonstrates: (15) This cake looks delicious, can I have [some eN]?
Notice that if one is substituted for eN, the examples under both (14) or (15) become ungrammatical under the intended readings. This is a well-known fact, cf. Radford’s (1993: 102) characterisation of one as a ‘pronominal count noun’.14 ... ‘Superlative’ noun ellipsis. Building on Kester (1996: Ch.5), let us now review instances of noun ellipsis in English that co-occur with superlative adjectives. Note also the fact that – in these cases only – eN and one are both possible. (16) a. Joe’s staging of the ‘Tempest’ is [the most interesting eN/one]. b. Which shoes did you buy? [The most expensive eN/ones]. c. As for amplifiers, these are [the loudest eN/ones].
This apparent optionality sets ‘superlative’ noun ellipsis apart from ‘human’ and ‘mass’ noun ellipsis. Apparently, the D and Num shells in ‘superlative’ noun ellipsis behave in a manner parallel to that of demonstrative Ds: besides descriptive complements, they can also take either a null complement or one(s). Related to this, notice also that demonstratives are the only English Ds
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
that agree in number with Num. This observation will provide the entry point for our investigation of why noun ellipsis is so restricted in English. .. An account As stated already, noun ellipsis with adjectives involves material in the NP projection as well as the Num head itself, under the working hypothesis that modifying APs are situated at SpecNumP. The relevance of number features should not be underestimated, as far as which interpretations for noun ellipsis with adjectives are available in English. So, the ‘human’ construction in English involves an overt definite determiner and plural number (not marked on the adjective, of course); the ‘mass’ construction involves no overt determiner and – trivially – no possibility of plural number (plural is incompatible with a ‘mass’ reading). The ‘superlative’ construction involves either a singular or plural interpretation and a definite D. (17) ‘Human’ noun ellipsis ‘Mass’ noun ellipsis ‘Superlative’ noun ellipsis
Det the ? yes no yes
Number plural neither either
one possible? no no yes
Kester (1996) argues that ‘human’ noun ellipsis involves a null noun marked with the default [+human][+generic][+plural] features (p. 229), whereas the ‘mass’ construction a null noun with a default [+mass] feature (p. 279–280). At the same time, the empty noun in the superlative construction is licensed by adjectival inflection, according to her analysis. We consequently have a proliferation of features on empty nouns here, which apparently means that the empty noun in the human construction is a different lexical entry than that in the mass construction. Of course, there is nothing wrong in principle with different lexical entries for null nouns; in fact we are going to discuss the constraints that govern their number and distribution in the next chapter. Given the analysis throughout this study, many lexical entries for phonologically null non-descriptive nouns is a fact of life, also forced on us by the discussion in the previous chapter: a masculine null noun is involved in he/him and a feminine one in she/her; the one in it and they/them does not have a gender specification. What seems wrong in positing such inherent features for the empty noun in cases of noun ellipsis constructions in English is, first of all, that we can
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
possibly do without them. Moreover, a [±mass] feature is about individuation (Harley & Ritter 1997, 2000) and cannot be feasibly assumed to form part of the lexical entry of N, if Num exists. Finally, where else is a formal [±human] feature operative in English grammar? Isn’t stipulating it an ad hoc solution here? Let us persist in our hypothesis that features have fixed loci and see if we can account for the facts. Essentially following Delfitto & Schroten (1991) and Cheng & Sybesma (1999), let us assume [mass] to be a specification on Num, not just a special interpretation of singular number with certain nouns. Less widely spoken Romance languages provide plenty of evidence for this: in Servigliano, the (count) singular for ‘fish’ is lu peššu, the mass is lo peššo – notice also the agreement on D for number; similarly, in Asturian we have pelo for ‘hair’ versus pilu for ‘a hair’. In these and other cases, the ‘mass’ morphology is of a default nature (Delfitto & Schroten 1991: 181–183). Given this and embracing Delfitto & Schroten’s assertion that the mass-singular distinction is not a peripheral one, we can perhaps assume an un(der)specified Num to receive a ‘mass’ interpretation. Building on Longobardi (1994), let us now adumbrate the interaction between Num, on the one hand, and Ds the and Ø on the other in English.15 (18) the + NumSing Þ definite ‘The lion sleeps tonight’ II. the + NumPlur Þ definite set ‘The lions in this park are very friendly’ III. the + Numzero Þ * I.
IV. Ø + NumSing Þ * V. Ø + NumPlur Þ generic ‘Lions are man’s best friends’ VI. Ø + Numzero Þ mass ‘Eating lion makes you a carnivore’
Let us now take the state of affairs in (18) and substitute English nondescriptive nouns (one and eN) for concept-denoting lion. Boxes of the same shade receive the same interpretation after LF. Crossed-out cases are not acceptable.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
(19) I: the+NumSING+ N II: the+NumPLU+ N V: ØD+NumPLU+ N VI: ØD+NumMASS+ N
eN it
one the one
AP + eN the dead
AP + one the dead one
they * *
the ones ones→ people *
the dead dead dead
the dead ones dead ones *
Let us now cautiously explicate (19). The first column gives the licit combinations of D and Num with eN in the complement of Num.16 One behaves like lion in (18) – except for the fact that it cannot be selected by a ‘mass’ Num. Similar facts hold for the DPs made up of an AP and one. A plural generic type *ones is idiosyncratically out, probably suppleted by people as in people say that you’re no good for me – the quintessentially human generic DP. Up to this point, the armamentarium of English non-descriptive nouns can be used in ‘elliptical’ DPs in order for them to refer to definite individuals and definite sets of individuals, in the form of the (AP) one and the (AP) ones respectively. People offers a ‘pronominal’ substitute for bare plurals with human referents – whatever their actual interpretive role. People, apparently lexically specified as human, sets a ‘bad’ precedent for what follows. Here we must note a problem with Num + eN DPs. More specifically, the problem seems to be with Num here: whether un(der)specified (‘mass’) or plural, this distinction and Num itself are invisible at PF. Furthermore, notice that the whole Num projection is radically invisible, as there is no material in SpecNumP either. Moving to combinations of an AP with eN, we notice a similar problem: although now the AP, as a specifier of NumP, makes NumP as a projection visible, morphology gives us no clue regarding the actual feature specification of the Num head. Assume now that in English Num must be spelled out (Doetjes 1996; Cheng & Sybesma 1999: 517 – cf. also Kayne 1995: 162). Whatever the source of such a requirement, it plausibly entails that an elliptical DP dead eN will end up with a ‘mass’ reading – exactly the un(der)specified value for Num. This in turn excludes the usage of the phonologically identical dead eN (with a plural value for Num) as a generic. The burden of an APmodifiable equivalent for people falls on the AP eN, where Num is made visible by the AP and an un(der)specified (‘mass’) value for Num is blocked by the (for discussion: Longobardi 1994; Kester 1996: 274–283; Giannakidou & Stavrou 1999: 315–319). The result is illustrated in the table under (19): the combinations in the shaded area have all a generic interpretation.
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
We thus derive the fact that the AP eN has a human, plural generic meaning, the ‘human’ construction, as well as the ‘mass’ construction. Of course, even the less than careful reader will rightfully react against such proposals: this is not how the grammar of human language works, by elimination. That is certainly true. What has been described as the ‘explication’ of (19) is in fact a rough depiction of a conspiracy between morphology and pragmatics. This is to say that, in principle, English grammars can generate the full set in (19), including ones and the dead with a singular Num. It is the responsibility of pragmatics that such and such construction is assigned such and such an interpretation, or blocked altogether under a particular interpretation. What I claim is that there is nothing in the grammar of English to exclude a DP of the form AP eN with a singular Num or a singular definite version of the AP eN. In fact, such and other readings are possible and may emerge if properly contextualised. In other words, the interpretation of the AP eN as ‘human’ and AP eN as ‘mass’ are cancellable: (20) a. I like the blue eN/one, do you like the red eN/one? b. Speaking of ties, I would rather put the striped eN/one on instead of that. c. We first put in the liquid ingredients and then the dry eN/ones.
If the one/eN alteration in environments of noun ellipsis with adjectives was regulated by grammar, all instances of (20) with eN should be impossible but, eventually, they can behave like ‘proper’ noun ellipsis as discussed in Section 2.1.2. Of course, this is half the truth. We discussed a ‘conspiracy between morphology and pragmatics’ above. The part played by morphology is, again, laid out in (19): the lack of adjectival morphology makes Num specifications invisible. This in turn causes the ‘congestion’ under the ‘AP + eN’ column that calls for pragmatic resolution. Turning to the superlative morphology on an adjective, we see that it not only enables a the AP eN DP to signify either a definite individual or a definite set – according to its number specification – but also permits an alteration between eN and one – a bit like (20). The reason behind this seems to be that the superlative inflection (most/-est) spells out individuation features of Num, thus an un(der)specified ‘mass’ interpretation is avoided. To summarise so far, non-descriptive nouns are behind all the instances of noun ellipsis reviewed. Focusing on noun ellipsis with adjectives crosslinguistically, this conclusion offers us the means to unify the interpretive import of noun ellipsis with that of pronouns: noun ellipsis behaves like a very
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
restricted pronominal at LF. The interaction between non-descriptive nouns and Num specifications offers the full range of the more ‘special’ interpretations noun ellipsis can acquire. But it is time to review other instances where null nouns play a central role.
. Pronominal clitics and null nouns In a lot of languages that possess both, there exist striking similarities between the morphological paradigms of pronominal clitics and determiners, definite articles in particular (Uriagereka 1995; Corver & Delfitto 1999; Cardinaletti & Starke 1999). Furthermore, there are cases of languages like German, Dutch, Romance and Greek where the two paradigms extensively overlap. Although we should always be cautious about surface similarities when trying to understand the underlying workings of grammar, a plausible hypothesis in this particular case could be that the similarity between determiners and pronominal clitics is not accidental. In practice, the hypothesis that pronominal clitics are D heads17 is widely accepted: cf. Cardinaletti (1994), Uriagereka (1995), Chomsky (1995: 337), Corver & Delfitto (1999). Here we will assume without discussion a movement analysis for pronominal clitics, where the clitic is generated as a D head within a DP. This DP is merged where ordinary referential and pronominal DPs are merged and subsequently moves to an intermediate specifier, say SpecAgrOP18 (Shlonsky 1997: 178–179; Laenzlinger & Shlonsky 1997: 160; Cardinaletti & Starke 1999: 196). From there, the D head moves and attaches itself to the closest c-commanding head (Shlonsky 1997: 178) somewhere within the Infl functional complex (Kayne 1989, 1991, 1994), perhaps T sometimes (Terzi 1999). This ‘two-step movement’ (Corver & Delfitto 1999: 805–808) of the clitic, first as an XP and then as X0, appears to be a sort of necessary evil, as will be discussed in detail in Section 3.2. For the time being, and for the sake of completeness, notice that if only the first step applies (XP movement), the pronominal DP surfaces as a weak pronoun in the sense of Cardinaletti & Starke (1999); see also Laenzlinger & Shlonsky (1997), Shlonsky (1997) and Corver & Delfitto (1999). An intriguing point in the account for clitic movement sketched above is the following: pronominal clitics are assumed to be intransitive determiners (Cardinaletti 1994), even more so than ‘strong’ pronouns. Below is how this idea is spelled out by Chomsky (1995: 337):
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
Clitics […] are bare Ds without complements […] We therefore expect to find two kinds of pronominal (similarly, demonstrative) elements, simple ones that are morphologically marked as affixes and must cliticize, and complex ones with internal structure, which do not cliticize: in French, for example, the determiner D (le, la, etc.) and the complex element lui-même ‘himself ’.
Now, Sportiche (1996), although assuming a substantially different analysis for pronominal clitics, affirms that it is not pronominal clitics (i.e. the D heads in the analysis we follow here) that function pronominally but rather the ‘pronominal empty category’ they are associated with. This will be shown to be in concord with what we have been asserting in this study regarding the nature of pronominality – pronominal clitics should be no different. Moreover, Uriagereka (1995) and Corver & Delfitto (1999) argue for an ‘NPpro’ to complement clitic D at the base position. Within an account for cliticisation that involves movement, the question that emerges now is which analysis we are to prefer: Chomsky’s intransitive D analysis (‘D = DP’), as summarised above, or one according to which clitics originate as DPs with a complement that includes a null noun? In the following two sections we will attempt to demonstrate the superiority of an account without intransitive determiners on grounds of simplicity, consistency and learnability. . Features of clitics A first argument against pronominal clitics as intransitive determiners is essentially a reapplication of our arguments against strong pronouns as intransitive determiners: in most languages that possess them, pronominal clitics are marked for features like number and gender which, if we are correct, cannot be encoded on just any head inside DP and, certainly, not both of them can be encoded on D.19 Recall that we posit formal features, their interpretable versions in particular, to be encoded on fixed heads; person ([ASE] and [PSE]) on D, number on Num and gender on N. Uninterpretable versions of these or other features can appear on other heads of course, inducing agreement; for example, an uninterpretable [plu] feature on the D they/them is hypothesised, responsible for the fact that this particular form agrees in number with its embedded Num, contrary to the.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
If we take clitics to be displaced pronominal forms – and not some kind of agreement morphology (cf. Jaeggli 1981; Borer & Grodzinsky 1986; Sportiche 1996; Manzini & Savoia 1999) – the fact that they host all the aforementioned features must be explained. If they start off as DPs, we have a way to capture this. Let us consider Spanish pronominal clitics la and las. Their forms are identical to that of the corresponding definite articles and their semantic contribution is quite similar: pronominal clitics encode definiteness, a [Def] feature perhaps, or specificity (Anagnostopoulou 1994; Uriagereka 1995; Sportiche 1996). This should be enough evidence for the presence of a D head or even that the clitic form itself is a D. Moreover, both la and las encode both feminine gender and number: la is the singular and las the plural form. In other words, clitics start as DPs specified for number and – where applicable – gender. If our approach is correct, it must be then that this DP contains, apart from the clitic D head, a NumP, on the head of which number is encoded, as well as a noun. Thus, the resulting DP must look something like (21) after it is merged. DP
(21) D
NumP
la [Def] [*Fem] [*Sing]
Num
NP
[Sing] [Fem]
Of course, the feature specifications in the phrase marker above cannot be the whole story, as there exists a strong pronoun variant in Spanish, namely ella. According to our account here, ella would have exactly the same structure with la and the two forms would only be differentiated in the choice of determiner (that is la versus ella). Apparently the two Ds, la and ella, are distinguished by some other feature, not indicated in (21). Let us now consider learnability. If ella is a fully fledged pronoun with a structure like (21)20 and la is an intransitive determiner, then the learner of Spanish must learn the following:
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
a. la and ella have identical φ feature specifications b. la, homophonous to a definite feminine singular article, can have all its φ features encoded on D,21 whereas ella has a fully-fledged structure with each of the φ features in their ‘proper’ place: number on Num and gender on N c. la has on D a feature ella does not: la moves, ella stays in situ d. this is either a feature F or ‘strength’ of F On the other hand, if la and ella have both internal structure, as we wish to claim here, then the following have to be learned: a. la and ella have identical φ feature specifications b. la has on D a feature that ella does not:22 la moves, ella stays in situ c. this is either a feature F or ‘strength’ of F Let’s see whether this more restrictive view makes any difference regarding the two-step analysis of clitic movement. . The ‘two-step’ movement of clitics Clitic movement creates a problem that the two-step approach is an attempt to solve: the following quote from Chomsky (1995: 249) states the problem. Under the DP hypothesis, clitics are Ds. Assume further that a clitic raises from its θ-position and attaches to an inflectional head. In its θ-position, the clitic is an XP; attachment to a head requires that it be an X0 (on fairly standard assumptions). Furthermore, the movement violates the Head Movement Constraint (HMC), indicating again that it is an XP, raising by XPadjunction until the final step of X0 adjunction. Clitics appear to share XP and X0 properties, as we would expect on minimalist assumptions.
Chomsky’s answer to the observation that ‘clitics appear to share XP and X0 properties’ is radical, as expected: “an item can be both an X0 and an XP” (ibid.), a natural consequence of his Bare Phrase Structure, the X0-XP distinction is ultimately irrelevant for Syntax. Backtracking a bit, let us ponder on whether a head versus phrase distinction is stateable, or desirable, even in a minimalist23 model. The truth is that only clitics seem to allegedly share XP and X0 properties. Under standard analyses, everything else in grammar – including constraints on movement – seems to capitalise on the X0-XP distinction.24 If the X0–XP distinction is indeed irrelevant for Syntax, then heads blocked under HMC effects would
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
move first as XPs, bypassing any intervening heads, to head-move only during a second step. This is not what happens. I therefore propose that we both have to and can restate the X0 versus XP distinction. A way to do so is as follows: (22) Heads (X0) are listed in the lexicon and enter the Numeration, phrases (XP) are syntactic objects constructed from other syntactic objects, whether heads or phrases.25
Of course, no constraint prevents a head from behaving as a phrase, i.e. there is no principle stating that a phrase must be made up of at least two syntactic objects (see also Section 2.2.1 of the Introduction). Let us then suppose for a minute that clitics are of the D = DP form. Given that this head, say la, carries all the features (φ and other) of its single-membered DP, what is the empirical point in assuming that it moves in two steps, first as an XP and then as an X0? If a clitic is a DP consisting of a single D, it moves to SpecAgrOP and then the D of this DP moves to the closest c-commanding inflectional head. This is paradoxical, as nothing distinguishes the first step from the second: in both instances, it was the same D that moved anyway! In other words, in both the XP and the X0 step of clitic movement, it was exactly the same interpretable features that were copied, those of the D. Wasn’t then the first, allegedly XP, step a theory-internal gimmick to render it both long-distance and with an X0 position as a landing site? It would appear to be so. Let’s then posit a different state of affairs: the clitic is merged in a fullyfledged DP, complete with full Num and NP constituents, albeit phonologically empty ones, as under (21). First, the whole DP moves to SpecAgrOP. Apparently, it is the D that is responsible for this operation (see Section 3.1 and endnote 22) but the NumP, carrying interpretable number and gender features (inside an elementary noun), is pied-piped as well. Thus, already before Spell Out, copies of the interpretable number and gender features inside the DP that contains the clitic are situated at SpecAgrOP.26 Subsequently, the D head moves further up to the closest c-commanding head, apparently one inside the inflectional complex (let’s unimaginatively call this head F), but the number and gender features remain at SpecAgrOP. See below for the resulting phrase marker, where only the relevant features and projections are indicated:
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
(23) FP
AgrOP
F
D
DP
F
V
F
D
NumP
AgrO
VP
[number] [gender]
Assumptions about antisymmetry (Kayne 1994: 38, 50–52) regarding left adjunction of heads under head movement have been adhered to. Verb movement has been sketchily represented as a V to AgrO to F head movement, abstracting away from individual languages. . Empty nouns and the XP step of clitic movement So far it has been shown that if clitics have a phonologically null NumP constituent, it is exactly this constituent that remains stranded at the landing site of the XP step of their movement, along with a silent copy of the clitic D head itself, of course. Number and gender features are not carried all the way up to F0, where the clitic D head ends up adjoined to. This is important for a subtle but very important reason, namely the duality of the function clitics seem to perform. Clitics function as pronominal arguments;27 they are also specified for φ features. Thus, they play an aspectual (related with ‘referentiality’ and Case) role as well as that of nominal inflection at the same time (Manzini & Savoia 1999; cf. also Borer 1994). Suppose once more that clitics are unitary (D = DP) entities, encoding both the referential/aspectual function – normally associated with D (Stowell 1991; Longobardi 1994) – and the ‘agreement’ function on the same XP/X0. The result is that when the clitic merges (either after movement or not) with F, the by hypothesis ultimate landing site
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
of its movement, it carries with it ‘junk’ as well: the φ features that are irrelevant to the supposedly specificity-related/aspectual function the clitic has to play in F (Michael Brody, p.c.): the φ features have no specificity-related/aspectual role to play and should have been ‘left behind’, at AgrOP, as is the case with full pronominal and other object arguments. Hence, if the φ features of the clitic are in fact encoded within the NumP, then we have a way to capture the dual function of clitics, as illustrated in (23): the non-trivial DP, is made up of a D and its NumP complement. The fact that D agrees with features inside the NumP (number and gender) is a result of its being a D, like articles agree. This D also encodes a feature that triggers movement. It is pied piped with the NumP to SpecAgrOP, where the φ features inside the phrase check uninterpretable ones of AgrO, and then the D head moves alone to F for ‘specificity’. No interpretable φ features reach F before or at LF. There is also another point that makes a case for an XP step of clitic movement to SpecAgrOP. Notice that clitic movement seems to depend on the possibility of verb movement (Kayne 1989, 1991; Uriagereka 1995). If clitic movement were a long-distance head movement or a hybrid XP/X0 movement directly to F, this co-occurrence would not be possible to capture easily. Towards this, notice that some Germanic languages appear to have verb movement but not clitics (Holmberg & Platzack 1996; Sportiche 1996; Cardinaletti & Starke 1999). What they do sometimes have is weak pronouns or object shift of pronominals (Holmberg 1986; Sportiche 1996; Laenzlinger & Shlonsky 1997; Corver & Delfitto 1999; Cardinaletti & Starke 1999). The situation is summarised below: (24) V- movement No V-movement
Weak pronouns possible? Yes No
Clitics possible? Yes No
Verb movement is a necessary condition for either type of ‘mobile’ pronominals. If movement of both weak pronouns (which are XPs) and of pronominal clitics involve an XP step, this can make sense. As far as object pronominals (weak or clitic) are concerned,28 a version of ‘Holmberg’s Generalisation’ seems to hold: no object DP can leave the VP if the V has not moved out of it (Kayne 1989: 240; Chomsky 1993: 18). This generalisation in turn boils down to notions of ‘extended domains’: if (weak/clitic) object pronominal DP
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
movement is to SpecAgrOP, then V must have adjoined to AgrO first, in order to render SpecvP and SpecVP equidistant from the landing site of SpecAgrOP (see Chomsky 1995 for further discussion). Thus, in order for DPs to move out of VP, V must have left the VP first. If this DP is pronominal and stays in its landing site until Spell Out, it surfaces as a ‘weak pronoun’. If its D is further extracted and head-moved higher, this D head surfaces as a ‘pronominal clitic’. In both cases, V movement is a prerequisite. The picture that finally emerges is the following: number is always located on Num and gender on nouns. Suppose a null noun in a NumP is ‘selected’ by a ‘clitic’ D head: the whole DP is pied piped by the D and leaves the base position for SpecAgrOP – or the equivalent thereof – before Spell Out, as the ‘clitic’ D head attempts to be positioned right below the attracting F head. The clitic D cannot move as a head from the position it is merged as it is going to be blocked by one of the heads intervening between it and F, by some version of the Head Movement Constraint. This XP movement to SpecAgrOP will also be blocked if the verb has not moved out of the VP and through AgrO. The DP checks uninterpretable φ features at SpecAgrOP. From there, the D head leaves the NumP behind and eventually adjoins to F alone, probably for reasons related to aspect or specificity. If the D does not leave SpecAgrOP before LF, then we deal with what we call ‘weak pronouns’ (Laenzlinger & Shlonsky 1997: 158–162). Although a host of issues remains far from resolved, I hope to have outlined the fact that the hypothesis of a pronominal noun (inside a NumP) substantiates the assumption that clitics move in two steps, XP and X0, as in each step different features are involved. As a result, we can maintain a distinction between heads and phrases, given that pronominal clitics are the only elements in grammar to have needed a dual XP/X0 nature postulated regarding their phrasal status.
. Radical ellipsis: Empty arguments We have so far seen phonologically empty non-descriptive nouns (eN) inside NumPs that formed complements to overt (clitic) determiners and/or had an AP at SpecNumP. Is it the case that NumPs featuring an instance of eN can be complements of phonologically empty determiners? In principle, it should not be impossible. Moreover, such a possibility seems to be instantiated in languages like Modern Greek.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Indefinite Argument Drop involves an empty noun Giannakidou & Merchant (1996) discuss an additional type of empty pronominal which only appears in indefinite direct and indirect object positions in Modern Greek. They dub the whole phenomenon Indefinite Argument Drop. Consider the following sentence (adapted from Giannakidou & Merchant): (25) I Nena puluse [ftina isitiria]i ki o Aris aghoraze ei/j the Nena was.selling cheap tickets and the Aris was.buying ‘Nena was selling cheap tickets and Aris was buying some’
The empty object e above can either refer to cheap tickets – but not those that Nena was selling – or just tickets in general. The situation is similar to that of noun ellipsis with an adjective as discussed in Section 2.1.2. Compare (25) with (7a–c), repeated below for convenience: (7) a.
Jules: J’ai beaucoup des chapeaux belges. I have many of hats belgian ‘I have got a lot of Belgian hats’ b. Jim: Tous mes chapeaux, je les ai achetés moi-même. All my. hats I them have bought myself ‘I have bought all my hats myself ’ c. Tom: Donnez-moi les blancs e. give-me the. white ‘Give me the white ones’
In both (25) and (7a–c), the empty (elided) constituent is non-referential and, consequently, cannot be co-referent with the DP that contains its ‘antecedent’: ftina isitiria in (25), des chapeaux belges and tous mes chapeaux in (7). So, eN in (7c) is about hats, neither Belgian hats nor Jim’s hats. Similarly, e in (25) is about ‘(cheap) tickets’ but not the tickets Nena was selling. Like in ellipsis, Indefinite Argument Drop ‘antecedents’ are below the level of DP.29 Before proceeding, it is essential to make clear that these empty arguments cannot be construed as instances of VP ellipsis, object pro (Y. Huang 1995) and arbitrary pro (Rizzi 1986)30 or as variables bound by a null topic (Huang 1984; Raposo 1986; Campos 1986). Giannakidou & Merchant (1996) argue against all the above possibilities and we will largely follow their arguments here.
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
.. Not VP ellipsis Let’s start from the possibility of Indefinite Argument Drop being an instance of VP-ellipsis: suppose that in V-raising languages like Modern Greek, V can be stranded in Infl, while the VP containing the trace of V, erases (McCloskey 1991). Such an analysis would make sense in an ellipsis-as-PF-deletion framework (cf. Chomsky 1995). Example (25) and its interpretation provide us with two arguments against such an analysis: first, if (25) involves an instance of VP ellipsis it is a very strange kind of VP ellipsis as the verbs ‘stranded’ at the respective Infl nodes are not identical, poulouse (‘was selling’) and aghoraze (‘was buying’). Second, a reading with e as definite is impossible if the ‘antecedent’ is definite, as is the case under (26a), and a clitic must be used instead. Of course, exclusion of definite arguments inside an elided constituent is not something that should normally happen in the context of VP ellipsis; hence, in (26b), an interpretation where Aris should buy all the cheap tickets is possible. (26) a. * I Nena puluse [ola ta ftina isitiria] ki o Aris aghoraze e ‘Nena was selling all the cheap tickets and Aris was buying’ b. Nena was selling all the cheap tickets and Aris should e, too.
.. Not pro As far as pro is concerned, given that, at least in subject position, pro (in Modern Greek and everywhere else) is definite, then the obligatorily indefinite reading of e in (25) would be untenable. Now, as far as Rizzi’s (1986) arbitrary pro is concerned, its interpretation is argued to be driven at least by the features [+human, +generic] (Rizzi 1986: 509–512). Tickets in (25) hardly qualify as either. Moreover, arbitrary pro does not seem to be a possibility in Modern Greek, unlike Italian (example from Giannakidou & Merchant 1996): (27) a.
Questo esercizio mantiene proarb sani this exercise keeps healthy. b. * Afti i askisi kratai proarb iyii(s) this the exercise keeps healthy(.) ‘This exercise keeps one healthy’
.. Not variables bound by null topics Finally, Indefinite Argument Drop cannot be captured in terms of its involving a variable bound by a null topic. To start with, null definite topics cannot bind a variable in Modern Greek, unlike the situation in Chinese (Huang
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
1984), Portuguese (Raposo 1986) and other languages. Nevertheless, Spanish, as discussed in Campos (1986), permits only null indefinite topics to bind variables in object position.31 Could it be that Indefinite Argument Drop in Modern Greek is also an instance of a null indefinite topic binding a variable, like in Spanish? Dimitriadis (1994a) has shown that this is not the case and that indefinite null arguments in MG all fail the standard tests for variables discussed by Raposo (1986). So, variables cannot be licensed by topics inside Complex NP islands (p. 381), sentential subjects, adjuncts, wh-islands (p. 382). Moreover variables bound by a null topic can license parasitic gaps (p. 383). The mirror image of this situation holds for Greek Indefinite Argument Drop: it can be ‘licensed’ in all the above environments and does not license parasitic gaps:32 (28) a.
Complex NP islands Port.: * Eu informei a policia da possibilidade de I informed the police of.the possibility that o Manel ter t no cofre the Manel has in.the safe ‘I informed the police of the possibility that M. has it/them/one/some in the safe’ MG: Ipa sti Nena ya to endhehomeno na I. said to.the Nena about the possibility NA ferun i ali e bring.3rd the others ‘I told Nena about the possibility of the others bringing one/some’ b. Sentential Subjects Port: * Que a IBM venda t a particulares supreende-me that the IBM sells to individuals surprises.me ‘That IBM sells it/them/one/some to individuals surprises me’ MG: To oti tha ferun i ali e me ekplisi the that will bring.3rd the others me surprises ‘That the others will bring one/some surprises me’ c. Adjuncts Port: * o pirata partiu depois de ter guardado t no cofre the pirate left after that have kept in.the safe ‘The pirate left after he kept it/them/one/some in the safe’
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
MG:
Dhen pigha sta maghazia yati ihes not went.1st to.the shops because had.2nd filaxi e esi kept you ‘I didn’t go to the shops because you had kept one/some’ d. Wh islands Port: * eu sei [em que cofre]i Manel guardou tj ti I know in which safe Manel keeps ‘I know in which safe Manel keeps it/them/one/some’ MG: ksero [se pion]i pliroses e ti know.1st to whom paid.2nd ‘I know to whom you paid one/some’ e. Parasitic gaps Port: vi t na TV sem reconhecer eparasitic saw.1st in.the TV without recognise ‘I saw it/them/one/some on TV without recognising it/them’ MG: *idha e stin tileorasi horis na anaghnoriso eparasitic saw.1st in.the TV without NA recognise ‘I saw one/some on TV without recognising it/them’
.. Radical ellipsis Given the affinity of the phenomenon of Indefinite Argument Drop with noun ellipsis, one is tempted to attribute to e in the examples above a similar structure to that of noun ellipsis. In fact, this is exactly what Giannakidou & Merchant claim, as they decompose null indefinite arguments in Modern Greek into the following structure: (29) [DP Ø [NP e]]
We have established the existence of null nouns (dubbed eN) throughout this chapter, mainly drawing from instances of noun ellipsis with adjectives. We have also seen that the form and presence of the determiner in elliptical DPs are those required for LF reasons in ordinary DPs, as well: there don’t seem to exist any special requirements for determiners when a eN instead of an ordinary noun is inside the DP – with the sole exception of elliptical DPs, like the dead eN, which is interpreted as human generic despite being headed by the definite article the and which we looked into in some detail in Section 2.2.2. The German example (5), repeated below for convenience, clearly makes this point:
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
(5) a.
Gute Suppe macht glücklich good. soup makes happy ‘Good soup makes you happy’ b. Gute eN macht glücklich good. makes happy ‘A good one makes you happy’
Ordinary ‘mass’ DPs, like (5a), take a null D in German, as in English. Accordingly, a ‘mass’ DP with an eN also takes a null D, as illustrated under (5b). Exactly the same state of affairs holds for English, as we saw in Section 2.2.1. Now, given that indefinite arguments in both singular and plural are headed by a null D in Modern Greek, the fact that a phonologically null indefinite argument should also be headed by a null D, as illustrated in (29), follows naturally. . Indefinite Argument Drop and pronominal clitics If the analysis, as epitomised in (29), that Giannakidou & Merchant give for null indefinite arguments in Modern Greek is the correct one, then two very interesting consequences follow. First, as Giannakidou & Merchant (1996) have observed themselves, Indefinite Argument Drop and noun ellipsis are unified: in fact, Indefinite Argument Drop can be claimed to constitute a case of ‘minimal’ noun ellipsis that involves neither adjectives or possessors, nor even overt Ds. The theoretical repercussions of the existence of such a radical kind of ellipsis are going to be explored in the next chapter. A second consequence of accepting (29) as the structure for Indefinite Argument Drop is regarding its relationship with the structure of the clitic DP, as merged in its argument position. Compare (30a), the notational variant of the structure we gave for clitic DPs in (21), with (30b), the fully fledged structure of a null indefinite DP: (30) a. Clitic DP: b. Null indefinite DP:
[DP Dclitic [NumP Num [NP eN]]] [DP Dindef [NumP Num [NP eN]]]
Comparing (30a) with (30b), we realise that the two structures are identical save for a single feature [Def] on the determiner.33 The fact that the pronominal clitic agrees with Num and [Gender] of eN is a result of it being overt, contrary to the phonologically null indefinite D. Can the parallelism depicted in (30) be supported by a parallel syntactic behaviour of pronominal clitics and null indefinite arguments? I believe the answer is positive and the rest of this section will be devoted to demonstrate this.
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
.. The complementary distribution of clitics and null indefinite arguments Dimitriadis (1994a, 1994b) has, to the best of my knowledge, first observed that pronominal clitics and null indefinite arguments behave in an identical fashion in various environments. Before moving into this, though, observe the fact that pronominal clitics and null indefinite arguments appear in complementary distribution. For the sake of concreteness, consider the grammatical answers to the questions “did you get the coat?” in (31a) versus those of “did you get a coat” in Modern Greek under (32a). In the first case, the object is definite, in the second indefinite. (31)34 a.
Pires to palto? Took.2nd the coat b. to pira took.1st # c. pira took.1st
(32) a.
Pires palto? Took.2nd coat b. # to pira took.1st c. pira took.1st
The generalisation emerging from (31) and (32) is that pronominal clitics substitute for definite DPs and null indefinite arguments for indefinite ones.35 Hence, descriptive nouns in DPs (like palto in [DP to palto] and [DP Ø palto] above), have the same behaviour with eN in Modern Greek: if they appear in a definite DP, then they will be headed by an ordinary overt definite D; if they appear in an indefinite DP, then they will be headed by an ordinary null indefinite D. Moreover, one would be tempted to point out that Indefinite Argument Drop and clitic constructions seem to be exactly the same phenomenon in languages that possess them both, like Brazilian Portuguese, Quiteño Spanish, Modern Greek and Bulgarian.36 Dimitriadis (1994a, 1994b) claims that in both cases, the D cliticises. In the case of Indefinite Argument Drop this, although an attractive hypothesis, is impossible to prove in a direct fashion. Nevertheless, Indefinite Argument Drop, at least in Greek, can trigger Clitic Left Dislocation (also known in the literature as CLLD).
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
.. CLLD We will only sketch the bare essentials of CLLD here, in order to show that Indefinite Argument Drop can trigger it. It is outside the scope of this study to review the matter in depth here; the interested reader is referred to Cinque (1990), Anagnostopoulou (1994) and Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1999). For our purposes here, let us say that CLLD is a configuration in which a clitic can license a topic at the left periphery of the clause. A standard case of CLLD in Modern Greek is given in (33a). Absence of the clitic results in ungrammaticality (33b). The only way to have an non-doubled definite DP in the left periphery is Focus, in capitals indicating stress in (33c). Finally, a focused phrase is ungrammatical when doubled by a clitic (33d), see also Tsimpli (1995): (33) a.
To the b. * To the c. TO the d. * TO the
palto to aghorase o Kostas coat bought the Kostas palto aghorase o Kostas coat bought the Kostas PALTO aghorase o Kostas coat bought the Kostas PALTO to aghorase o Kostas coat bought the Kostas
The situation in (33) seems to be the following: the definite DP to palto can appear fronted in two configurations only. It can either move to a Focus position, leaving a copy/trace behind (33c), by a kind of what we traditionally dub A′-movement (see Brody 1990; Agouraki 1990 for analyses). Because the object position in this case is already occupied by the copy/trace of to palto, the presence of a clitic DP would violate any version of the θ criterion, thus the ungrammaticality of (33d). Alternatively, in (33a), a base-generated topic to palto agrees with the argument clitic DP (Cinque 1990). This topic cannot be itself the argument of the verb aghorase, that is why (33b) is ill-formed. To summarise, the presence of the clitic argument in (33a) licenses the presence of a base-generated topic at the left periphery of the clause (perhaps a TopicP – see Rizzi 1997b). Now, Indefinite Argument Drop has a similar licensing effect:37 (34) a.
palto aghorase o Kostas coat bought the Kostas b. * palto to aghorase o Kostas coat bought the Kostas
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
As illustrated, in (34a), an indefinite DP (Ø palto) can also appear in the left periphery: as Dimitriadis (1994a, 1994b) observes, this indefinite topic has not moved leaving a variable behind (there appears to be no topic movement in Modern Greek), but is rather a base-generated topic licensed by a clitic-like element. Moreover, topic and argument clitic DP must agree in definiteness, as illustrated in (34b). The fact that null indefinite arguments can license an indefinite topic at the left periphery of a clause makes perfect sense in the light of the discussion so far: null indefinite arguments not only are present but also have a similar structure to clitic DPs. If Dimitriadis is correct in assuming that the zero D of null indefinite arguments cliticises, then Indefinite Argument Drop and Cliticisation are fully parallel, differing only in the value of the definiteness on the D involved.38 Lightfoot (1998) has made a similar claim, claiming all instances of VP ellipsis and gapping in English to be clitics (of an XP and an X0 level respectively). Finally, Boeckx (2000) also treats ellipsis as clitics juxtaposing ‘neuter’ clitic French le, that can substitute for phrases, with the availability of ellipsis in English. .. A note on the interpretation of null indefinite arguments There is a question that arises from our treatment of null indefinite arguments as DPs made up of a null D and a null noun. If we assume our analysis that a null noun is also present in pronominals (strong, weak and clitic ones) and noun ellipsis, then an interpretive twist emerges. Recall Section 2.1.2 where we argued that both pronominals and noun ellipsis are pronominal in terms of interpretation, in the sense that they do not refer to entities by virtue of denoting but that they have their referent disambiguated contextually, this being down to their empty noun. The differences between pronouns and ellipsis are due to the restrictions imposed on their potential referents by APs, Possessors and their Determiner heads. So, in the case of the strong pronoun ella and its clitic counterpart la in Spanish, the referent is restricted by the feminine feature on eN, a singular feature on Num and a definiteness feature on D; in the case of the Italian le grigie eN, the referent is restricted by the feminine feature on eN, a plural feature on Num, a definiteness feature on D as well as the AP grigie. If this thread of explanation is followed to its consequences, it would appear that the configuration of null indefinite arguments, being unrestricted should be able to refer back to practically anything. So, (31c) could be the answer to a question about something definite, like (31a). Of course, this is not so because the null D in a null indefinite subject is not unspecified for definiteness but, rather, specified for indefiniteness. Thus, its
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
referent is in fact restricted, probably by an [indef] feature marked on D, see also (30b). Hence, the fact that null indefinite arguments act ‘pronominally’ only for indefinite discourse topics, provides us with some evidence towards indefiniteness being encoded by a feature (value) and not consisting an unmarked or default option (cf. Deflitto & Schroten 1991: 159, regarding existential readings). Having said so, one might still wonder why the following situation does not seem to hold for any natural languages: suppose that a variety of null D existed, radically impoverished. This hypothetical D would mark no features and impose no restrictions whatsoever on the referent of the DP, perhaps similarly to eN that encodes no concept. Yet, such entity is impossible and DPs of the form depicted below do not exist: (35) Null unrestricted DP: *[DP ØD [NumP Num [NP eN]]]
As to why this is so, an answer along the lines with Emonds’s (1985) Unique Syntactic Behavior as a starting point will be offered in the next chapter.
. A Grand Unification? We have shown that noun ellipsis, exemplified in cases of noun ellipsis with adjectives, and English DPs involving the non-descriptive noun one all involve nouns that do not denote concepts, phonologically overt (one) or not (eN). Then, we proceeded to show that pronominal clitics start off as XPs that move and out of which the clitic D head is subsequently extracted to adjoin to an inflectional head (dubbed F, perhaps differing cross-linguistically). We have demonstrated that if we assume that the DP of which the clitic is initially the head contains a Num and a null noun, this ‘two-step’ operation is given substance, as in each step different heads (and their features) are involved: D, Num and the noun in the first (XP) step, just D in the second (X0). The next step was to look into the phenomenon of Indefinite Argument Drop as it occurs in Modern Greek. We have shown it to involve an ordinary indefinite DP, albeit with an eN instead of a descriptive noun – thus unifying this phenomenon with noun ellipsis: subsequently, Indefinite Argument Drop was described as a ‘radical’ form of noun ellipsis. Moreover, given that – according to our analysis – the form of the clitic DP, at the point at which it is merged as an argument, and that of a null indefinite argument DP differ only with respect to definiteness, as both involve null empty nouns, we assumed
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
that they should be in complementary distribution and trigger the same range of phenomena. Both predictions are borne out. The picture that emerges so far is the following: almost all nominal proforms are DPs involving a non concept-denoting noun. This statement covers D-pronouns and N-pronouns (as discussed in Chapter 1) but also noun ellipsis, pronominal clitics and Indefinite Argument Drop. It does not cover pro/PRO and variables bound by null topics. Although we will have nothing to say about variables bound by null topics here, the question of pro will be discussed in Chapter 4. Before this, though, and given the scope of our proposals, it is time to inquire into the phrasal status of non-descriptive nouns and their nature. This task, and, especially, the nature of phonologically null non-descriptive nouns (eN) will be an area we will investigate in the next chapter.
. Appendix: Nominalisation versus noun ellipsis Giannakidou & Stavrou (1999) set out empirical criteria for distinguishing between noun ellipsis (or nominal subdeletion) and nominalisations. Let us once more claim that noun ellipsis involves a null noun (dubbed eN here) (as Giannakidou & Stavrou 1999: 302–305 also do), whereas nominalisation would involve a categorial shift from A to N that takes place either in the lexicon or syntactically (ibid. 312–316). Because their criteria are primarily devised for Modern Greek, we will adapt them for our purposes here, making them a bit more abstract. . Noun ellipsis Noun ellipsis (p. 299–302). a. Involves surface constraints (namely, the presence of discourse antecedents) but does not necessarily refer to animate entities (see also Section 2.1.2). b. Tolerates gender variation. In our analysis this is a consequence of the freedom to choose an ‘appropriate’ null noun. c. Is a productive process. This is also made apparent in Section 2.1.2.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Nominalisation Nominalisation is pretty much the reverse situation (p. 305–312). In nominalisation: a. Gender (and in some cases, number) remains invariable. b. Modification by adjectival modifiers like grade adverbs and so on is hardly tolerated. Contrast the inexorably rich eN to *the inexorably Reds. c. No comparatives and superlatives are available. d. Co-ordination with other nouns is possible. Moreover, in languages like English or Dutch (as in Kester 1996: 234–236), special noun morphology (like plural -s and diminutive -tje respectively) is permitted.
Notes . But this is not necessarily an argument against the existence of intransitive determiners, like, say, I/me. Discussion of this issue is deferred until Chapter 5. . Except for binding, as we will see in Section 2.1.2. . Pragmatic factors like (1c) being infelicitous for human referents (Andrew Radford, p.c.) or she for someone present are apparently irrelevant to the semantic representations of either DP. . Contra Abney (1987) and Radford (1993) who analyse adjectival heads as taking NPs as their complements. Carstens (2000) briefly discusses the parallelism between adjectives and adverbs, a very promising line of research I have nothing substantial to comment on. . But see Heim & Kratzer (1998: Ch.9). Lasnik (1999) argues for a strength-related movement analysis of VP ellipsis – see Boeckx & Stjepanovic (1999) and Boeckx (2000) for arguments against it. . For restrictions in French noun ellipsis, see Sleeman (1993). . Sleeman (1993) argues that empty nouns in elliptical DPs in French (and English) are base-generated variable pro constituents, bound by a quantificational adjective or a quantifier within DP. She argues that, among the not straightforwardly quantificational adjectives, only those that have a ‘partitive’ reading can license ellipsis. We will briefly come back to this analysis in Section 2.2.1.2. . Or whatever decides ‘co-reference’, see Heim & Kratzer (1998: Ch.10) for insightful discussion. . For a different formulation of this, see Noguchi (1997).
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
. Although the proper construal of binding principles is well beyond the scope of this study, a comment is perhaps in order here. Lasnik (1991) argues that principle C should be reformulated as a ban on a ‘more referential’ expression (say, a full DP) being bound by a less referential one (a pronoun or an epithet); this being amenable to parametrisation. Heim & Kratzer (1998: 269–274) build on Reinhart (1983) in order to refute the role of grammar in establishing co-reference that does not follow from variable binding. The spirit of their proposal is that binding principles are pragmatic. . But not impossible, as Fukui (1987) and Noguchi (1997) claim. I wish to thank Shiro Ojima and Stephen Nolan for raising this point and discussing it with me. . Which is grosso modo Kester’s (1996, 1996b) working hypothesis. . The terms ‘human’, ‘mass’, ‘superlative’ and ‘abstract’ to label elliptical DPs are after Kester (1996). . As to why this should be so, apparently this is an idiosyncratic (lexical) property of one. . In other languages, different states of affairs hold. The indefinite article was not included in the schema under (18) because it is irrelevant for noun ellipsis environments (see also Lobeck 1995: 93–96). . The ‘suppletion’ of pronouns for the relevant feature combinations can either mean: (a) that a DP headed by a definite D and containing a singular Num and eN is spelled out by morphology as it, whereas its plural version is spelled out as they/them. This way to view things essentially follows Postal’s (1969) treatment of the complementary distribution between the and non-person pronouns. (b) or that the complementary distribution between the on the one hand and it & they/them on the other has to do with some uninterpretable feature on the D the that null nouns cannot check. Alternatively, it & they/them bear a feature that phonologically overt nouns – even if they denote no concept, like one – cannot check… I feel that the first option is the most realistic but I have no further comments to offer on the issue. . Additional evidence towards the categorial uniformity between articles and, at least non-person, clitics is provided in Tsimpli & Stavrakaki (1999): Greek children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) that have problems producing determiners show almost the same rate of failure in producing clitics. . This is not to say that agreement projections are endorsed – see also Chapter 4. The label here and in Section 3.2 is just for reasons of exposition and for lack of a more accurate one. . In the discussion here, like in the previous chapter, we gloss over Case features. A reason for this is that it still remains unclear whether they are situated on D, N or a K projection above D. See Giusti (1995), Mallén (1997), Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998) and Cardinaletti & Starke (1999) for suggestions and discussion.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Cardinaletti & Starke (1999) claim that strong pronouns are made up of more functional layers than pronominal clitics. Given that ella in an object position appears in the form a ella, this would be a plausible hypothesis to make for Spanish but, here, few things hinge on it: whether strong pronouns involve more functional layers than clitics and weak pronouns or not, both strong pronouns and ‘defective’ ones involve a DP, a NumP and an NP layer. . There is a further paradox with la the clitic encoding all its interpretable φ features on D: while the D (of) ella is exactly like the article la in that it agrees with a Num head for number and an N head in gender, la the clitic and la the article are radically different: the first encodes all φ features on D whereas tha article agrees with a complement… . The NumPs complementing D are apparently identical. . Minimalism is not a grammatical theory but rather the commitment to rigidity and parsimony in constructing a grammatical theory (Chomsky 1998: 5). . An obvious example is locality constraints and the latest trend (cf. Chomsky 1998, 1999; Mahajan 2000) to eliminate head movement. . Hopefully, there is another distinction somehow related to this one: “Morphology deals only with X0 categories and their features” (Chomsky 1995: 319). Bob Borsley (p.c.) pointed out to me that this definition, as it stands, would result to zero maximal projections (i.e. heads that have another head adjoined to them) behaving as XPs, because they are constructed in Syntax. This does not appear to be true, but I unfortunately have no sensible solution to offer to this problem. . Recall that under fairly standard assumptions, the features of the object DP would have been attracted to AgrOP by LF anyway (Chomsky 1993, 1995). See also endnote 18 for a disclaimer about the identity of ‘AgrO’. . We abstract away from benefactive and ethical clitics, as well as cases of possessive clitics from within the object attaching to Infl here. See Borer & Grodzinsky (1986) for an account. . And object scrambling, too, if Sportiche’s (1996) analysis is on the right track. . In both (7c) and (25), the elliptical DP can be contextually forced to ‘co-refer’ with some antecedent – consider a continuation of (7c) like “…but, of course, both the Belgian and Jim’s hats are white.” This is pragmatically induced, see Giannakidou & Merchant (1996) for discussion. . Authier (1989) for an analysis of ‘arbitrary pro’ as a variable unselectively bound by an empty operator. . Campos dubs this phenomenon “Indefinite Object Drop.” . Portuguese examples from Raposo (1986: 381–383). Recall that the variables (marked t) in the Portuguese examples can accommodate either a definite or an indefinite interpretation.
Pronominal nouns beyond pronouns
. Here we gloss over the feature that actually drives clitic movement. If clitics were ordinary definite articles, then the head F that attracts them should also overtly attract definite articles out of ordinary DPs, having driven them to SpecAgrOP (see previous section)… Notice that the fact that the two paradigms (of definite articles and pronominal clitics) are in no language completely identical could be a reflex of the phonological status of their complements (like the vs. it – see Section 2.2 in Chapter 1). Another possibility is that cliticisation is a PF-induced phenomenon related to the phonological ‘emptiness’ of the complement of D (cf. Cardinaletti & Starke 1999). If Uriagereka’s (1996) analysis of Galician in which Ds with overt complements can also cliticise is correct, then matters are complicated significantly. I will have nothing more to say on this issue here. For completeness, notice that Dimitriadis (1994a, 1994b) claims that null indefinite arguments ‘cliticise’ as well (see the rest of Section 4.2). . Hash (#) indicates answers that are grammatical in principle but infelicitous as answers to the specific questions. . For discussion of what happens with quantifier topics see Cinque (1990), Dimitriadis (1994a). . According to Dimitriadis (1994b) who focuses on Modern Greek and Bulgarian. . A distinct focused version of (34a) is also available – with a focus intonation on palto. . See also endnote 33.
C 3
On the nature of empty nouns
. . . .
Open issues Empty nouns are not phrases Empty nouns and pro A theory of empty nouns
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Open issues We have so far made a case for the presence of non-descriptive nouns inside a variety of DPs and we have argued that they are ‘pronominal’ in a fundamental sense. The careful reader might have noticed that I deliberately swept discussion of the phrasal status of these null nouns under the carpet: are they heads (N0), intermediate projections (N′), or phrases (NP)? Given that some discussion of the issue exists in the literature and that there are clear and recurrent phenomena related to it that have to be accounted for, the first part of this chapter will be devoted to discussion of the phrasal status of nondescriptive nouns, both phonologically overt and null. Another very important problem is that of how empty nouns fit into a typology of empty categories, if at all. We have talked of empty nouns encoding gender on more than one occasion and a natural question that arises is how this is compatible with a theory of licensing and identification of empty categories – pro, more specifically. In Section 3 we will try to show that empty nouns are not instances of pro. In its strongest version, a ‘pro module’ in a theory of grammar would predict that only one invariable empty category exists, which has to be licensed and contextually identified; thus, if we are to maintain what we said about empty nouns, a major rethinking of empty categories and the theory that underlies them is in order. In the context of empty nouns, this will be attempted in Section 4 of this chapter, building on Emonds’ concept of ‘grammatical nouns’ and his ‘Unique Syntactic Behavior’.
. Empty nouns are not phrases . Empty nouns do not tolerate complements It appears that empty nouns, both overt and null, behave like phrases rather than heads. This observation goes back to at least Jackendoff (1977) as far as one is concerned.1 So, as Jackendoff (1977: 58–60) and Kayne (1994: 103–105) point out, one does not tolerate of-phrases usually identified as complements of N. This is illustrated in (1) below. (1) *The students of Physics are taller than the ones of chemistry.
On the nature of empty nouns
Jackendoff offers what is the standard explanation for this difference of behaviour between students, an ordinary descriptive noun, and ones. This is that, unlike ordinary nouns, which are heads (N0), one is of N′ level. So, *the ones of chemistry in (1) is ungrammatical because the ‘place’ of the phrase of chemistry is ‘taken up’ in a sense by ones. In other words, the N0 students forms an N′ constituent along with its complement of chemistry. If one is already of an N′ level, it somehow ‘occupies’ both the head and the complement positions by itself. An explanation along these lines is consistent with the mechanisms of X′ theory.2 Nevertheless, it has an ad hoc flavour. A basic problem with such an account would be how recent versions of X′ theory can accommodate the fact that some lexical entries – just one so far from category N: one – are specified as X′ (or phrasal) elements, possibly being heads at the same time. This is most probably an idiosyncrasy of the lexical item in question and, consequently, has to be encoded in the lexicon, “a list of exceptions, whatever does not follow from general principles” (Chomsky 1995: 234). One cannot help feeling that a special X′ status for just one lexical item is a dubious matter. Now, if the X′ level status of one is encoded in the lexicon, then this is an arbitrary property of the particular lexical item and it is surprising that no other nominals share it: what could prevent the noun politics being represented as an X′ or phrasal element in the lexicon? Closer to home, if a lexical entry can have phrasal status, then the generalisation sketched in the previous chapter, repeated below as (2) for convenience, is refuted: (2) Heads (X0) are listed in the lexicon and enter the Numeration, phrases (XP) are syntactic objects constructed from other syntactic objects, whether heads or phrases.
Corver & Delfitto (1999: 802–804) discuss the fact that null nouns exhibit a behaviour identical to that of one in (1). Consider the example below, adopted from them: (3) a. We students of Physics like quasars very much. b. * We eN of Physics like quasars very much.
Based on the above, as well as instances of ellipsis (see previous chapter), they explicitly claim null nouns to be ‘NP level pro-complement[s]’. Similarly, Uriagereka (1995: 81) argues that “the pro [that complements pronominal Ds] is not a DP in the specifier position of D, but rather the NP complement of D, which is analogous to one.”
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
The above is potentially good news: we now posit XP status for the lexical entries of not just one, but null nouns like eN, too. Perhaps we can now claim that non-descriptive nouns come as XPs from the lexicon. But the fact that these nouns do not denote a concept is not necessarily an idiosyncrasy irrelevant to their ‘peculiar’ phrasal status. Perhaps ‘pronominality’ and special X′ behaviour are related in a non-idiosyncratic manner that does follow from a general and simple principle. This will be a claim we will attempt to justify in the following subsection. . Empty nouns as N0 heads .. Complements of N Radford, to the best of my knowledge, was the first to link pronominality with the peculiar phrasal status of one, via the inability of pronominals to assign θ roles. In unpublished work (1989), he only discusses one, but it is possible to extrapolate his analysis to eN as well without further assumptions. Radford claims that one is of N0 level, a head, neither N′ nor NP. The fact that it does not tolerate complements is attributed to the inability of one to assign θ roles and not some special X′ status for it. He further links this inability of one to θ-assign to its being a pronominal noun; in other words, he relates the pronominality of one to its inability to θ mark complements. If the reason for the special phrasal status of one is its pronominality, then an analysis that derives the XP status of one from what we here identify as lack of descriptive content can be aptly extended to eN as well. Radford turns to examples like (4), where an of phrase following one makes up a well formed constituent, and juxtaposes it to the likes of (1), repeated below for convenience. For the sake of completeness, in (4b) and (5b) we illustrate the situation for eN, which is similar.3 (1) *The students of Physics are taller than the ones of chemistry. (4) a.
The portrait of the Queen is lower than the one of the ViceChancellor. b. John’s eN of the Queen is lower than Jack’s portrait of the ViceChancellor.
(5) a. The ones from New York are taller than the students from New Jersey b. Virgin eN from Tuscany is better than watery olive oil from Spain.
He claims that the grammaticality of (4) would be explained if we assimilate its status to that of (5): in both (4) and (5), the preposition (of and from re-
On the nature of empty nouns
spectively) licenses its own complement itself. This is not the case for (1), although both (1) and (4) involve an of-phrase, a complication to which we return below. Radford further argues that of in (4) and from in (5) are thematic prepositions, whereas the variant of of in (1) is non-thematic. If one is unable to provide external θ licensing to this non-thematic prepositional phrase, then the whole phrase is ungrammatical. In order to illustrate that the of phrases in (4) and the from phrases in (5) are headed by a thematic P head whereas in (1) by a non-thematic preposition, Radford employs a number of tests, which are briefly reproduced below: (6) Only thematic of can be the head of a predicate phrase. a. thematic: My favourite picture is [ t [of the Vice-Chancellor]] b. non-thematic: *My favourite student is [ t [of Chemistry]] (7) Only thematic of PPs can be extraposed. a. thematic: [A photo _ ] was found [of the VC drinking absinthe] b. non-thematic: *[A student _ ] was jailed [of Chemistry] (8) Only non-thematic of PPs have a prenominal counterpart. a. thematic: A (*Vice-Chancellor) picture (of the Vice Chancellor) b. non-thematic A (Chemistry) student (of Chemistry)
Independently, Oga (2000) has reached the same conclusion, namely that there are indeed two types of of. The first (dubbed thematic here) she assumes to be a θ assigning lexical head. The projection of a lexical/thematic P head does not have to be adjacent to the N and can extrapose (7). The reverse is true for functional (‘non-thematic’) P and its projection: its licensing depends on whether the N can assign a θ role to it. The idea that there exist two classes of prepositions, thematic/lexical and non-thematic/functional, is widely held and supported by independent evidence. According to it, the categorial label P should be restricted to thematic Ps, as they are predicative, like the other lexical categories V, A and N – see (6) above, as well. Thus, they neither need nor tolerate ‘external’ licensing. On the other hand, non-thematic (or ‘dummy’) prepositions can safely be argued to be functional heads: they fail to θ mark, they are not predicative and their main role seems to be to make manifest the oblique case of the DP in their complement.4 Phrases headed by a non-thematic preposition inherit the referential status of the DP in their complement and that is why they need to carry a θ role.5 To sum up, the contrast between (1) and (4) boils down to a contrast between the non-thematic versus the thematic variant of the preposition of. One,
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
by hypothesis, cannot θ mark its complement or anything else. If the PP modifying one is headed by a thematic P, like in (4), the complement of P is licensed by the P itself and the whole phrase is merged in a higher position (cf. Jackendoff 1977: 59), possibly reserved for predicative constituents inside the DP, like a thematic/lexical PP is. Thus, the co-occurrence of one (and eN) with PPs headed by a thematic P does not entail θ marking abilities on behalf of the N. At the same time, PPs headed by a non-thematic preposition need an external θ assigner and one cannot provide it. So, instead of postulating a special X′ status for one and eN, all we have to say now is that NPs headed by non-descriptive nouns cannot have arguments, as their N heads cannot θ license them. This raises a natural but intriguing question: why can non-descriptive N heads not assign θ roles? .. θ assignment & predicates As a first step towards explaining why non-descriptive N heads, like one and eN, cannot assign θ roles, recall that they denote no concept and that, consequently, their feature make-up consists entirely of non-descriptive features. Now, let us suppose that empty nouns cannot assign θ roles exactly for this reason: because they do not denote any concept at all. Unlike descriptive nouns and like functional heads they do not denote predicates. For the sake of exposition, take the noun picture. It can potentially assign at least two θroles, informally tagged as Agent and Theme.6 (9) a. a picture [AGENT of Vermeer] (cf. Vermeer pictured X) b. a picture [THEME of Ginevra] (cf. X pictured Ginevra)
We assume that these two θ roles, Agent and Theme, must be assigned to phrases, of Vermeer and of Ginevra here, merged within the NP projection of picture.7 Now, the fact that picture, unlike ball, can assign two θ roles can plausibly be assumed to be a semantic property of the specific lexical item as it is drawn from the lexicon. It can further be assumed that the number and type (e.g. Theme, Goal etc.) of θ roles that a lexical item can assign is directly related to the logical properties of the predicate it denotes. This is ultimately an extra-linguistic property defined by the conceptual systems: the fact that the verb put denotes a three-place predicate is neither dependent on UG requirements nor an arbitrary ‘internal affair’ of the lexicon (like ‘strength’ of features etc.). Now, this is a simple, actually oversimplified, approach to the so-called ‘mapping’ problem: we plainly assume here that logical properties of
On the nature of empty nouns
predicates are carried over into grammar by the lexical heads that denote them. Of course, this can certainly not be anything near the whole story, given complications like the fact that the projection principle does not seem to hold for nouns, contrary to verbs (for discussion: Grimshaw 1990): the Agent remains unexpressed in (9b) and the Theme in (9a). Even so, it is a natural claim to make that a lexical head denoting no predicates – which is the case of non-descriptive nouns – has an adicity (in the sense of Williams 1994: 26) of zero: one and eN denote no predication function, thus the number of argument XPs they can take is the number of logical arguments for this (trivial) function: zero. .. Constructing NPs Let us hypothesise that the ability of complements and specifiers to be merged inside a lexical projection, say NP, is a result of conceptual properties of the lexical head: they must be (θ-)licensed by the head noun. If only arguments of the function denoted by the lexical head can be merged as this head’s complement or specifier, then empty nouns, that denote no concept, can license neither a complement of N or SpecNP. The resulting picture is, trivially, of one and eN being of NP level; nevertheless, this is a consequence of Syntax not sanctioning the merging of any phrases with these heads, rather than one and eN being specified as XPs in the lexicon. It could also be noted that there is no problem of a ‘communicative’ nature in producing and understand examples like (1) or (3) as standard ellipses – the problem lies exclusively within grammar.8 Further dwelling on this point and abstracting away from English, the inability of non-descriptive nouns to take arguments/tolerate material inside their NP can be illustrated even in languages with eN being the standard constituent inside elliptical DPs (instead of overt one, as is the case in English – see Section 2.2 in the previous chapter). Consider Modern Greek once more: (10) *I fitites Fisikis ine psiloteri apo aftus eN Himias the students physics. are taller from these chemistry. ‘The students of Physics are taller than those of Chemistry’ (11) *Idha ametanoitus ipokinites (ton) ematiron I.saw unrepenting instigators (the) bloody. praxikopimaton ke ghnorisa afelis eN coups. and I.met naïve.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
(ton) anepitihon epanastaseon (the) unsuccesful. revolutions. ‘I saw defiant instigators of (the) bloody coups and I met naïve ones of (the) unsuccessful revolutions’ (12) Tha epina aromatiko kafe apo tin Ollandia will I.was.drinking fragrant coffee from the Holland ala pino anosto eN apo tin Anglia but I.drink tasteless from the England ‘I would drink fragrant coffee from Holland, but I drink tasteless from England’
The above examples illustrate that ‘rich agreement’, ‘communicative salience’ or ‘availability of null elements’ does not prevent MG from behaving exactly like English. So, (10) is parallel to (1) and (3): there is no θ role assignment to the argument of eN Himias (‘of Chemistry’). Given the possible objection that articleless genitives might form some sort of compound with the noun fitites that renders them inseparable, (11) illustrates the point with DPs as arguments of the noun ipokinites (‘instigators’) and eN. What emerges is that, whether these DPs are headed by an overt definite article or a null indefinite one, they cannot be θ marked by eN (as they can by ipokinites) and are thus impossible as its arguments: all variations of (11) are bad.9 The example in (12) reproduces the situation in (5): (lexical/thematic) PPs do not depend on θ assignment by the head of an NP and can appear freely inside a DP with an empty noun. Another interesting suggestion that emerges from treating empty nouns (either overt or null) as trivial functions with zero adicity and, consequently, no arguments is that Possessor DPs are not arguments of the noun (cf. Grimshaw 1990; Kratzer 1996 and endnote 6). Rather, Possessor is akin to Agent (cf. Szabolcsi 1994) and has the status of external arguments in the most radical of senses. If Kratzer (1996) is correct in severing the external argument from its verb, positing it a specifier of a Voice (or ‘little v’) Phrase, similar claims could be made for external arguments of the noun. Both (verbal) Agent and Possessor θ roles would then be not assigned by V and N respectively but v/Voice and n (Radford 1999)/Poss (Kayne 1994). Whether this parallelism is accurate or not, Possessor is fully compatible with empty nouns. Observe: (13) English a. I have taken William’s razor but not Fred’s eN b. # I have taken William’s razor but not John’s one.10
On the nature of empty nouns
Modern Greek Tha epina vari kafe tu Ari will I.was.drinking strong coffee of.the Aris ala pino anosto eN tu Pari but I.drink tasteless of.the Paris ‘I would drink Aris’s strong coffee, but I drink Paris’s tasteless ’
To recapitulate: we follow the view that θ assignment completely and solely defines the structure of lexical projections. The descriptive features of a lexical head (a noun, in our case) denote predicates and θ roles assigned by the head reflect in a straightforward fashion the logical arguments the predication can range over. Lack of descriptive features, as is the case with empty (nondescriptive) nouns, means that no predicate is denoted. This in turn entails impossibility of θ assignment on behalf of this non-descriptive head. The picture that emerges is that empty nouns, accommodating no arguments, have an N = NP appearance at Spell-Out and LF.
. Empty nouns and pro So far we have established a natural class for all empty (non-descriptive) nouns, whether they appear as complements of pronominal Ds (in strong and clitic pronouns or as N-pronouns) or in elliptical environments (one and various instances of noun ellipsis, including Indefinite Argument Drop). All instances of empty nouns are N0 heads, their superfluous NP status being a result of their zero adicity (i.e. their inability to assign θ roles and, consequently, to license a complement or a specifier). Although both overt empty nouns (such as one or Japanese kare) and various instances of (phonologically) null nouns (our eN) seem to behave alike, there is now a severe theoretical complication emerging. On the one hand, we here have the notion of null nouns encoding ϕ features such as gender, on the other hand a standard approach to empty categories claims them all to be instances of an invariant empty category that is contextually (i.e. in the syntactic context) defined as a pronominal, anaphor etc. A tension between these two approaches is a real issue and appears inevitable – as is the case for the analysis of arbitrary pro in Rizzi (1986) and that of null nouns licensed by adjectival inflection in Kester (1996).
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
To limit the question as far as null nouns are concerned: are null nouns lexical entries in the lexicon, subject to the restrictions of their overt counterparts? In other words, are there in English a masculine eN, a feminine eN and an unspecified eN next to one and people? Or is it the case that all null nouns are just a single (phonologically) null lexical entry that has to be formally licensed and identified? Moreover, is a compromise between these two approaches possible? . Introduction: a brief history of pro .. The age of reason At the beginning of the 80s, Chomsky (1981, 1982) introduced and to a certain extent established two ideas with respect to empty categories. The first was that properties of empty categories are identical to those of overt ones, thus they can be classified under such labels as ‘pronominal’ and ‘anaphor’, can receive θ roles and so on.11 The second was that they can be (perhaps solely and completely) defined functionally from general principles of grammar. Consider: (14) Who did the shark attack e?
The presence of e is forced by the Projection Principle: the Theme θ role assigned by the verb attack must be present at all the levels of representation. As to its identity, e cannot be an anaphor: it lacks an antecedent to bind it locally. e cannot be a pronominal, either, as an example like the following was deemed ungrammatical (a weak crossover violation): (15) *Whoi did the shark next to Johni attack ei?
So, e in (14) and (15) cannot be bound outside its binding domain (thus [–pronominal]) and must have no binder inside its binding domain (thus [–anaphor]). It qualifies as a variable then and displays properties identical to overt R-expressions: we can substitute the diver for e in both (14) and (15) for an illustration. The theory can be summarised as follows (quoted from Chomsky 1982: 34): This property of E[mpty] C[ategories] surely implies that there is only one type of [Empty Category] and that the status of a particular occurrence of an E[mpty] C[ategory] as PRO, NP-trace, or variable is functionally determined, that is, determined by the E[mpty] C[ategory]’s role in derivations and representations.
On the nature of empty nouns
The literature on empty categories has grown exponentially ever since. A fourth empty category introduced in Chomsky (1982) was pro, an empty pronominal. This empty category has attracted a great deal of attention. As to its distribution, pro is, by hypothesis, the null subject in sentences like those under (16) (grammatical only in “null subject languages,” named after this particular property of theirs). pro presented the theory with a variety of challenges, most of which still await solutions. A first taste of what these challenges are is already given in Chomsky (1982: 85): We may continue to refer to the element [+pronominal, +anaphor] as PRO and to the element [+pronominal, -anaphor] as pro, taking each of these to be a cover term for various combinations of the “grammatical features” person, gender, number – and possibly also Case.
Intense debate and extensive exchange of views has followed these initial attempts to capture the distributional properties of pro. What already emerges is a hint of the tension we referred to earlier in upholding the idea of a single empty category when pro12 is included in the picture: If pro is an ‘ordinary’ pronominal, then it must somehow be specified for different combinations of features in different instances, the same way as overt pronominals are. Consider Italian, for instance (16) a.
Io/pro sono 1st. am b. Tu/pro sei 2nd. are.2nd c. Noi/pro siamo 1st. are.1st
In the example (16) above, we have to explain how the verb agrees with its pro subject the same way it does with the overt pronominal ones. If it is the case that “various feature combinations” exist for pro, as seems plausible here, then it cannot be that only one instance of an empty (nominal) category that is functionally determined exists. An alternative solution would be to include some sort of condition that will enable us to determine a particular instance of pro without assuming as many instances of pro as there are feature combinations of person, number, gender and Case. Up to here only the (Extended) Projection Principle and Binding Theory have been invoked. A solution in this spirit was expressed in Rizzi (1986): Rizzi argues that the presence of pro, forced by the (Extended)
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
Projection Principle, is subject to two conditions: a licensing condition by a (parametrically defined) head and an identification condition.13 Licensing is about what head can permit a pro within its governing domain: Italian Infl can, English Infl cannot and so on. More explicitly, Rizzi (1986: 524) specifies the licensing of pro as Case-marking by that head, not just government. Identification is the process of recovering the (φ-)feature combination a pro ‘stands for’, in an invariable pro analysis (or, alternatively, the (φ-)feature combination a pro encodes). In the case of most Romance languages, as in (16), the Infl head that licenses pro by assigning Case to it also identifies its content by somehow ‘copying’ its own φ-features onto pro: thus, in (16b) for instance, the Infl specified for 2nd person and singular number ‘copies’ these features onto pro, in (16c) it copies its 1st person and plural number, and so on. Although in that particular paper Rizzi assumes that the licenser and the identifier must be the same head, he has later revised this position in the face of evidence from a number of languages. Thus, in Rizzi (1997: 282) it is noted that if the licenser fails to identify pro, then either Control or discourse identification could be forced, both options available by UG. In any case, perhaps we would not be wrong to claim that identification mechanisms are restricted to associating pro with exactly the φ-features ‘necessary’ for the overt pronouns in a given language. Thus, we would not expect a Mandarin identifier of a pro to ‘copy’ any Gender features onto it14 and certainly nothing more than the relevant φ-features. Returning to the case where the identifier and the licenser are the same head, we now have a mechanism that enables us to uphold the assumption that there is only one kind of empty category, as the licensing and identifying conditions, available by UG, can ‘functionally’ fully determine a pro. Interestingly, because identification and licensing are kept distinct, it may well be the case that a language possesses licenser(s) for pro but no identifiers – this would restrict pro to expletive uses, as seems to be the case with Icelandic (Rizzi 1997: 274). Accordingly, it is parameters, their settings and functional heads that vary cross-linguistically or within different instances in the same language, not the null element pro itself. .. Ageing reasons Although the theory of pro appears to be an adequate framework that can accommodate a version of the functional determination of empty categories
On the nature of empty nouns
while reaffirming their affinity with their overt counterparts, this licensing/ identification mechanism runs into a series of problems. ... The demise of a binding-related definition for empty categories. The inventory of empty categories was formulated along the plus/minus settings of the two features ([±pronominal] and [±anaphor]) in Chomsky (1982). These features were relevant to the binding behaviour of the elements (both overt and null) encoding them: a [+pronominal] [–anaphor] element abides by Condition B: it must be free within its binding domain, and so on. While the overt members of this inventory appear not to be amenable to a [±pronominal] [±anaphor] classification any more (Enç 1989; Lasnik 1991 among others), the inventory has also lost most of its null members by now: traces are now considered to be copies of the moved elements (Chomsky 1995, 1998; Sauerland 1998), the PRO theorem can no longer be derived from independent principles and there is much debate about PRO’s (lack of) Case (cf. Chomsky 1995).15 pro seems to be the last (nominal) empty category. ... A richer variety of bar-levels and categorial labels for empty categories. Moreover, continuous research has revealed a number of empty categories that come under more categorial labels than that of nominals. Apart from empty noun heads, there is by now solid evidence for empty Complementisers (Rizzi 1990), empty ‘generic’ determiner heads (Longobardi 1994) and elliptical null elements that can be of the category N, V and even Infl (Lobeck 1991). If these are set against XP level pro and PRO and empty operators of various sorts (Chomsky 1981; Huang 1984; Authier 1989b; Brody 1995; Mathieu 1999; Panagiotidis 2000b) are added, the emerging picture seems to become increasingly complicated: empty categories appear to come at both X0 and XP levels, as well as a variety of lexical and functional categorial labels. One must also note here that, since we cannot avail ourselves of radically empty nodes (cf. Chao 1988 and references therein) any more, a detailed theory for all the empty elements mentioned above is required – they certainly haven’t got an unlimited distribution. In other words, the models of grammar currently being developed do not involve a template-like phrase structure that has to be ‘filled’ with terminal nodes, but construct representations by ‘putting together’ lexical items, one of which projects, in a bottom-up fashion (Chomsky 1995). Hence, the option of a radically empty node is not available, there is either an element to merge with a syntactic object, or there is not.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
... The need for a more articulated licensing/identification mechanism. It is true that in most of the work mentioned in the context of noun ellipsis (see previous chapter) empty elements are always taken to be licensed by some sort of mechanism, usually involving a functional head. For instance, Lobeck (1991: 98) proposes the following Ellipsis Licensing Principle for elliptical e – whichever its category. This is a bold attempt indeed, as the proposed principle is – to the best of my knowledge – the first attempt to devise a condition for empty constituents that can be of categories other than the nominal one. [e] must be canonically governed by a functional head specified as [+Kase], [+Number] or [+Q].
This proposed ‘Principle’ either is an independent condition (a real Principle) or reduces to other Principles of grammar. Unfortunately, if the former were true, the Ellipsis Licensing Principle hardly comes anywhere close to the ‘basic’ status of the EPP, binding theory or even Rizzi’s licensing condition on pro. One reason for this is that it refers to specific features that do not prima facie seem to belong to a natural class – compare this, for instance, to licensing as Case assignment to pro (Rizzi 1986): we expect nominals to be assigned Case, anyway… For the same reasons, it is hard to see what independent principles the Ellipsis Licensing Principle could reduce to. Moreover, the predictions it makes are not accurate crosslinguistically, and this is why Lobeck (1995) reformulates it in a more parametric and ‘relational’ fashion (Lobeck 1995: Ch. 4).16 The emerging situation seems to be that it is impossible to maintain that an invariable empty category defined exclusively via licensing and identification can appear in such a multitude of environments under conditions that approach idiosyncrasy. Towards this, the analysis in Kester (1996) is a good example: she claims that adjectival inflection is the reflex of a functional head F17 inside the DP, at the specifier of which APs are situated. She then correlates the availability of null nouns (our eN) with the richness of adjectival inflection in a particular language. Thus, Dutch possesses adjectival inflection -e and null nouns are licensed widely (Kester 1996: Ch. 4), English does not and one is used instead (Kester 1996: 266–268); Afrikaans diachronically acquired an element like one when it lost its adjectival inflection. Still, not all instances of noun ellipsis are consistent with maintaining an invariable pro and Kester has to state that “different instances of pro may have quite different X-bar and categorial properties” (1996: 189), and subsequently argues explicitly that pro can sometimes “ha[ve] inherent
On the nature of empty nouns
features.” A detailed discussion and criticism of licensing and identification conditions is deferred until Section 3.2. ... At odds with checking theory. Furthermore, with the introduction of checking theory, the mere existence of pro is doubtful. Take, for instance, the par excellence position of pro: that of a subject in null subject languages. Some Infl element, say AgrS or T, licenses pro and licensing boils down to Case assignment (Rizzi 1986: 524). This is fine in GB/P&P18 terms where Case assigners actually “assign” Case. Checking theory forces us to posit some sort of Case feature on pro itself: an uninterpretable [Nom] feature in Chomsky’s (1995) framework. (17)
AgrSP
AgrS′
pro ? AgrS [NOM]
VP
Whether pro encodes a [Nom] feature or just an unspecified Case feature (which could potentially accommodate pro showing up in other argument positions), the result is that pro now becomes incompatible with all positions that cannot be part of a Case Chain. At least two areas where this would pose a problem is theories for the base generation of clitics (but see Section 3 in the previous chapter) as well as non-nominal ellipsis. If a pronominal clitic is a base generated entity that absorbs accusative Case and licenses a pro in object position (Borer 1984, 1986; Jaeggli 1982, 1986; Sportiche 1996), what happens to the Case feature of pro?19 Furthermore, non-nominal ellipsis (Lobeck 1991, 1995) goes completely beyond an explanation along the lines of the presence of a pro if this null category is specified or needs to be specified for Case. ... The categorial status of subject pro. Under the DP-hypothesis (Abney 1987; et al.), the categorial status itself of a subject pro becomes a problem. If we are correct that pronominality is not a grammatical primitive, it is not inherently expressed in pro, say in terms of a [+pronominal] feature. Suppose
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
also that instances of empty categories under a variety of categorial labels exist, as in Section 3.1.2.2 above. Consider now pro in a subject position: if Stowell (1991) and Longobardi (1994) are correct that arguments must be DPs, then pro must be identified as a DP by Infl – in other words Infl must contain a D feature (as in Chomsky 1995). If pro has a Case feature, this is rather straightforward. Compare now this to nominal pro (eN) licensed and identified in the complement of the trace of a D head (say, a pronominal clitic D in the analysis adopted here20) or the complement of a functional head F with an adjective in its Spec, as in Kester: the D feature of Infl will identify pro in its specifier as of category D, while that of a clitic D trace or F will identify the one inside its complement as of category N (cf. Ritter 1991, 1995; Koopman 2000). By now, the intricate licensing/identification system should also include a mechanism that distinguishes between specifiers and complements. Moreover, this licensing/identification mechanism can actually define the categorial status of the empty category. Notice that this is a problem even if we reject checking theory. . Against licensing and identification for null nouns In what follows I will try to flesh out the technical objections against licensing and identification for null nouns in the previous section by appealing to empirical evidence. I understand that these objections could hold for empty categories in general but we shall restrict ourselves to eN here.21 In order to do so, we will review all the instances where null nouns show up in a DP as reviewed in Chapters 1 and 2: pronouns and pronominal clitics, noun ellipsis and Indefinite Argument Drop. We will then see how the licensing and identification theory works in explanatory terms and compare it with the approach that emerges from this study, namely that null nouns are stored in the lexicon as separate lexical entries, as is the case with overt empty nouns like one. .. Licensing of eN In order to make our argument against licensing/identification of eN, we will attempt to capture all instances of eN using a licensing/identification model. To this end, we are going to use Lobeck’s “Licensing and identification of pro” (1995: 52; see also Section 3.1.2.3). The reasons we do so is that Lobeck essentially adopts Rizzi’s (1986) licensing/identification model, which she extends to cover all instances of what she considers to be pro. Moreover, Lobeck accepts an articulated structure for DPs (one that includes a NumP, as well;
On the nature of empty nouns
Lobeck 1995: Ch. 3) and she extensively applies the consequences of her licensing principle and her Ellipsis Identification Parameter to instances of noun ellipsis (Lobeck 1995: Ch. 4). I hence feel that Lobeck offers the most articulated formulation of how eN could be captured as pro. The proposed Principle and Parameter are the following: Licensing and Identification of pro: An empty, non-arbitrary pronominal must be properly head-governed, and governed by an X0 specified for strong agreement (1995: 52) Ellipsis Identification Parameter: The number of strong agreement features in DET and NUM that is required to identify an empty, pronominal NP is proportional to the number of possible strong agreement features in the agreement system of noun phrases in the language (1995: 135)
Elaborating, the ‘Licensing and Identification of pro’ principle predicts that only (functional) heads that are specified for strong agreement – however defined – can license pro, including our eN. The Ellipsis Identification Parameter relates the number of features required to identify pro to the number of possible strong features available in a given grammar. Thus, English will need fewer features to identify pro (once this is licensed, of course), whereas German, which is heavily inflected, will need more. ... Pronominal eN. Indexicals contain a D that is marked for [ASE] and [PSE] (‘person’). Apparently, Ds specified for person features show ‘agreement’ enough and can both license and identify pro/eN. As far as non-person pronouns are concerned, case and gender agreement on pronominal Ds both license and identify the eN in the complement of Num.22 Given that, normally, only number agreement exists within the English DP, case and gender are enough to identify a pro. Under this account, the pronoun it would be assumed to be specified for some feature the is not specified for (the cannot take empty complements/ identify pro/eN). This could be neuter/inanimate gender, although this analysis seems hardly convincing (cf. Section 3.5 of Chapter 1). Even if it were specified for gender, the major flaw of the way things work in this account would be that gender is taken to be a feature on D (Lobeck 1995: 112–113) – something that does not appear to be correct (see Section 3.4 of Chapter 1). ... Pronominal clitics and eN. Moving to eN as ‘licensed’ by a clitic D, we encounter more difficulties. Recall the discussion of Spanish Ds in Section 2.1
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
of Chapter 2. The strong pronoun ella, the clitic pronoun la and the definite article la all mark the same set of features, informally given here as (at least) [fem] [sing] [def]. On top of that, all Ds in Spanish agree for number and gender. In the spirit of the Ellipsis Identification Parameter, it should be the case that either of the following holds: a. As the number of possible strong agreement features in the agreement system of noun phrases in Spanish is high, more strong agreement features on D are required to identify pro. So, we would expect that ella and la would not be able to identify a nominal pro but that ellas and las (specified for plural, possibly a strong agreement feature)23 or mi (specified for [+poss] [ASE] [PSE]) should be able to. This is not correct: la is a clitic and has, by definition, a null complement (see Section 2 of Chapter 2).24 Moreover, even article la can license and identify pro/eN: consider la eN del rio (‘the from the river’). b. If gender and number are enough to identify pro/eN in Spanish, all determiners should license and identify elliptical pro in this language. Should this be accurate, it would capture the Spanish facts but trivialise the Ellipsis Identification Parameter. In French and Italian, for instance, the number of possible strong features in the agreement systems of noun phrases in these two languages is the same as that of Spanish (including number and gender), but French and Italian articles, identically specified for number and gender, cannot license and/or identify pro/eN; the equivalents of la eN del rio are ungrammatical in both French (*la eN du fleuve) and Italian (*la eN della fiume). ... Noun ellipsis. Lobeck’s analysis is designed on the basis of noun ellipsis and, expectedly, it accounts for the phenomenon in a satisfactory way. To illustrate this, consider the scarcity of eN in English. According to the Ellipsis Identification Parameter, only a small number of strong agreement features in D and Num are required to identify an eN, given the paucity of possible strong agreement features in English noun phrases. Nevertheless, eN is scarce in English and one has to ‘take over’ because D and Num show hardly any strong agreement in most cases; hence, they cannot license eN. On the other hand, a Num specified for [plu] or a D specified for [partitive] or [poss] features are adequately “specified for strong agreement.” Lobeck’s account predicts that in exactly these environments a null nominal is licensed.
On the nature of empty nouns
Nevertheless, the account does not run smoothly. A [plu] feature is clearly marked in English by the /-z/ form on nouns and, in a sense, is enough to render Num ‘strong’. Similar facts can be said to hold for possessive D and the ’s form on possessors in SpecDP (Lobeck 1995: 89–91). From here on we run into a host of problems: an English [mass]/[partitive] feature (whether on D or Num) is not morphologically marked in any non-trivial sense.25 How is then eN licensed and identified? Even if one claimed that a [mass]/[partitive] feature is present on either D or Num (see also the discussion in Section 2.2.2 of Chapter 2), it is not a “strong agreement” feature, whatever ‘strong agreement’ would mean. A second problem is what Lobeck’s analysis (1995: 87–88) predicts for this and that, both singular Ds: they are predicted not to license eN and the following example is supplied for illustration (from Lobeck 1995: 88): (18) *Although John doesn’t like [DP this [e] that he got at K-Mart]…
Whatever the explanation for the unacceptability of (18) is, it is also true that the following are grammatical: (19) a. I like this/that eN b. I don’t like this scarf from Paris but I like that eN from Prague
Even if – against our discussion in Chapter 1 – we assume for a moment that this and that in (19a) are ‘intransitive Ds’, (19b) looks like a genuine example of noun ellipsis with that. Is it the case that a [Deictic] feature (Panagiotidis 2000b) on this and that can possibly count as ‘strong agreement’? Moreover, in both instances of (19), one can substitute for eN. The same is true for what we dubbed ‘superlative noun ellipsis’ in the previous chapter. How is the optionality of one explained in these particular cases, but not elsewhere? As seen several times so far, one is not always freely available. A more serious problem is that a licensing/identification model fails to capture ‘human noun ellipsis’ without auxiliary assumptions. Lobeck (1995: 67) offers a footnote in which Rizzi’s (1986) proarb is tentatively equated to the null noun of expressions like the rich. This leads to a serious complication, for the following reason: Rizzi’s proarb is an argument and thus, in more up-to-date terms, a DP pro-form. How can it be licensed as a noun? One could possibly claim that this is exactly a strong argument for a single, invariable pro: the same way V or Infl licenses a proarb by default, the ‘weak’ D the and the singular Num in the rich license, by default, a proarb. Both instances of proarb have a [+human, +generic, plural] specification. Apart from the obvious questions (why proarb
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
isn’t licensed in English in environments outside noun ellipsis and so on), this account is virtually untenable if we consider that noun ellipsis in English is impossible with just the overt. Consider: (20) a. [D the [NumP rich [Num plu] eN]] b. * [D the [Num plu] eN]
Two equally ‘strong’ Num heads (both ‘plural’) and two equally ‘weak’ D heads (the) can license/identify proarb (20a) or not (20b), depending on the presence of an AP at SpecNumP (or elsewhere inside the DP). If the presence of an AP at SpecNumP constitutes a manifestation of “strong agreement features” on D or Num, these features are at best elusive. ... Indefinite Argument Drop. Our criticism so far is mainly on the specific licensing/identification model for nominal pro. Apart from the question of gender on D – which seems to be essential to any licensing/ identification mechanism that would seek to justify the existence of a pro in non-person pronouns of languages like English, it could be the case that a better model than that proposed by Lobeck (which in turn heavily relies on Rizzi’s) can get the facts straight. I will now present evidence that there is a serious flaw in any licensing/identification model for nominal pro. This evidence against eN being an instance of pro that gets licensed and identified by an appropriate head concerns Indefinite Argument Drop. Recall the discussion in the previous chapter26 in which it was clearly shown that null indefinite arguments are not instances of either VP ellipsis or proarb or variables bound by a null topic. Moreover, they were shown to share crucial properties with both noun ellipsis and clitic pronouns. Now, suppose that – against this evidence – we attempt to formulate an account by which the whole null indefinite argument is an instance of pro licensed and identified by a head – or two heads together. Rizzi (1986) was able to pursue such an account for proarb because of its ‘default’ nature and its fixed ‘arbitrary’ referent.27 So, in the case of (21), repeated from Chapter 2, the licenser of proarb is V and its identification is claimed to be down to “a rule of arbitrary interpretation” (Rizzi 1986: 522). (21) a.
Questo esercizio mantiene proarb sani this exercise keeps healthy.
Let us now suppose that V in Modern Greek can license pro in object position. Three problems now emerge:
On the nature of empty nouns
a. All pro arguments in subject position are definite in MG but all pro arguments in (direct and indirect) object position are indefinite in MG. How is this exactly instantiated? b. Both null subjects and null objects can be identified for all combinations of gender and number28 in MG, according to Rizzi proarb is strictly [+human, +generic]. c. Subject pro can be argued to be identified by the φ features of ‘AgrS’. No such identifier exists for object pro in MG. Recall that it cannot be the case that V or (morphologically null) ‘AgrO’ identify an object pro in MG: content of pro “must be fully recoverable from the overt linguistic context…” (Rizzi 1986: 520). Let us now concede to a recent ‘extension’ of the identification convention, as it appears in Rizzi (1997: 282): if the licenser fails to identify pro, then either Control or discourse identification could be forced, both available by UG. This extension does not come without a theoretical price to pay: identification in terms of features encoded on a head (whether the licenser or not), can be reasonably claimed to constitute a grammar-internal operation; similarly if identification via Control is available by UG. On the contrary, identification by context, i.e. ‘after grammar’, weakens the identification convention qua a grammatical operation to virtual elimination. But let us say discourse identification is an option; if we need to uphold a licensing/ identification of pro model for null indefinite arguments we are forced to do so: null indefinite arguments do not even need overt antecedents. Even so, a difficulty arises, point a. above: Why is it the case that object pro in MG can never be identified as definite, even in the presence of a definite discourse antecedent? Recall the example from the previous chapter, repeated below as (22) and (23): (22) a.
Pires to palto? Took.2nd the coat b. to pira took.1st # c. pira took.1st ‘Did you take the coat?’ ‘I took it’
(23) a.
Pires palto? Took.2nd coat
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
b. # to pira took.1st c. pira took.1st ‘Did you take a coat?’ ‘I took one’
If ‘object pro’ was identified by context, (22c) would be fine as a reply to (22a) – it is not. Notice here that although the infelicitous use of (23b) as a reply to (23a) could be claimed to be amenable to some sort of pragmatic economy principle (say, ‘least effort’), this cannot be so for (22c) versus (22b). Let us now suppose that, while insisting on pursuing an account of null indefinite arguments as involving pro, we nevertheless recognise the affinity they display to the clitic DPs and noun ellipsis DPs. Along these lines, we would be led to assume that null indefinite arguments involve a pro the way a clitic DP or a noun ellipsis DP would: in this case, we would assume a pro of category N that is the complement of Num. The D would be null: the null indefinite D in Greek. This would capture the behaviour of Indefinite Argument Drop qua cliticisation (they both license CLLD – see Section 3.2.2 of the previous chapter) and qua noun ellipsis: all these phenomena involve an eN – which would now be shorthand for pro identified as a noun. It would follow that any D can license a nominal pro in MG, even the null variety.29 Even under this scenario, the difficulty in finding an appropriate identifier for this nominal pro is as great as before. There is no overt material inside the null indefinite DP whatsoever to identify the pro in noun position, as both D and Num are phonologically null. ... Summary: eN is not pro. From the discussion in this section it has emerged that an account of eN as pro licensed and identified is untenable; if non-person pronouns involve one, then their gender (like in English he and she) is either a mystery or the result of identification from a D or a Num head. In the case of clitics, some complex mechanism would be required to prevent articles from identifying nominal pro, whereas identically specified for ϕ features clitic Ds must still be permitted to. As far as noun ellipsis is concerned, the specific interpretations of various kinds of it in English remain unaccounted for (see next section, too). Finally, the phenomenon of Indefinite Argument Drop appears to be beyond the explanatory mechanisms of a licensing/identification model. These problems, along with the more general ones outlined in 3.1 render untenable the existence of a single invariable pro that
On the nature of empty nouns
appears wherever a ‘special’ licenser can govern it and that can ‘take up’ a variety of roles according to its identifiers – at least in its nominal ‘incarnation’ (see also Brody 1986). .. Inherent features on pro A way to overcome the difficulties of positing eN to be an instance of pro is to assume a null noun can bear inherent features. Of course, this null noun is not an instance of ‘Rizzi-style’ pro any more, although accounts according to which different instances of pro encode different sets of features are abundant. On the other hand, this null noun is not fully specified and still in need of licensing and identification. Roughly, this is the ‘middle way’ researchers like Kester (1996) follow. Kester (1996: Ch. 4) realises that the whole gamut of noun ellipsis cannot be captured just by positing a single invariable pro licensed and identified in different (nominal) environments. For instance, observe the contrast between the following minimal pair of instances of noun ellipsis (adapted from Kester 1996: 246): (24) a.
de besprokene eN the.COMMON talked.about ‘the person talked about’ b. het besprokene eN the.NEUTER talked.about ‘the matters talked about’
Descriptively, (24b) is an instance of ‘abstract noun ellipsis’ and (24a) of ‘human noun ellipsis’, albeit in singular. Both options are grammatical in Dutch. Kester (1996: 242–247) claims that, in (24a), the eN (her pro) is specified as [+human], whereas in (24b) it is specified as [–animate] [–count].30 These inherent features are in turn identified by the gender on D: common gender (24a) identifies a [+human] feature on pro, whereas neuter gender (24b) a [–animate] feature on pro. In Kester (1996: Ch. 5) the relevance of [±mass] features and [±count] features on nominal pro is also discussed. Simplifying somehow and restricting ourselves to the instances of noun ellipsis reviewed here, Kester assumes that nominal pro is always licensed by a DP-internal functional head F and that features on a nominal pro are identified either by the context or by appropriate features on either D or F. The following table summarises how this applies in Dutch.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
(25) Some types of nominal pro according to Kester elliptical pro human pro
identified by context (plural morphology on F)/common gender on D
mass pro abstract pro
default F non-plural morphology on F/neuter gender on D
inherent features Ø [+human]([+plural] [+generic]) [+mass] [–animate] [–count]
The situation in English would be either identical (as is the case for ‘mass pro’) or very similar with only the identifying features being different (so, a human pro is always identified as [+plural] [+human] [+generic] by the D the (Kester 1996: 273–275). Before commenting on Kester’s analysis based on pro with inherent features, let us point out how flexible a system it is. Of course, there are at least four different lexical entries for eN in (25), the underlying assumption by now is that empty categories have some inherent content – for instance, it would not be too far fetched to extrapolate an inherent categorial feature [N] for all instances of ‘nominal pro’ in (25) above. Observe that prima facie Kester’s account as sketched above is very similar to the one we gave for noun ellipsis in English in Chapter 2 (Section 1.2). If anything, the spirit is the same: a degree of lexical idiosyncrasy, expressible in terms of grammatical features on the null noun, is necessary to capture the distribution and function of null elements (in the nominal domain). This approach is theoretically preferable, if the alternative is the formulation of complex identification principles or positing licensing heads that hardly form a natural class but can nevertheless define the category of the licensee. Moreover, it can be rendered explanatorily superior. On the other hand, the idea that features on functional heads (inside the DP) identify the inherent ones on eN is a bit too much on the ‘baroque’ side; at the same time, some aspects of it are untenable in our framework of fixed loci for interpretable features and our analysis of gender as a feature of N. In order to illustrate this, let us compare the accounts of Kester’s approach, with that of our Chapter 2 (Section 1.2)31 on (24). Kester, as we saw above, assumes that a functional head F licenses both instances of pro. In the case of (24a), a common gender feature on D de identifies the [+human] feature of pro; in (24b) a neuter gender feature on D het identifies the [–animate] feature of pro. In both (24a & b), the affix -e on the adjective is the manifestation of a head F and identifies the non-plural feature
On the nature of empty nouns
specification of pro: as [–plural] in (24a) and as [–count] in (24b). Notice that by some ‘redundancy rules’ (1996: 243) common gender entails a [+human] feature on the nominal pro and so on. Moreover, a pro specified as [+human] [+plural], appropriately identified, is the nominal element in the plural version of (24a) de besprokenen (‘the ones talked about’). Let us now set up an account according to the assumptions so far in this study. In (24a), the D de agrees in gender with the common gender feature on eN, in (24b) the D het with the neuter/unspecified for gender eN. In (24a) Num is specified as singular and in de besprokenen as plural, the same eN is involved in both cases. Common gender on eN entails a ‘human’ interpretation, absence of it a non-human one, no [±human] feature is necessary. The situation is similar with English and Dutch non-person pronouns: he & she and hij (= ‘he’) & zij (= ‘she’): although in Dutch gender agreement exists, zij cannot refer to an inanimate feminine entity: in both languages gender on eN directly triggers ‘animacy’ or ‘human’ status at or beyond LF,32 not by identifying a [+human] feature. Comparing the two accounts we observe that our account dispenses with identification altogether; for instance, the gender marking on D is a result of agreement and so on. Of course, we can informally say that agreement makes visible the features interpreted on other heads: a number marking on D makes visible the number specification of Num in these eN or them eN but observe that number marking is there anyway, identification of eN is not its purpose: these hooligans, #them days, #them ones. Agreement can be absent altogether, as is the case in Indefinite Argument Drop. In the following section we will attempt to offer a coherent account of what empty nouns are and in how many guises they can appear. To this end, we will further spell out the approach on empty nouns, only sketched so far.
. A theory of empty nouns The key concept behind an approach to empty nouns that can capture all their different types and behaviours (as discussed in the first two chapters) is that they are all listed in the lexicon as heads of the category N0. That is, empty nouns, whether overt (like one, kare etc.) or null (eN) are listed in the lexicon. They are all heads (as shown in Section 2) and their crucial property is that they do not denote concepts, they are devoid of descriptive features. This was shown to be their one significant characteristic that sets them apart from de-
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
scriptive nouns and defines them as a natural class. Recall that one common characteristic of all empty nouns is their inability to assign θ roles/lack of argument structure. Another one is that they trigger pronominal (i.e. ‘semantic variable’) interpretation of the DP they form part of, an interpretation only as restricted as the material inside the DP: semantic33 features on the N itself, φ and other features on Num and D, APs at SpecNumP, possessors at SpecDP. Both characteristics derive from empty nouns being non-descriptive. The fact that both overt and null empty nouns are listed in the lexicon and that no (special) licensing and identification is claimed to be required for the members of the null variety should be straightforward. Apart from technical (Section 3.1) and empirical (Section 3.2) problems there are also conceptual ones regarding the ‘need’ for empty categories to be licensed and identified. Take licensing first. The licensing condition for ‘DP’ pro in Rizzi (1986) is that it must be Case-marked by an appropriate X0. On reflection, this ‘condition’ is no different from the Case filter: all DPs must be Case marked. At the same time, the requirement that pro be Case marked from only designated heads in each grammar (none in English, Infl and V in Italian etc.) seems completely arbitrary: the licensing heads per grammar form an ad hoc set and do not belong to a natural class. Ultimately, the place of such an idiosyncrasy is in the lexicon – somehow (see also the next chapter). In this vein, Speas (1996: 201) notes that a licensing condition for empty categories “necessitates that Grammar allow some heads to be designated as licensers of a category with particular phonological properties (namely, the property of being unpronounced). There are no equivalent designations in other components of syntax involving other phonological properties.” The above criticism also works the other way round (ibid.): a licensing condition “necessitates that a particular lexical entry, pro, is subject to a special requirement in virtue of its phonological status. […] there are no other lexical items whose phonological properties cause them to be subject to some special syntactic requirement.” As far as identification is concerned, it has by now been shown to be too broad an operation that can be carried either in grammar or beyond grammar altogether. Even if we adhere to identification in grammar, further complications emerge:
On the nature of empty nouns
a. It is not always the case that (all) features for a postulated single invariable pro can be copied onto it by the identifying head, cf. Indefinite Argument Drop. b. It hardly seems to be the case that the features on the ‘identifying head’ belong (= are interpreted) there, cf. number on D. c. Usually features are marked on the ‘identifying head’ whether they are needed (for identification of pro) or not (i.e. when there is an overt constituent instead of pro). This is illustrated in (16) and (26) below. d. Once we have abandoned the idea of a single invariable pro, identification boils down to features on the ‘identifying head’ making manifest inherent features on pro. Although this is assumed by a number of researchers, it nevertheless is a mechanism with a ‘redundancy’ flavour. Thus, we are better off claiming that in (26a) the plural marking on D is no different to that on (26b) or (26c): it does not identify anything but, rather, agrees with the specification of Num: (26) a. These eN b. These ones c. These dogs
On top of that, dog, one and eN are all N0 constituents listed in the lexicon. Let us now turn to the details of this proposal. . Grammatical nouns and Unique Syntactic Behavior The number and type of features that can appear on empty nouns, by definition, excludes descriptive features: the features that encode the concepts ordinary nouns denote. So, empty nouns cannot carry features that denote concepts like CAT, FAX or SKY. This certainly restricts the number of features that empty nouns can encode to the following: a. Phonological features. b. Semantic features that canonically appear as derivational morphology, like gender or honorific features (recall the discussion of Japanese ‘Npronouns’ in the previous chapters). The intuition here would be that empty nouns, in the face of their lack of denotation, are learned and distinguished from each other by virtue of their phonological or semantic features. In other words, we would be surprised to
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
find a language which contains two empty nouns specified for, say, feminine gender and [+honorific] while both having a phonological representation such as /vuz/ or zero. This intuition is captured, elaborated and formalised by Emonds’ (1985: 165) Unique Syntactic Behavior without any additional stipulations. At the same time, Unique Syntactic Behavior makes a very interesting prediction regarding the number of possible empty nouns. .. Unique Syntactic Behavior Emonds (1985) starts off with the generalisation that “the only possible open categories are the major lexical categories.” This leaves functional categories as closed classes, but not exclusively. In fact, as he makes explicit, there are indeed members of lexical categories that actually form closed classes. These closed classes, subsets of the members of lexical categories, are governed by the following definition and principle (Emonds 1985: 165): Definition: A feature with semantic content not used in any syntactic rule is called a (purely) semantic feature.34 Unique Syntactic Behavior: Lexical items in the closed categories cannot be differentiated from each other solely by purely semantic features.
Emonds discusses the nature of syntactic features and asserts that a ‘syntactic rule’ is any operation that applies in what we today call ‘narrow syntax’ (i.e. the Numeration to LF component). Before proceeding, we must point out that the notion ‘semantic’ feature in the definition above is essentially that of a non-descriptive feature with some LF interpretation. Limiting our discussion here to nouns, Unique Syntactic Behavior does not apply to descriptive nouns. This is so because, first of all, it would make the wrong predictions: the nouns pen (‘writing instrument’) and pen (‘fenced area’) have identical phonological and ‘syntactic’ features and differ only with respect to their semantic feature, albeit one encoding a concept, a descriptive one. In other words, all other things being equal, a contrast in terms of descriptive semantic features can sanction the existence of a minimal pair of lexical entries, by virtue of the different concepts denoted. This is not the case with other semantic features like gender or ‘agent’ (expressed by the -er suffix in English) and so on. There is indeed a clear intuition about the difference between semantic features that encode concepts, like CAT and FAX, and semantic features that do not, like gender and [honorific]. This difference is possibly a not merely quantitative one, but I have no more to say on this issue. What is important here is that descriptive (concept-denoting) features can ‘make’ a distinct lexi-
On the nature of empty nouns
cal entry, where ‘purely semantic’ ones cannot. Given that concepts are, possibly, infinite in number, concept-denoting lexical entries form open classes as well. On the other hand, non-descriptive lexical entries must form closed classes. Emonds (1985: 165–168) explains the fact that both functional and closed lexical categories are closed classes: both lack concept-denoting semantic features. Both functional and closed substantive categories, lacking descriptive features can, apparently, have their lexical entries distinguished only on the basis of formal features. In the case of nouns, next to the open class of descriptive nouns, there is a closed class of grammatical nouns the members of which can be differentiated from each other only by virtue of their ‘formal’ features. As should be obvious by now, the following holds: (27) Empty nouns are grammatical nouns
To recapitulate, Unique Syntactic Behavior predicts the following: a. Members of closed lexical categories (‘grammatical’ nouns, verbs and so on) can be of a limited number only. b. The above is a consequence of their lack of (descriptive) semantic features. As here we do not support the idea that functional categories are nonprojecting (Emonds, ibid.; Fukui & Speas 1986), we will have to establish the difference between ‘grammatical’ lexical categories (to which, clearly, empty nouns belong) and functional categories along the lines of their categorial features. So, for instance, ‘grammatical’ nouns like one, according to standard views,35 will behave like all other nouns in terms of their syntactic behaviour: they will inflect for number, can be modified by APs and so on. More on this in Chapter 5. ..
Elementary lexical entries Let us now look into our findings of Chapters 1 and 2 in some detail, in the light of (27). Empty nouns are grammatical nouns and do not denote concepts. Moreover, grammatical nouns can be differentiated from each other only by virtue of different formal features, not purely semantic ones. What does this exactly mean, though? What are the implications for the learnability and distribution of empty nouns?
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
... Formal features. The concept of a ‘formal’ or ‘syntactic’ feature cannot resist much scrutiny in a model of grammar where only interface conditions hold. So, a feature must be either LF interpretable (‘semantic’) or PF interpretable (‘phonological’). Of course, there seem to exist uninterpretable versions of features, at least of semantic ones. Now, suppose we are correct in our assumption that agreement is one of the effects of feature checking. We can now see Emonds’s ‘Definition’ and ‘Unique Syntactic Behavior’ at work. Take two hypothetical lexical entries of the eN variety in English. One is eN specified for feminine gender and the other is eN specified for an ‘agent’ feature, the null variant of the noun doer. The ‘feminine’ eN exists, it takes part in at least one syntactic operation: checking the uninterpretable feminine gender feature on the D she. On the contrary, the eN specified for an ‘agent’ feature does not exist, there is no syntactic operation it takes place in: the feature ‘agent’ does not appear anywhere as an uninterpretable one inside the DP. As discussed in the previous chapter, there is nothing inherently ‘formal’ in features such as gender: it is a ‘purely’ semantic feature on actress in DPs like the Italian actress but a syntactically active one on eN in DPs like she eN as it checks an uninterpretable gender feature on D she. The fact that in Romance and other languages gender is more ‘grammatically active’ has nothing to do with the interpretable gender feature on N as such but, rather, with the distribution of uninterpretable gender features inside the DP: on Ds, APs etc. ... An alternative to identification of null nouns. Unique Syntactic Behavior, as reinterpreted above, is no more than an accurate description of what factors condition the learnability of null nouns, namely agreement on D, Num and APs inside the DP. An eN specified for an ‘agent’ feature does not exist because it would be differentiated by an eN without one solely by virtue of this ‘agent’ feature. Now, it is reasonable to assume the existence of such a feature, compare (a) print to (a) printer, (a) ride to (a) rider and so on, in principle an eN specified for this feature should be possible. Because human languages are not abstract formal entities but must be learnable, the learner needs some indication of the feature makeup of silent grammatical nouns (and other silent lexical entries). An eN specified for an ‘agent’ feature is not learnable, as there are no clues inside the DP for the presence of such features on eN. Such clues could only be uninterpretable ‘agent’ features on, say, D that would trigger a checking operation either overtly or covertly (manifested as agreement). It is only in this sense that null
On the nature of empty nouns
nouns are ‘identified’ by the overt linguistic context: once, in order to have their feature makeup learnt. Consider Indefinite Argument Drop once more. The phonologically null D does not need to ‘identify’ the eN in its complement, an eN merges with Num and then with D like any other N head. On the other hand, this eN exists in the mental grammar of speakers of Modern Greek because it was learnt and it was learnt because in some environment its gender specification was made visible by an agreeing D and/or adjective. .. Summing it up In the absence of descriptive features, lexical items (whether functional or substantive) can only be distinguished on the basis of the finite and restricted set of (non-descriptive) semantic features that they carry. These features are language-specific, drawn from a small pool that UG makes available. So, to better illustrate the point, if there were only two features (besides the categorial one [N]), say α and β, available in a particular language for the nominal domain, there would be just four possible grammatical nouns:36 (28) +β -β
+α [N][α][β] [N][α]
-α [N][β] [N]
A lexical item like the one in the bottom right corner of the table would be defined solely on the basis of its categorial feature.37 So, an elementary head can in principle consist of a categorial feature only – let’s assume this to be true for both lexical and functional categories for the time being. Having said that, we should not fail to add that if a feature, say [β], has no uninterpretable counterparts inside the DP that could trigger syntactic operations like agreement, it cannot be learnt as a feature on null empty nouns. If this is true, then the [±β] distinction in (28) is eventually neutralised and only the following null grammatical nouns are possible in this language: [N] and [N] [α]. . The theory at work The theory developed above considers empty nouns to be grammatical nouns. Grammatical nouns are combinations of features and are listed in the
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
lexicon but do not denote concepts. The grammatical nouns available in a given grammar are the learnable subset of the possible feature combinations of ‘nominal’ features – as captured by Unique Syntactic Behavior. Let us now see what kind of predictions this theory makes. In order to do so, we will review all the instances of pronominals and noun ellipsis dealt with in the previous two chapters. .. English English is a very interesting language as far as empty nouns are concerned: it displays a limited number of ‘nominal’ features and even fewer instances of agreement with such features. So, the following instances of eN seem to exist in English: a. An eN specified for [N] and masculine gender, its occurrence restricted to the complement of the agreeing D he. A [human] feature is not necessary; recall that, ceteris paribus, gender on eN entails animacy. b. An eN specified for [N] and feminine gender, its occurrence also restricted to the complement of the D she. c. An eN specified for just the categorial feature [N]. This dramatically underspecified eN occurs in all instances of noun ellipsis in English. Its impoverishment could also be a defining factor in the interpretation of elliptical material within a DP (see Section 2.2 in the previous chapter). It also appears in the complements of the remaining personal pronouns38 as well as with possessive forms like mine, yours etc. d. At least one overt empty noun, one, specified for [N] as well as some feature that is matched only by a ‘countable’ Num. Alternatively, we can say that the impossibility of one as a complement of a mass (under)specification of Num is the result of some ‘lexical economy’ requirement, similar to the one that bans #we ones in most dialects of English. This second option avoids the suspect underlying assumption that lexical heads can have features that need checking but would entail that grammatical nouns can be differentiated on the basis of phonological features (see Section 4.2.3 for discussion). The four lexical entries above are sufficient to account for the range of occurrences of empty nouns in English.39 Of course, given the discussion in Section 1.2 of Chapter 2, not all combinations of empty nouns with differently specified Num heads and Ds are possible – the scant DP-internal morphology of English triggering the complications that have already been dealt with. To
On the nature of empty nouns
this end, recall that a DP like [DP the [NumP [AP] Numsing [N eN]]] can be generated by syntax – and sometimes is – but given its highly ambiguous morphological form, a variant [DP the [NumP [AP] Numsing [N one]]] is preferred.40 Note that the minimally specified41 eN in a structure [DP the [NumP [AP] Num [N eN]]] does not need to be specially licensed or ‘identified’ – it is merged there like any other noun that is listed in the lexicon. .. Languages with richer DP morphology In order to see how empty nouns can operate let us now have a look at languages in which ‘morphological ambiguity’ is not so great a problem. First of all, in most Romance, Slavic and Germanic languages as well as Balkan languages (like Modern Greek, Albanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian), gender agreement usually appears on the D and/or the adjective. This provides evidence to the learner for a repertory of grammatical nouns containing at least the following entries: a. An eN specified just for the categorial [N] feature (and the default gender). b. Entries of eN specified for the other gender(s). Observe that the state of affairs is very similar to that in English, as European languages do not mark agreement for any other semantic features of the N inside the DP or on the verb; according to Unique Syntactic Behavior, grammatical nouns specified for any other of these features are unlearnable. Overt grammatical nouns like one are only found in dialects of Mainland Scandinavian, Frisian and Afrikaans that lack gender agreement inside DP and, thus, suffer from the ‘morphological ambiguity’ of English (Kester 1996: 266–268). In all other cases, different lexical entries for eN ‘serve’ in both pronominals and noun ellipsis. Languages like Brazilian Portuguese, Quiteño Spanish, Modern Greek and Bulgarian (see also Section 3.2 in the previous chapter), which possess null indefinite determiners, have also the option of what was here tagged Indefinite Argument Drop, after Giannakidou & Merchant (1996).42 .. Overt empty nouns and Unique Syntactic Behavior We have seen that a null empty noun (a silent combination of non-descriptive features of category [N]) is not learnable unless its feature content can be identified via agreement somewhere in the input the language learner receives. What is the situation like when it comes to phonologically expressed combinations of non-descriptive features of category [N], overt empty nouns?
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
Emonds (1985) includes nouns like thing, person and so on in the class of grammatical nouns, not just one that we discussed here. Given this (possibly correct) assumption, consider ‘N-pronouns’ of languages like Japanese and Thai – they are roughly similar to English nouns like thing, person and so on, albeit specified for other features, like honorific, politeness, deference and so on as well. A look at the table of 1st person Thai pronouns in Chapter 1 could possibly be enlightening towards this, even though it appears that not all the features distinguished there are grammatically encoded on the lexical items themselves. Now, in languages like Japanese, politeness, honorific and gender features sometimes trigger agreement on the verb (Nolan 2000);43 in terms of the wording of the Definition preceding Unique Syntactic Behavior they appear to be “feature[s] with semantic content […] used in […] syntactic rule[s].” On the other hand, this is not the case for Thai – there is no agreement inside the nominal phrase, or elsewhere, for any of the features its N-pronouns encode (P. Viriyasirikul, p.c.). Thus, we would be led to deduce that Unique Syntactic Behavior does not hold for overt empty nouns. This is not entirely accurate. If Unique Syntactic Behavior is a condition on learnability, semantic features not agreed with are legitimate when marked on overt empty nouns, as they are visible in a direct way. To elaborate: what seems to be crucial about the learnability of a lexical item (thus: its inclusion in the mental lexicon) is the possibility for the learner to retrieve its feature combination from the input. Overt empty nouns possess phonological content, so they are apparently learnt like all other nouns in the language:44 their feature content is in a sense marked on their phonological content. When it comes to null empty nouns, learning them becomes a more complex matter. The learner has to retrieve their feature makeup by agreeing functional heads inside (or also, perhaps, outside) the DP. This is the only ‘identification’ eN needs. On top of that, Unique Syntactic Behavior accurately predicts that a language like Dutch, which marks only gender on the D (= has uninterpretable gender features on D), cannot possess an empty noun marked as [+distant] in the lexicon or, a fortiori, differentiate between two empty nouns one marked as [N][+distant] and the other as just [N]. . Conclusion Empty nouns, whether overt or null, are noun heads (N0). Their lack of arguments and consequent surface appearance as NPs is the result of their not
On the nature of empty nouns
denoting a predicate and the resulting inability to sanction arguments (either by θ assignment or otherwise – cf. Grimshaw 1990). A unified treatment of both overt and null empty nouns as grammatical nouns, in the sense of Emonds (1985), was offered. There are no (special) licensing and identification conditions for null empty nouns (eN): not only are such conditions technically unattainable, but they also fail to capture the empirical facts (with Indefinite Argument Drop being the most evident case) and are theoretically undesirable. All empty/grammatical nouns are listed in the lexicon and can be freely merged as the ‘semantic’ heads of DPs (Abney 1987; more on this in Chapter 5). The resulting DPs, that come under the descriptive labels of “noun ellipsis,” “pronouns,” “pronominal clitics” or “null indefinite arguments” all receive a semantic variable interpretation at LF restricted by the various features inside the DP. Some instances of DPs with eN can be blocked in particular languages because of independent constraints, one of which, morphological ambiguity, we looked into here. Although overt empty nouns are learned like all the other words of a language, lexical entries for eN must be learned obliquely; because they have no phonological content, their feature makeup can be only learned via agreeing functional heads (inside the DP or elsewhere).
Notes . The discussion in Section 2 closely follows and expands Panagiotidis (2000). . Let us gloss over the implausibility of intermediate (X′) level entries in the lexicon and assume X′ and XP equivalent (as in Speas 1991). . ‘Similar’ instead of ‘identical’ because of the bizarre behaviour of few constructions like those eN of Chemistry, which are acceptable and which I have no explanation whatsoever for. . The categorial label for functional prepositions is a matter of debate. Emonds (1985: Ch.6) has discussed the relationship between Complementisers (C heads) and (functional) prepositions. Starke (1995) and Kayne (1998) explicitly assume them to be C heads. On the other hand, the fact that case is marked on functional prepositions has led some researchers to label them K(ase), related to Determiners (cf. Giusti 1995). . The fact that the thematic/non-thematic dichotomy cuts through the instances of of is only prima facie surprising. See also Oga (2000) for more arguments supporting the existence of two types of of, related to (in)alienable possession. Tremblay (1996) shows exactly the same to be the case with with.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. We leave Possessor aside in our discussion. If this θ role is parallel to that of (verbal) Agent (cf. Grimshaw 1990), then it is either assigned by a light n (assuming a Larsonian shell) or Kayne’s (1994) Poss functional head, cf. Kratzer (1996). In the first case, we can relate the ability of all (?) Ns to license a possessor to their categorial status, as in Tremblay (1996). . Whether one or both of these arguments of N moves out of the NP later in the derivation is not a matter of concern. In any case, argument chains of N, trivial or not, have their foot inside NP, on a par with argument chains of θ assigners like Vs, as standard analyses go. . Perhaps this could be another implicit piece of evidence in support of the notion of a ‘maladaptive’ grammar? (Reuland 1998; Lightfoot 1999, who uses the term). . The limited acceptability of idha ipokinites praxikopimaton ke ghnorisa _ epanastaseon I.saw instigators coups. and I.met revolutions. must be attributed to this example being an instance of gapping – which does not seem to involve empty constituents but some form of PF elision (see references in Section 2 of the previous chapter). . The ban on expressions like John’s one in some dialects of English probably has to do with some sort of “lexical economy”: as the alternative elliptical John’s is also available. In any case, the deviance, in the dialects where it constitutes one, is milder than that of, say, (1) and only (1) and the like seem to violate a syntactic principle. . The implicit background assumption was that all empty categories were nominals of a phrasal level. This would distinguish them from both radically empty nodes in a tree and things like empty Complementisers as in I know that/Ø I will have to go. See also Section 3.1.2.2. . I will hardly discuss features of PRO here. See Safir (1996), Quicoli (1996) and Manzini & Roussou (2000) for discussion. . ‘Interpretation’ condition originally: Rizzi (1986: 521). . A point of view that (tacitly) assumes universality of φ-features (cf. Chomsky 1998) is against this premise. . If PRO does exist, that is: Borer (1994), Manzini & Roussou (2000). . See also Section 3.2.1. . Not our F in Section 2 of the previous chapter, just lack of imagination on my behalf. . Or within the Chomsky (1998) framework where this operation is asymmetric and Case features of nominals are unspecified, ‘waiting’ to take up the specification from the relevant head: Nominative from T, Accusative from v and so on… Rizzi (1997: 282) argues that “head government continues to be needed […] for many cases in which a head enters
On the nature of empty nouns
into some kind of ‘action at a distance’ with the specifier of its complement (for case assignment/checking or the licensing of ec’s).” . We do not want Case to be transmitted to the pro in the object position via the chain: if there is a full DP in object position (a double) it would not need Case from elsewhere and Kayne’s generalisation (but see endnote 7 in Chapter 4) would be lost, at least for the languages that it seemingly holds (e.g. Spanish and Romanian). . Things become even more complicated in a long-distance licensing mechanism for pro by a clitic base-generated in the verbal domain (see also endnote19). This is why Sportiche (1996) is forced to postulate movement of pro; Koopman (2000) likewise. . With consequences for subject pro, in Chapter 4. . D governs pro/eN by a version of Baker’s (1988) Government Transparency Corollary (Lobeck 1995: 85–93). Chomsky (1993: 18) offers a reinterpretation of Government Transparency Corollary as head raising, see also Chapter 5. . At least according to Lobeck (1991): she only considers elements marked for plural to be [+Num], cf. her Ellipsis Licensing principle in Section 3.1.2.3. . It could be claimed that the extra feature that drives clitic movement could be the ‘identifying’ feature but it is not morphologically marked anyway. . This is not necessarily the case in languages like Dutch (Kester 1996: Ch. 5), where, arguably, a [mass]/[partitive] feature is morphologically marked on the adjective’s schwa affix in an elliptical DP. . Chapter 2, Section 4.1. . This is challenged by Cinque (1988) who distinguishes two types of arbitrary pro. See also Shlonsky (1997: 134–137) for some discussion. . Person is irrelevant: DPs marked for [ASE] [PSE], these having ‘indexical’ properties, cannot be indefinite; see Chapter 1, Section 3.1. . The consequences of such an analysis would be complex and far-reaching. To mention but one, we would have to account for the impossibility of a definite D in nominative to take a null complement as well as the extremely limited productivity of the [D Num eN PP] (e.g. los del rio) construction. . Kester does not posit a Num head and so number and mass features are situated on N/nominal pro according to her. . To be fleshed out, elaborated and generalised in the next section. . Apparently it and het (the neuter variants) are not specified for gender, [neuter] is probably not a feature specification in these languages. Towards this, recall that both it and het have expletive uses. . What we previously dubbed ‘derivational morphology’ features.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Chomsky (1995: 230–231) for a reconfirmation of this distinction. This definition shall be clarified in what follows. . Postal (1969), Emonds (1985), Radford (1993), Kayne (1994). . The tacit assumption below is again that of a privative/unary feature system: [–X] means no X. . A famous case of such an item, in the domain of determiners, could be expletive there. Chomsky (1995: 287) says that “the expletive has neither Case nor φ-features. FF(there) contains only D […] the expletive has no formal features apart from its category.” . The cases of I and you (.) are tricky. These two pronouns never take overt complements and, thus, obligatoriness of selection is not a valid argument towards positing a complement for them. Moreover, the Num shell also seems redundant, as both these pronouns can be fully specified at LF by their [ASE] and [PSE] features. We will return to them in Chapter 5. . A puzzling question here would be why Indefinite Argument Drop is impossible in English (why the DPs ‘ØD+NumPLU+eN’ and ‘ØD+NumMASS+eN’ are impossible). There exists some non-trivial degree of idiosyncrasy with respect to where concept-denoting nouns are necessary (as opposed to grammatical ones): los eN del rio (‘the ones from the river’) is grammatical in Spanish, its equivalents in Modern Greek are not. Given the discussion in Section 2, they should in principle be possible, as PPs are not arguments of the noun. Apparently, some similar (morphological?) constraint bans phonologically null objects in English. More research into these morphological constraints (as well as those of the “the+eN → it” kind) would shed more light into the intricacies of where exactly null grammatical nouns are possible. See also endnote 42 for a similar situation in Spanish and Portuguese. . This is highly unlikely to be an instance of ‘global economy’: we would not want morphological ambiguity to be a criterion by which the computational system compares derivations. . Apparently an eN specified for gender will not be inserted there under some version of the Elsewhere condition. . I have no answer why European Portuguese (Raposo 1986) and Castilian Spanish (Campos 1986) do not permit the combination of a null indefinite D and eN, but seek recourse to operator-variable configurations for null arguments (see also Section 4.1.3 in the previous chapter). See also endnote 39 for a similar problem in English. . I am grateful to Stephen Nolan for discussing his work in progress with me. . For an excellent review: Bloom (2000). See also Oshima-Takane (1988, 1999) on how pronouns are learnt.
C 4
Pro and empty pronouns
. . . . .
The situation so far Why pro is not composed out of (at least) a null noun EPP and head movement On verbal D (DV) and verbal Num Summary
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. The situation so far In the previous three chapters it has been shown that elementary lexical entries can consist of as little as a categorial feature. Some null nouns are such elementary lexical entries on the lexical category side, expletives like there (bearing a D feature only) probably exemplify elementary lexical entries on the functional category side. Moreover, we have shown that empty nouns can head trivial NPs complementing ‘pronominal’ Ds cross-linguistically (strong pronouns and pronominal clitics alike) and are even used as pronouns “on their own.” The lack of descriptive content of these nouns has been argued here to trigger what is understood as ‘pronominality’. On top of that, we have demonstrated that one and other ‘phrasal’ nominals reduce to NPs headed by an empty noun, either phonologically null (like eN in pronominals and instances of noun ellipsis) or overt (one itself). Again, the fact that empty nouns denote no concept is their defining property. In the previous chapter we have explicitly argued against elaborate licensing and identification mechanisms in grammar. We have shown a licensed and identified empty noun qua an empty category to be undesirable on conceptual, theory-internal and empirical grounds. From that discussion it should have been made obvious that the arguments against an ‘NP-pro’ in the previous chapter mutatis mutandis carry over to ‘DP-pro’, the empty pronoun itself; hence, the next candidate for elimination is pro that serves as subject or object. Note that this is not an easy matter, for a series of reasons that will become clear later, and that the incompatibility of pro with minimalist assumptions and methods already underlies ‘anti-pro’ studies such as Manzini & Savoia (1997, 2001) and Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998). One might be tempted to pursue an idea already in Radford (1993), Corver & Delfitto (1999) and – to a certain extent – Koopman (2000) and claim that pro is a null DP with a structure similar to that of null indefinite arguments: a null noun complementing a null D. There is a number of reasons why this cannot be possible for most languages, to be discussed in Section 2. In Section 3 we will review, comment and expand on Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998), who offer an alternative account of pro as a D head. In Section 4 we offer an account of null subjects that capitalises on the existence of verbal Ds (as in Ritter 1995), while building on concepts and successful analyses in Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998).
Pro and empty pronouns
Briefly, this chapter will serve two purposes: first, it will establish the fact that licensed and identified null pronominals such as pro have no position in a parsimonious theory of grammar; second, it will explore the limits of the distribution of empty nouns and their triggering pronominal reference, as it is to be argued that agreement markers do not involve an empty noun. Throughout this chapter, our attention will be focused on pro in subject position. This is partly for methodological and descriptive, and partly for theoretical reasons. As far as the descriptive reasons are concerned, subject pro has been massively discussed and analysed since the postulation of this empty category (Chomsky 1982), in a far more thorough and detailed as well as intriguing manner than object pro (Y. Huang 1995: 1102–1112 for a review of null objects). As for the theoretical reason, it seems to be the case that null subjects are more widespread than empty objects, and this seems to be for a real reason: null objects do not seem to involve a pro or whatever pro stands for: we have already examined in detail null indefinite objects and variables in object position. As will have become clearer by the end of this chapter we will assume without discussion that null objects never involve a pro.
. Why pro is not composed out of (at least) a null noun As is known (e.g. Rizzi 1997) subject pro is always definite.1 As we have seen in Chapter 1, this would be expected anyway as far as 1st and 2nd person pro is concerned; if pro is somehow specified for person, that is [ASE] and [PSE] features, definiteness is entailed. Now, as far as its grammatical representation is concerned, even non-person pro is definite; of course such a thing as an ‘arbitrary 2nd person’ schema exists in both null subject (1b) and non-null subject (1a) languages. This can be safely assumed to result from a pragmatic, or at least post-grammatical, mechanism: (1) a. You never know… b. Pote dhen pro xeris… never not know.2nd ‘You never know…’
Modern Greek
Let us now consider non-person pro. pro behaves like overt personal pronouns in that it is definite, this being one of the differences between pro and PRO in its arbitrary interpretation.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
(2) pro fuma smokes ‘He/she/it smokes’
Italian
The example above means “he/she/it smokes”, as glossed, but not “someone smokes” or “people smoke” etc.; pro in (2) cannot take an indefinite or arbitrary interpretation. Italian is a very interesting language because the clitic si must be used instead of ‘arbitrary’ pro in subject positions (Manzini 1986; Rizzi 1986); null subject languages like Greek and Spanish must either use an overt indefinite expression or employ a strategy similar to the one illustrated in (1) and use a non-person plural pro. The definite character of pro in languages with overt definite D heads, like Italian above, already constitutes evidence against pro as a phonologically null DP consisting of a null determiner and a null noun. In Italian, more or less as is the case in English, a null D only heads those DPs with an existential or generic reading (pace Delfitto & Schroten 1991 and Longobardi 1994). It does not take much theorising to establish that postulating a null D to head a definite pronominal such as subject pro, is at least problematic, while definite pronominals with an overt D at object positions do exist in these languages: pronominal clitics. More evidence for the implausibility of pro as a DP headed by a null D comes from Modern Greek. In MG, DPs with an existential or generic reading are also headed by the ‘definite’ article2 and there are no instances of specific or definite DPs headed by null Ds: even proper names take obligatory articles when used as arguments. It goes without saying that MG has also Ds cliticised on Infl when an object DP contains a null noun: pronominal clitics. A null pronominal with a null D and eN would stand as an indefinite argument, which is exactly what happens. For the same reasons, an idea that argument pro in languages like Italian or Greek is a bare trivial NP (or NumP) without the DP shell is also untenable. First of all, if only DPs can be arguments (Stowell 1991; Longobardi 1994), this option is automatically out: pro can be an argument. On top of that, a bare NP/NumP would receive either a predicative or an ‘indefinite’ interpretation, but pro is always definite. An extra complicating factor would be that overt generics in subject position force the presence of a D in Italian and MG (Longobardi 1994 and endnote 2 on the identity of this D). Thus, a structure [DP Ddef [NumP Num [NP eN]]], where D is definite is an impossible structure for pro in null subject languages like Italian and MG: in
Pro and empty pronouns
these languages null articles are indefinite; moreover, they also possess overt definite determiners that can combine with eN in the context of ‘pronominal clitics’; finally, they are generally resistant to subject DPs without an overt determiner. Having said that, nothing should prevent us in principle from postulating [DP Ddef [NumP Num [NP eN]]] as the null pronominal subject of languages like Japanese. Recall that Japanese, in the best of cases, will only possess null articles (if at all, cf. Fukui 1987) and demonstratives (Noguchi 1997: 786) as D heads. We will briefly return to languages like Japanese in Sections 3.1 and 4.4.5.
. EPP and head movement As we have seen in the previous chapter discussing eN as an instance of pro, the licensing/identification approach for (pronominal) empty categories is problematic in a minimalist system. Even if we restrict our attention to subject pro, recall that, by hypothesis, a range of identifiers for it are made available by UG: rich inflection, control, discourse antecedents – the last group being clearly pragmatic (Huang 1991; Rizzi 1997: 282). These and other concerns, lengthily discussed in the previous chapter (especially Section 3.1.2), have led to the emergence of (at least) two alternatives to pro. The first is based on a theory of aspectual features as in Borer (1994), Arad (1996, 1998), Manzini & Savoia (2001) and correlates the presence or absence of an overt subject to the strength of a relevant aspectual ‘subject’ head. The second one, a modified version of which we will discuss and to some extent adopt here, postulates that the EPP feature on T (cf. Chomsky 1995, 1998) is always strong but that non-null subject languages have to check it in a Spec-Head configuration by movement of a DP to SpecTP, whereas null subject languages have the (more economical somehow) alternative of head-moving an appropriate head to the locus of EPP, say T (Pollock 1997; Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998). Here we will build on the analysis of Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou, a brief sketch of which follows.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998) As is known, three kinds of ‘DP pro’ are distinguished (Rizzi 1986: 540–543): a. referential pro, which is a proper argument. It refers to real world entities, pace its pronominality of course. It must be identified for both person and number features. b. (quasi)argumental pro, that can only receive an ‘atmospheric’ θ role and is identified for number only. c. expletive pro, a null variety of expletives like it and there and English; it does not receive a θ role, it is identified for no φ features and the sole purpose for its presence is satisfying the Extended Projection Principle (EPP): all clauses must have a subject. The following table summarises the state of affairs according to Rizzi: (3) Type of pro referential pro (quasi) argumental pro expletive pro
Interpretation referential, argumental argumental (‘atmospheric’) expletive
Specified for person, number number Ø
Italian examples pro fuma (= 2) pro piove (‘it rains’) pro sembra che… (‘it seems that…’)
The point of departure of Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s analysis is the following twist: null subject languages permit – with a varying degree of freedom – postverbal subjects to be realised. Consider again Italian. (4) a.
Telefona Rico phones Rico b. Rico telefona Rico phones ‘Rico phones’
A number of studies have assigned to (4a) a structure similar to that of an expletive-associate3 construction, exemplified by (5a): (5) a. There arrived a man b. A man arrived
The equivalent of there in (5a) was assumed to be an expletive pro in examples with a post-verbal subject like (4a). (4b) would be parallel to (5b), where
Pro and empty pronouns
the associate moves to SpecAgrP and satisfies EPP. Now, Manzini & Savoia (1997: 303) point out that Since Case, Agreement and thematic properties are all borne by [Rico], it is difficult to see how expletive pro can be justified except on strict theoryinternal grounds, notably with respect to the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) of Chomsky (1981).
Manzini & Savoia, as is clear from the extract above, assume then that null subject languages either have a weak EPP feature or satisfy it in a fashion different than that of non-null subject languages. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998: 516) essentially agree with this statement and opt for the second option: they propose that EPP is universally strong (it must be satisfied before Spell Out) but that in null subject languages it can be satisfied by head movement instead of XP movement of the DP subject, a proposal reminiscent of Pollock (1997). A key assumption here introduced by Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou is that X0 movement pre-empts both XP movement, as in (5b), and also the merger of an expletive, as in (5a). As far as the preference of X0 versus XP movement for EPP is concerned, a case for it could be made fairly uncontroversially for ‘non-configurational’ languages, given that they only have clitics and agreement markers, heads, for arguments and never XPs (Jelinek 1984, 1996). Nevertheless, although there have appeared studies that discuss cases where certain types of Move pre-empt certain types of Merge (Aoun, Hornstein & Choueiri 1998; Shima 2000), it is no trivial task to prove that head movement can pre-empt merger of an expletive. We will nevertheless not discuss it any further here.4 Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s proposal capitalises on the longdiscussed correlation between richness of verbal agreement and availability of null subjects (cf. Taraldsen 1978; Rizzi 1986). Here, verbal agreement is viewed as having “the categorial status of a pronoun in pro-drop languages” (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998: 517) and is assumed to merge directly on the lexical verb (ibid.). As far as the feature makeup of verbal agreement is concerned, Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou mention “[+D, +interpretable φfeatures, potentially, +Case]” (p. 516). As Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou only discuss the elimination of expletive pro, they argue for this D-affix as an EPP checker, leaving the subject XP, like Rico in (4), as the recipient of the Agent θ role. We will present their account and move on to examine the delicate issue of θ assignment in the next section.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
A split Infl (à la Pollock 1989) is assumed, consisting of AGR(eement) and T(ense). T is the locus of Tense features but also of an uninterpretable [V] feature, quite uncontroversially so (cf. Chomsky 1993). Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou argue that T is also specified for an [N] feature “which has to do with [nominative] Case” (p. 525). Uninterpretable [V] and [N] on T can be either strong or weak. On the contrary, AGR is taken to be the locus of a strong uninterpretable [D] feature, the EPP feature in Chomsky (1998); moreover, this uninterpretable [D] feature is universally strong. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (p. 519) put it thus: “As argued extensively in Chomsky (1995), there is no reason for AGR to exist, unless it is strong, given that AGR is not relevant for the LF interface like all other functional categories.” A problem here, to which we come back later, is that exactly because ‘AGR is not relevant for the LF interface’, it is conceptually undesirable whether strong, i.e. eliminable before Spell Out, or weak, i.e. eliminable after Spell Out – as argued extensively in Chomsky (1995). Moreover, AGR is undesirable for empirical reasons as well: see Iatridou (1990), Ritter (1995), Petros (1996) – to name but a few analyses seeking to eliminate AGR from the theory of grammar. For the sake of exposition, it will be assumed that the EPP feature, whether [D] or something else, is on AGR for the time being. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou argue that the D affix that eventually checks EPP on AGR can be merged either on V or on AGR. The first option, the D affix merged on V, will naturally force V to head-move to AGR (that bears a strong [D] feature), via T apparently, deriving the fact that all null subject languages display verb-raising.5 The second option, the D affix merged on AGR, gives us North Italian dialects like Trentino and Fiorentino, where the D affix is realised as a subject clitic (Rizzi 1986b; Brandi & Cordin 1989 for discussion). It is further assumed that if the D head can check Nominative Case on T on its way to AGR, then the lexical XP subject can stay in SpecvP where it is merged (cf. Koopman & Sportiche 1991; Kratzer 1996) – this is exactly the case of Modern Greek. On the other hand, if this D head does not bear a Nominative Case feature that would check the strong [N] feature on T, then the XP subject will have to raise to SpecTP, as in Celtic languages and Arabic. It should be noted that Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s account does not presuppose ‘morphological’ richness of this D head – a fact that can potentially accommodate null subject languages without any verb morphology for person and number, like Mandarin and Japanese. All that is needed for the language learner in order to set the EPP parameter to ‘checking by head-
Pro and empty pronouns
movement’ is three straightforward word order criteria: availability of null subjects, availability of VSO and – consequently – verb-raising, lack of Definiteness Restriction Effects (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998: 523), i.e. the grammaticality of the equivalent of structures like *there stays the policewoman in the jail. What Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou present us with is a stimulating and coherent way to eliminate expletive pro. But what about referential pro, an empty pronominal as a recipient of a θ role? Before addressing this complex issue in Section 3.3, it is necessary to review the relationship between clitics and agreement markers on one side and XP arguments on the other. . Clitics, agreement markers and XP arguments .. If pro is eliminated: null subject languages as non-configurational languages Regarding the example (4a) above, we followed Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998) and replaced expletive pro with verbal agreement -a of verbs like telefona as a checker for the EPP feature on AGR. The θ role of Agent can still be assumed to be assigned to Rico, the lexical subject. Suppose now that we wish to extend the head movement analysis to the cases of referential pro, like in (2), as well. The question would then be what constituent the θ role is assigned to. Unless we want to radically recast or scrap θ theory like, say, Borer (1994, 1996) and Manzini & Roussou (2000), in the latter case in order to be able to do away with PRO, there seems to exist no easy way out. Let us then say that verbal agreement -a can be an argument itself and receive the Agent θ role.6 Why this should be so and how it can be done is further discussed in Section 3.3. Now, if verbal agreement can receive θ roles in null subject languages, this immediately brings them very close to nonconfigurational languages, which arguably satisfy the θ criterion morphologically and not syntactically (Jelinek 1984) and where all XPs are either modifiers or adjuncts (Ouhalla 1994; Jelinek 1996). Nevertheless, we definitely do not want to claim that null subject languages are non-configurational languages: such a claim would conflict with a number of manifestations of configurationality in these languages. For instance, notions like ‘specifier of ’ and ‘complement of ’ do matter for XP arguments in null subject languages, a well-known example being ne cliticisation in Italian, which is only possible
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
out of deep objects (Burzio 1986), that is complements of V (or specifiers of V in a Larsonian shell). In any case, construing all null subject languages as non-configurational would take us really far afield, partly because the notion “non-configurational” itself is hardly accurately delineated (Baker 1996 and Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1999 for discussion) and partly because, to put it informally, we do not want to assume ‘free-word order’ (another dangerously murky concept and, at the same time, a straightforward consequence of nonconfigurationality) to the same degree for Italian, Spanish and Greek, all null subject languages. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998) as well as most studies on null subject languages appeal to some sort of ‘macroparametrical’ variation (in the sense of Baker 1996), according to the familiar conception of parameters as ‘on/off switches’ (Chomsky 1986). Thus, to simplify, the claim here is stated in terms of a grammar having the θ criterion or EPP satisfied by either XPs or X0 (‘morphology’); the grammar learner is assumed to make a single, one-off, ‘on/off’ choice that will run across the board with far-reaching consequences. In this case, s/he will have to choose between either an XP-checking option for EPP across the board or an X0 one. In order to see whether this is accurate and adequate, we might want to take a closer look at the relationship between ‘non-configurational’ arguments such as agreement markers and clitics when they co-occur with XPs. .. Subject–Object (partial) symmetries Recall the analysis of pronominal (object) clitics we adopted and explored in the previous chapters. Pronominal clitics are merged as DPs with the following structure: [DP Dclitic [NumP Num [NP eN]]]. In a number of languages, though, the object clitic can be doubled by a full DP object. This is illustrated below: (6) a.
Lo visto a Juan saw.1st A Juan b. Ton idha ton Yani saw-1st the Yanis ‘I saw John’
River Plate Spanish Modern Greek
In (6) the direct object (the ‘double’) and the direct object clitic co-occur. There is robust evidence that the direct objects in (6) are not adjuncts but proper objects (Jaeggli 1986; Sportiche 1996). Contrary to common assump-
Pro and empty pronouns
tions widely known under the label ‘Kayne’s generalisation’, in both instances of (6), the double ‘shares’ in a sense its Case with the pronominal clitic.7 One way to capture the fact that clitic and double ‘share’ Case (and θ role) is the proposal in Uriagereka (1995: 81) and Torrego (1998: 216–217) that the double is merged at the specifier of the pronominal clitic DP and thus in SpecHead relationship with the D trace: the pronominal clitic and its double are merged as a single constituent: [DP [DP double] Dclitic [NumP Num [NP eN]]]. The DP that is made up by the clitic D and the trivial NP eN is the actual recipient of the verb’s θ role, whereas the double seems to be able to be θ licensed only because it is dominated by the projection of D and because their Case and φ features match. Alternatively, we can establish the relationship between clitic and double as one similar to that of an expletive to its associate, like in Manzini & Savoia (1999). According to them, an element is interpreted as an expletive when it forms a chain/ordered pair with an associate, i.e. as the result of the derivation it occurs in. In other words the very same item can be interpreted differently depending on the derivation: a clitic on its own will be the θ and Case recipient; when doubled by an XP object, it will behave as an ‘expletive’. Neither of the accounts nuanced here is without problems: an account that establishes identity between clitic and double by virtue of their matching features and their being merged inside the same D projection is not empirically uncomplicated; one that treats clitics in clitic doubling environments as expletives does not do full justice to the semantics of clitic doubling, as this is not straightforwardly reducible to that of expletive-associate Chains (Anagnostopoulou 1994 and Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1999 for discussion). Let us now suppose that the coexistence of X0 and XP subject in null subject languages, as under (4), is a kind of doubling (cf. Torrego 1998). This would not mean that all instances of such coexistence are identical, or – a fortiori – that they are all the mirror image of object clitic doubling. All we would like to claim about -a and Rico in Rico telefona, and the like, is that it is possible that the XP Rico shares the θ role of the X0 and that Rico it is not merely an adjunct (Jelinek 1984) or a ‘modifier’ (Ouhalla 1994). The intricate relationship(s) between an X0 and an XP subject will be explored in more detail in Sections 3.3 and 3.4. Regarding the nature of these X0 subjects, we are now going to take a very brief look at the similarities between agreement markers and clitics.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
.. Agreement markers and clitics Agreement markers and clitics seem to display interestingly similar but not identical behaviours. Our focus here being doubling options, consider the following table (adapted from Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1999): (7) Co-occurrence pattern with DPs or pronouns with pronouns only No co-occurrence
Subject agreement Spanish Welsh, Moroccan Arabic Irish, Koranic Arabic
Object clitics River Plate Spanish Peninsular Spanish French
Two things are striking about the table above: First, subject agreement markers (assuming for the moment that subject agreement in all Spanish, Welsh, Moroccan Arabic, Irish and Koranic Arabic is expressed by agreement marker X0 heads, not a straightforward matter) and object clitics display identical cooccurrence patterns: with everything, only pronouns or nothing. On the other hand, a language like Peninsular (Castilian) Spanish has object clitics that can co-occur with (‘be doubled’ by) pronouns only, whereas its subject agreement markers can co-occur with everything: it is not the case that clitics and agreement markers behave in an identical pattern, but at the same time, there are no co-occurrence patterns that restrict themselves to subjects or objects. Here, space and scope restrictions preclude a detailed look at (or even review of) the discussions of the similarities and differences between pronominal clitics and agreement markers and whether they are represented distinctly in mental grammars. However, we can assume as a working hypothesis that [agreement markers] are base generated on the designated heads, while [clitics] are generated in the lexical domain and are moved to the designated heads. (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1999: 19)
The above is consistent with our treatment of clitics in this and the previous chapter, namely as determiners that move ‘upwards’ into the Infl domain with a null NumP complement. As Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou point out elsewhere: […] strong agreement affixes have separate lexical entries[,] they are independent, clitic-like pronominal elements, thus having a categorial feature [+D]. This means that the verbal root and the affix are both in the numeration, independently from one another. In principle, there are two options for the [+D] affix. (i) If it is merged with the verbal root at an early stage […] the verb will project and the complex element in turn will be merged with
Pro and empty pronouns
some larger structure. (ii) Alternatively, the [+D] affix can be merged directly on AGR head and when the verb moves to AGR, AGR projects […] Potentially, the difference between the two options can give us the difference between agreement affixes and [subject] clitics (cf. the differences between Trentino/Fiorentino and Greek […]). (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998: 522; emphasis mine)
We can take the above as our point of departure, although a number of open questions and a series of puzzling issues remain, and pursue our objective: to show that in all languages (either null or non-null subject ones) the θ role recipient, whether heading a DP or not, is always a [+D] head. This head can either ‘stand alone’ (without being an ‘intransitive determiner’ though) or head a DP subject. . θ assignment is to D heads Already in Stowell (1991: 209), the following distinction, in the spirit of Higginbotham (1985), is made explicit: (8) a. A predicative category may not function as an argument b. Only a referential category may function as an argument (9) A lexical predicate may not be the head of an argument
Both (8) and (9) apply at LF and what they exclude is the possibility of a bare NP functioning as an argument, as its head, N0, is a predicative category, like all lexical categories. It was in subsequent research that the category D was explicitly identified as the ‘referential’ category in (8b). Longobardi (1994) stands out in this line of research and his interpretation of (8) and (9) is given below as (10) and (11): (10) A “nominal expression” is an argument only if it is introduced by a category D. (Longobardi 1994: 620) (11) DP can be an argument, NP cannot
(ibid. p. 628)
In principle, N and its projection are irrelevant as θ recipients. N is a lexical category that denotes a concept and it is predicative. Even if it is devoid of descriptive features that, by hypothesis, ‘carry’ its denotation (as is exactly the case with empty nouns), the DP containing it can still be θ marked, like pronouns are. Whether a phrase has descriptive content or not does not interact with whether this phrase can carry a θ role; what is important for the purpose of θ marking is for this phrase to be headed by a determiner: as long as a
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
nominal expression is referential, it can bear a θ role, regardless of the content (or lack thereof) of its N. This idea is also compatible with Rizzi’s (1986: 543) observations summarised under (3) that only nominal expressions specified for person and number are referential whereas those specified for number only are argumental (i.e. quasi-referential like meteorological subjects): if person is located on D and number on Num (see Chapter 1), then referential arguments are DPs and ‘meteorological’ ones bare NumPs.8 Whatever the details, in order for a (nominal) expression to receive a θ role, D or a feature on D is necessary. We can formulate our conclusion as follows: (12) θ assignment from a predicate is to a D head.
In languages like English, where no affixal Ds, like agreement markers and clitics, exist, (12) makes exactly the same predictions with (10) & (11): all arguments, whether subjects or objects, are headed by a D, they are DPs. Nevertheless, when it comes to null subject languages and, generally, languages that do possess affixal Ds (clitics and agreement markers), (12) makes testable predictions: namely, that these languages can have both X0 and XP arguments (D0 and DP, respectively). We will try to demonstrate this by calling upon evidence from Modern Greek once more. . Greek arguments Given our discussion of the nature of clitics and agreement markers we can proceed to test (12). Recall that we assume the Spell Out representation of clitic objects to be the following: (13) [DP ([DP double]) Dclitic [NumP Num [NP eN]]]
For the time being and for the sake of exposition, we can follow a version of Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s account and assume the Spell Out representation of the verb and the agreement marker in a VSO null subject language, like Modern Greek, to be more or less like that in (14); I here simplify a Larsonian shell to a “simple” VP, hence the subject is at SpecVP: (14) [[T [V [V verb] [D agr. marker]] T] … [VP DPsubj [V [V verb] [D agr. marker]]]]
So, following the above rough representations and (12), let us see how θ assignment works in MG. Consider the following simple examples: (15)9 a.
ta ferame .. brought.1st
Pro and empty pronouns
b. ta ferame ta vivlia .. brought.1st the.. books c. ferame ta vivlia brought.1st the.. books d. (ta) ferame emis ta vivlia .. brought.1st we the.. books ‘We brought them/the books’
Let us now take the cases one by one and examine θ assignment without pro can be done. In (15a) the V10 fer- assigns the Agent θ role to the D0 -me, an agreement marker. In other words, -me acts as the verb’s subject. The Theme θ role is assigned to the D ta, a clitic, moved somewhere in the Infl domain from within the V-shell; ta is the direct object. So far, the non-configurational story and (12) yield exactly the same results: θ roles are assigned to ‘morphemes’ (X0 heads) in null subject languages. In (15b), a case of object clitic doubling, things are exactly the same, the double – at SpecDP according to (13) – is at the same time a ‘modifier’ (as the non-configurational story would go) but dominated by the base projection of the clitic argument D. Essentially, the Theme θ role will be assigned to a D0, the clitic ta, again. A case of ‘subject doubling’ is presented under (15d). The D -me, an agreement marker, is the Agent argument whereas the lexical subject in SpecvP forms a chain with it. This position is arguably not subcategorised in null subject languages (Ouhalla 1994 and references therein) and I leave a loose end here. In any case, if object and subject doubling involve θ assignment to a D0, the non-configurational analysis can carry through. Now, (15c) is the really important case. Although the Agent role is again assigned to the agreement marker, the Theme here is assigned ‘configurationally’ to the DP ta vivlia.11 This DP, occupying the ‘canonical’ direct object position in ‘configurational’ languages and being headed by a D is a legitimate recipient for the relevant θ role, Theme here, according to (12). No clitic or object agreement marker appears in the numeration of (15c), the very same V has assigned its Theme role to a D heading a nominal phrase and its Agent one to an affixal one. Moreover, the same V has assigned its Theme role to a clitic in (15a) and (15b) and to a DP in (15c). At least as far as the assignment of Theme roles in Modern Greek is concerned, ‘macroparametric’ statements are irrelevant: either a D0 clitic (available in the lexicon) or a whole DP can be
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
objects. In the next section we will review Yagua, a language where a verb can assign a ‘subject’ θ role to either an “agreement marker” or a full DP. Whereas traditional θ role assignment to phrases (DPs) relies heavily on the existence of pro as potential null phrasal arguments, an account that dispenses with pro but upholds ‘on/off’ parameters falls short of explaining why Modern Greek can assign a Theme role to either a D or a DP or similar phenomena in a lot of languages.12 On the other hand, armed only with the assumption that θ assignment is to D heads, whether they are base generated affixes or clitics or heads of full DPs, captures the whole range of phenomena. Nevertheless, for the theory developed in the previous chapters, a real problem lies ahead.
. On verbal D (DV) and verbal Num We saw that Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s account of null subject languages satisfying EPP by head movement can put us on the right track towards eliminating pro as a null subject. When this account is combined with the idea that D heads – being ‘referential’ – are the recipients of θ roles as well as a generalised notion of doubling of pronominals (see Section 3.2.3), it can make the correct predictions for a number of typologically unrelated languages. Nevertheless, there remain two serious problems: the first is the conceptual undesirability of an AGR head as well as the empirical evidence against its existence. The second one is the following: in this account, agreement markers are themselves the checkers of uninterpretable φ features on Agr; there is no pro in SpecAgrP in a head-movement model. Now, if agreement markers are D heads, the fact that they can host – cross-linguistically – interpretable φ features is in direct conflict with the findings in Chapter 1. We saw there that determiners do not host interpretable φ features other than person ([ASE] and [PSE]); interpretable number features are encoded on Num and gender features on N. Hence, a D ‘super-head’ that would encode number (and gender) and that surfaces as a verbal affix in null subject languages and a subject clitic in North Italian dialects would consist a strong counter-argument to the whole analysis presented there. Fortunately, both issues seem amenable to a unified account if we seek recourse to Ritter’s (1995) analysis of Hebrew verbal agreement.
Pro and empty pronouns
. Hebrew in Ritter (1995) Ritter (1995) proposes an analysis for Hebrew verbal agreement that takes it essentially to be pronouns lexically affixed on the verb. So far, the similarities with Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s account are evident, where D-affixes and D-clitics only differ with respect to the level (lexicon versus syntax respectively) at which they attach to their host. Nevertheless, Ritter departs from the assumption that a single AGR node exists for a series of reasons, both empirical and conceptual. A first empirical problem with Hebrew possessing a single AGR head is that verbs are inflected for both person and number only in the Past and Future tenses, present (or, more correctly: ‘Benoni’, see Shlonsky 199713) forms are only inflected for number. Second, the morphological affinity (Ritter 1995: 422–431) between pronouns and verbal inflection throughout the paradigm is too evident for this to be the result of mere coincidence. The close relationship between Hebrew pronouns and agreement markers becomes strikingly clear in a sort of ‘small clause’ construction Hebrew possesses: ‘nominal sentences’:14 (16) a.
Dan hu xaxam Dan he smart b. Sara hi xaxam-a Sara she smart- ‘Dan/Sara is smart’ c. Sara ve Dan hem xaxam-im Sara and Dan they smart- ‘Sara and Dan are smart’
The forms hu, hi and hem are the pronouns ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’ – as the glosses show. They have been analysed as an overt manifestation of Infl by Doron (1986) and Rapoport (1987), as AgrS by Shlonsky (1997: 14).15 As Doron (1986) and Shlonsky (1997: 88) further argue ‘verbal pronouns’ like those in (16) are impossible to construe with Benoni forms, something that keeps them in line with the rest of Present tense forms, as inflection for person is impossible with all Present tense forms. According to Doron, a Benoni as a verb and a ‘verbal pronoun’ compete for the Infl position. If a ‘verbal pronoun’ and a Benoni form do co-occur, the Benoni is interpreted as a participle unable to assign accusative Case (from Shlonsky 1997: 88): (17) a.
Daniela (hi) manhigat ha-kita Daniela she leading the-class ‘Daniela is the leader of the class’
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
b. Daniela (*hi) manhigat ‘et ha-kita Daniela she leading the-class ‘Daniela leads/is leading the class’
A conceptual problem with a unitary AGR head in the verbal complex for Ritter is that she takes D to be the locus of Person and Num that of number, as we saw in Chapter 1. Ritter (1995) has also shown Hebrew pronouns to be constructed out of DPs with a NumP complement. Thus, an AGR head that comprises both Person and Number features, being identical to pronouns, is a problem. An additional piece of evidence has to do with the fact that null subjects are allowed in Hebrew only in the presence of a D/person affix (cf. Shlonsky 1997: Ch. 7). So, even in Future and Past, ‘3rd person’ affixes do not license a null subject – a predictable result under the light of ‘3rd person’ as nonperson. More interestingly, in colloquial Hebrew there occurs an assimilation of the 1st person verb form to that of the 3rd person in the Future; in other words, the affix for 1st person is dropped and the verb becomes identical to the 3rd person form that involves a zero affix. In this case, subject drop becomes impossible with 1st person forms, too. ‘ani/hu yoxal ‘et ha-banana I/he will.eat. the-banana b. * pro yoxal ‘et ha-banana will.eat. the-banana ‘I/he will eat the banana’
(18) a.
Briefly, some instantiations of Infl are morphologically identical to pronouns and a null subject is available only with overt Person marking in Hebrew. In the face of this evidence, Ritter explicitly argues that AgrS is in fact two projections: a D and a Num projection (Ritter 1995: 425). Although she does not follow a checking framework in the paper under consideration, her idea that AGR is in fact a DP and an NumP is not without interesting implications, even when required to work together with a mechanism that accounts for null subjects by invoking head movement. We will adopt and build on the idea that verbal D and Num exists, for the following reasons: a. We hence dispense with AGR while replacing it with familiar and better defined categories with LF interpretation. b. We capture the generalisation about the morphological affinities between determiners and verbal agreement morphology. Such similarities are not restricted to Semitic languages; for instance, in the diachrony of Greek,
Pro and empty pronouns
there is a clear tendency to create subject agreement markers that are identical to determiners. c. We capture the fact (Harley & Ritter 1997, 2000) that person agreement presupposes number agreement but not vice versa, just by positing that D always selects a NumP, although Num is not necessarily shelled by a DP (as can perhaps be the case with meteorological quasi-arguments in the nominal domain). d. We avoid the complication of positing D affixes that can be affixed either in the lexicon or in the syntax but that do not project in either case (cf. Section 3.2.3) unlike T or Asp affixes, which have a fixed position in the phrase marker and always project. Having said that, an attempt to unify Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s model with Ritter’s intuition that there exist two loci of agreement above VP is not without problems. A first problem is that if Ritter’s D above T is the locus of EPP, what exactly checks EPP? (Ritter does not address this issue). Nevertheless, as we will try to show in the rest of this chapter, a unification is not impossible and not without benefits. . There is no AGR Everett (1989) presents evidence from Yagua, an Amazonian language studied by Tom and Doris Payne. The aspect of Yagua that is of interest here is its word order alterations and what triggers them. Consider the following examples adapted from Everett (1989):16 (19) a.
Pauro púúchi-níí Paul carries-3rd.. b. Sa- púúchi Pauro-níí s/he-carries Paul-3rd.. c. * Pauro sa-púúchi-níí Paul s/he-carries-3rd.. ‘Paul carries him/her’
(20) a.
Anita sííy Anita runs b. Sa-sííy s/he-runs c. * sííy runs
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
d. * sííy Anita runs Anita ‘(Anita) runs’
As illustrated in (19), the word order is SV when sa- is not present and VS when sa- is affixed on the verb. In (20), we see that subject drop is only available when sa, a ‘subject clitic’ according to Everett, is affixed. Note that, as (19b) illustrates, doubling of the subject is an option when the order is VS, but not when it is SV (19c). Moreover, subject drop is not available in (20c) when neither a lexical subject, as in (20a), or a clitic (20b) are present. Finally, a VS order without sa is impossible (20d). The data can be readily captured by the Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou model: Yagua can have the EPP feature (say, strong [D]) on AGR checked by either XP movement (19a), like English, resulting in an SV order, or by an X0 affix resulting in VSO – apparently having the lexical subject lower than the surface position of the verb, either in SpecTP (like in Celtic and Arabic) or SpecvP (like in Spanish and Greek). Furthermore, a D head like sa- is necessary and sufficient to satisfy EPP, as the grammaticality of (19b) and the ungrammaticality of (20c) show. Moreover, in (20d), where no sa is present and where the subject DP has not raised, a violation of EPP ensues. Yagua offers an example of a language where an Agent θ role can be assigned to either a clitic (a D affix like sa) or a whole DP. In this sense, Yagua does for subjects what MG can do for objects, as under (15) and the subsequent analysis. A discussion of configurationality would be irrelevant here: Yagua happens to have a subject ‘morpheme’ that can be θ marked and satisfy EPP. Its presence preempts movement of the subject DP – if present – and this results in a VS order. If we are correct in our assumption that Yagua possesses both options of XP and X0 checking of EPP, then we are led to adopt an account of parametrisation – at least for the null subject parameter – that reduces to the (non-)availability of certain lexical entries, a certain class of determiners in particular, in a given language (see Borer 1984; Wexler & Manzini 1987; Ouhalla 1991 etc.). Moreover, whether a particular sentence is well-formed or not crucially depends on whether there is at least one EPP ‘checker’ present in the numeration, either sa or a DP in the case of Yagua. Elaborating on the evidence drawn from Yagua and departing from Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s account, we can now suppose that the head that is relevant for EPP is not AGR, a head carrying only uninterpretable features, but Ritter’s (1995) ‘verbal determiner’, DV henceforth. DV is in turn complemented by a verbal NumP, as Ritter (1995) argues. The proposed hierarchy is either
Pro and empty pronouns
DV…Num…T…, as in Ritter (1995: 429), or DV…T…Num… (as in Kayne 1995, as far as the T…Num part is concerned) – the correct representation is a matter of further research and we will have little more to say about it here. What interpretable features does DV carry, then? Apparently person,17 where applicable, next to an uninterpretable strong [V] in languages where it is an affix, like in Greek and Spanish, and not a ‘subject clitic’ like Yaguan sa. Before we set Yagua aside, let us see what this unified account that combines the XP and X0 option for the satisfaction of EPP with the presence of DVP and NumP in the verbal functional complex entails for that particular language. . Two interpretable ‘AGR’ projections .. DV Suppose that DV can encode an interpretable person feature, like its nominal D counterparts. We can now recapture the situation in Yagua as follows: in Yagua, there exist two DV heads: a. a null DV that attracts the DP subject to its Spec, as in (19a) and (20a), to check its own strong ([D]?) feature, like in English. b. sa. This is either merged to the null DV, specified for person, to check its strong feature or is itself the DV. Let us opt for the second option: sa is an overt DV head. Recall now that the presence of sa is sufficient to satisfy EPP, enabling subject drop or, if a DP subject is present, rendering its movement (and the resulting SV order) unnecessary. What this could entail is that EPP is not the result of the presence of a special EPP feature, whether strong [D] or other; rather, EPP can be recast as the obligatory presence of a DV in the numeration. This formulation of the EPP is as stipulative as, say, the obligatoriness of Case features on some verbal functional heads like T and v. Hopefully, both the obligatory presence of DV (EPP) and Case would be able to be shown to reduce to an LF requirement. Regarding EPP as the obligatory presence of a DV in the numeration, Roger Hawkins (p.c.) proposes an explanation along the following lines: Suppose determiners, both ‘nominal’ and ‘verbal’ ones, encode or entail ‘referentiality’ at LF. Thus, as discussed in Section 3.3, a (nominal) D will render the nominal phrase it heads referential, make it refer to an entity (type <e>). In the same vein, a DV will make the event denoted by the TP it c-commands able to take a truth value (type ) and refer to an event in the real world.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
Such a formulation would open the way in severing finiteness from T (as in Rizzi 1997b), by construing finiteness as the result of/related to the presence of DV rather than T.18 To return to our discussion, Yagua possesses both a null strong DV that attracts DP subjects and overt DV sa. Let us reinterpret the examples under (19) and (20), repeated below for convenience, given this new hypothesis. (19) a.
Pauro púúchi-níí Paul carries-3rd.. b. Sa- púúchi Pauro-níí s/he-carries Paul-3rd.. c. * Pauro sa-púúchi-níí Paul s/he-carries-3rd.. ‘Paul carries him/her’
(20) a.
Anita sííy Anita runs b. Sa-sííy s/he-runs c. * sííy runs d. * sííy Anita runs Anita ‘(Anita) runs’
In (19a), (20a), (20c) and (20d), the null strong19 DV is merged. In (19a) and (20a), its strength is checked by a DP and SV order ensues. In (20c) such a checker is absent and in (20d) a potential checker, the DP, remains in situ: in both these cases the derivation crashes. On the other hand, in (19b), (19c) and (20b) the DV sa is merged and this is sufficient to satisfy EPP. Thus, the DP Pauro in (19b) remains in situ and moving it, as in (19c), is unmotivated and, consequently, ungrammatical. The straightforward conclusion here would be that languages like English have only null ‘strong’ DVs. On the other hand, null subject languages like Spanish and Greek have overt DVs like sa. In the case of Spanish and Greek, these overt DV heads also encode a strong [V] feature that makes them behave as suffixes with the verb left-adjoining to them: compare the attachment of sa in (19a) with subject agreement markers in (4) and (15). If Kayne (1994) is right that only left adjunction exists, then sa is a phonological clitic whereas
Pro and empty pronouns
MG and Spanish agreement markers are syntactic affixes. The illustrations below should be of some help clarifying the proposed state of affairs:20 (21) EPP: include a DV in the numeration Strong DV? Yes Yes No No
a.
Strong [V] on DV? No Yes No Yes
Examples of DV English Ø, Yagua Ø French Ø, Icelandic Ø Yaguan sa Spanish, Greek verb suffixes
Non-affixal null strong DV
DVP
DP ‘subject’
DV
…
Ø D
VP
DP
V
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
b. Affixal (strong [V]) null strong DV
D VP
DP DV
‘subject’ V
… DV VP
Ø D V DP
c.
Non-affixal overt DV
D VP
DV
… VP
sa
DP
V
V
Pro and empty pronouns
d. Affixal (strong [V]) overt DV
D VP …
DV V
VP
DV ‘suffix’ V
DP
V
The rest of this chapter will be devoted to illustrating how the DV hypothesis can account for the various instances of subject drop, agreement patterns and their interrelation with verb movement. Before this, it is worth dedicating a couple of words to verbal Num. .. Verbal Num Verbal Num is posited by Ritter (1995) in the face of the pronominal nature of Agreement in Hebrew. Moreover, given that verb morphology in languages like Spanish and Italian mark number (next to person), it is reasonable to assume that verbal Num will be the source of interpretable number features, e.g. singular in the verbal affix -a in fuma under (2) or telefona under (4). Moreover, Kayne (1995), departing from different assumptions, argues for the existence of verbal Num in English, as well. He argues that the -s verbal suffix in English, like in she sleeps, is a verbal Num head. Observe how this fits into our own analysis here, as the English -s is not an EPP relevant head: *sleeps. Now, according to Kayne, the specifier of this verbal NumP can serve as an intermediate adjunction site for extracted elements in a number of American English varieties yielding examples like (22a), adopted from Kayne (1995: 160), the representation of which looks something like (22b): (22) a. the people [who the boy think who are in the garden] b. [CP who C [DVP the boy DV [TP [NumVP who Num [vP think who are in the garden]]]]]
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
Verbal Num apparently agrees with the copy of who in its specifier, on a par with participle agreement triggered by a ‘passing’ clitic in the XP step of its movement (cf. Kayne 1989, 1991 and Chapter 2), and not the subject the boy.21 A last piece of evidence for the existence of two instead of one ‘Agr’ projections comes from North Italian dialects. North Italian dialects possess a variety of subject clitics, as will be discussed below. A generalisation relevant here is drawn in Poletto (2000: Ch. 2): in a group of North Italian Dialects, subject clitics encoding person features as well as expletive ones precede negation whereas those encoding number follow it. If anything, this is robust evidence for at least two distinct projections in the place of a unitary AGR, as Poletto herself shows. The fact that ‘person’ and ‘number’ subject clitics, at DV and verbal Num heads respectively, sandwich Neg could either reflect the hierarchical order DV…T…Num… argued for by Ritter (see Section 4.2), or could be down to some morphological intricacy. Towards this second point, the fact quoted in Poletto (ibid.) that in another group of North Italian dialects, a subset of ‘person’ clitics group together with ‘number’ clitics is enlightening; in Hebrew, ‘verbal pronouns’ (16), also candidates for DV/verbal Num membership, always precede negation lo (Shlonsky 1997: 14). Hence, whether the correct hierarchy is DV…T…Num… or DV…Num…T… cannot be decided by examining just the PF order. In any case, the above consists ample evidence for two (interpretable)22 “AGR” heads instead of a single one, one ‘for person’ and one ‘for number’, exactly as in Taraldsen (1995). Our revised model of EPP as a statement that DV must always appear in the functional complex of the verb has no consequences for T as an assigner of nominative Case. As Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998) explain, strength of the Case feature, whatever its proper description is, on T can be either strong or weak: if the Case feature is strong, it will trigger XP movement of the subject to SpecTP, if not, this feature can wait to be checked by feature movement after Spell Out. Moreover, our account eliminates pro while correlating person morphology and strength in an inverse fashion (on null morphology being strong: Panagiotidis 2000b) and dispensing with AGR. It further avoids the need to posit lexical versus syntactic affixation, as Ritter (1995) and Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998) are forced to do and does not assume that the verb has to encode a D and interpretable φ-features, both of ‘nominal’ nature, at the foot of its X0 chain. Regarding ‘Agr1’ and ‘Agr2’ (Cardinaletti 1997 and references therein, also Taraldsen 1995) as encoding person and number respectively, Alexiadou
Pro and empty pronouns
(2000) has reached similar conclusions on independent grounds: according to her, person is a feature on T, whereas number is on Asp. Although independent DV and verbal Num projections are not posited, elimination of AgrS and separate loci for person and number features inside the extended verbal projection are established. .. DV and control of PRO in Modern Greek Concentrating on DV, there is another group of arguments against AGR and for an element that acts as a subject and that is situated high in the clause hierarchy. The arguments in this section closely follow Philippaki-Warburton & Spyropoulos (1999) and their criticism of the account proposed by Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998). These arguments are again based on evidence from Modern Greek. MG has no infinitives and the only candidates for a sort of ‘infinitival’ status are gerunds, which appear exclusively in ‘adverbial’ adjunct clauses. Their subject, apparently PRO,23 must be controlled by a c-commanding argument, typically the subject but not the object, of the main clause (23a). That is exactly the case with the subject of the infinitival clause in (23b). This is a well-known fact about controlled null subjects (Chomsky 1981; Manzini 1983). Here, indices are used for convenience and do not represent a theoretical statement: (23) a.
Idhan i ghonisi ta pedhiaj [PROi/*j pezondas skaki] saw.PL the parents the children play. chess ‘The parents saw the children while the parents were playing chess’ b. Sergiusi promised Bacchusj [PROi/*j to buy grapes].
Criticising Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s analysis, Philippaki-Warburton & Spyropoulos (1999) observe that if the D affix -an of idhan in (23a), attached on the verb in the lexicon, is the controller of PRO, it is atypically so, since it is too embedded and fails to c-command it. In order to account for this and other problems with Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s analysis, PhilippakiWarburton & Spyropoulos (1999) offer an alternative along the lines of verbal inflection licensing and identifying a null XP clitic at SpecTP which, in turn, forms a chain with a pro or full DP in the θ position, at SpecvP. Without entering into details here, our account, along the lines of a highest DV being always the actual subject in null subject languages, can account for the situation under (23a) without the need for null clitics licensed and identified by inflection: DV will invariably c-command the embedded PRO.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
.. French, German and Icelandic: V movement does not entail null subjects In Vikner (1997) and Rohrbacher (1999) the correlation between V to Infl movement, morphologically rich manifestation of Infl and availability of null subjects is discussed. This correlation is expressed by means of a two-way entailment in Rohrbacher (1999): rich morphology triggers V to Infl movement and null subjects; V to Infl movement and null subjects entail that Infl will be morphologically rich. Towards this, Rohrbacher argues that French, German and Icelandic do not move V to Infl, because they permit no null subjects and, controversially, their Infl morphology is not rich enough.24 On the other hand, there is ample evidence (Emonds 1978; Pollock 1989; chapters in Hornstein & Lightfoot 1994; Zwart 1997; Vikner 1997 – to name but a few) that these three languages do move V to ‘Infl’ while having the SpecIP (our SpecDVP) filled. Rohrbacher’s view is discussed because of its prima facie kinship with the account being developed here: according to it, as also sketched under (21) and in endnote 19, a DV (Infl) that is morphologically overt is not strong and does not need a D element (‘subject’) to be moved overtly from SpecvP, thus enabling null subjects. At the same time, if the D affix was attached to V at the lexicon, as in Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998), then the strong [D]/EPP feature on the unitary Infl/AGR would be checked as a ‘free rider’ once the verb adjoined to it. This is not the case: neither French nor German nor Icelandic are null subject languages and Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998: 525–527) are thus forced to deduce something along the lines of the verbal affix in French and German not encoding a D feature. On the other hand, if the account here that only non-null DV heads enable null subjects is accurate, why is it the case that French and Icelandic do not? There are two ways to address the problem: we can either say that V moves to a head lower than DV, perhaps verbal Num or T, in the spirit of Rohrbacher. Alternatively, we can develop the idea illustrated under (21b): French, German and Icelandic possess only a null DV, which also happens to have a strong [V] feature, to be affixal in other words. Given that verbal inflection in French, German and Icelandic arguably marks person specifications, we can presume this to be the result of either verbal Num or T encoding uninterpretable [ASE] and [PSE] features and thus agreeing in person with the null DV, the locus of interpretable person features; the argument here could run parallel to that about number and gen-
Pro and empty pronouns
der inflection on German articles not entailing that D encodes interpretable versions of number and gender features. . The return of eN: cliticisation on DV .. More ways to check a null DV: North Italian dialects North Italian dialects provide more evidence that a null DV does not necessarily entail impoverished subject agreement morphology. Towards this end, evidence from North Italian dialects like Basso Polesano (Poletto 1996, 2000: Ch. 2), Rovignese (Poletto 1995), Paduan (Poletto 2000: Ch. 2), Fiorentino and Trentino (Brandi & Cordin 1989; Poletto 2000: Ch. 2) is indeed enlightening. Although there is a lot of variation involved regarding the positioning of subject clitics among these dialects, and some of it can be attributed to morphological intricacies, it must indeed be the case that both null DVP heads and morphologically overt ones are available in these dialects. Recall, that this runs counter to Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou’s analysis, according to which subject clitics are invariably D heads adjoined to Agr at the lexicon. We are forced to hypothesise that some of the subject clitics in North Italian dialects are indeed clitics, instead of overt DV heads. This is so because some of them are actually marked for gender. Person and number features marked on or ‘close to’ the verb are interpretable and encoded on DV and verbal Num heads respectively. If DV hosts person features and verbal Num number features, where is gender encoded? A first attempt to tackle this thorny issue would be to posit a Gender projection below verbal Num. Ritter (1995: 426) quotes unpublished work by Shlonsky, where exactly this is posited. Nevertheless, as discussed in length in Chapter 1, gender features are inherently nominal, in the sense that they ‘classify’ N heads, and one can hardly separate them from an N head, or – at least – an [N] feature. If this would force us to entail that an NP projection can dominate a VP we would be faced with a definitely undesirable complication on empirical terms and a conceptually awkward combination – impossible, if the discussion in the next chapter is on the right track. Another way to get round this problem would be to assume that Gender features can appear on Num (nominal or verbal) either when this is lexically specified thus, as in Ritter (1993), or when an N projection in missing altogether, as in Ritter (1995). This idea is in the spirit of Bobaljik & Thráinsson (1998) that functional projections are not present in a grammar if no evidence is available to the language learner that they are indeed present. Never-
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
theless, such an account would compromise our position that functional heads are bundles of features and not slots that can host a subset of ‘relevant’ features. Moreover, what ‘noun’ would a gender feature on verbal Num classify or belong to? Now, suppose for the sake of parsimony that only North Italian subject clitics that are marked for gender have a derivational history similar to that of our more familiar object clitics. Thus, they would be merged in SpecvP as D heads with a null NumP complement, with an NP headed by eN. The D head can agree for number and gender with Num and eN respectively. Like in the case of (object) clitic clusters, morphology will have the definitive word in deciding their surface position, especially with regard to Neg, (cf. Poletto 2000: Ch. 2). Thus, contra Rizzi (1986b), Brandi & Cordin (1989) and Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998), let’s hypothesise that subject clitics marked for gender are Ds that have left the rest of their projection behind and have attached to DV, the exact mirror images of object clitics. Their derivation should look something like (24) below: (24) 25
D VP
TP
DV el
Ø DP
D
NumP
T
VP
magna DP
V′
At the same time, person subject clitics (not marked for gender in any North Italian dialect) as well as expletive clitics, need not be assumed to be anything else but morphologically overt DV, this would be the zero hypothesis anyway.
Pro and empty pronouns
So, North Italian dialects would be a bit like Yagua, availing themselves both a null strong DV (with non-person clitics proper, as above) and morphologically overt DV heads (person and expletive ‘clitics’) with the only difference that non-person Ds can check a null strong DV by head-adjoining to it. Some Veneto-Istrian dialects like Rovignese and Basso Polesano resemble Yagua even more in that a DP subject at SpecDVP checking the strength of a null DV and a subject clitic proper (or an overt DV, of course) are mutually exclusive, although clause-initial Topics are available. What is more, as Poletto (1996: 276) notices “subject clitics seem to be in complementary distribution with subject NPs, not only when the subject is in the preverbal position, but also when it is in a postverbal one.” This is perhaps evidence of full DPs and clitics being generated in the same position, SpecvP. Moreover, the class of non-expletive subject clitics in Basso Polesano is identical to definite articles and as Poletto (ibid.) again notices, “subject clitics in Basso Polesano behave like object clitics.” At the same time, those clitics proper display a different behaviour to the ‘subject clitic’ form a. Consider the Polesano examples below (all examples from Poletto 1996, 2000: Ch. 2): (25) a.
Expletive DV: * (a) ze morto do fiole . is dead.. two girls.. ‘There died two girls’ * (a) magno . eat.1st ‘I eat’ b. Clitic movement to DV: el magna .. eats ‘He eats’ c. SpecDP of a null strong DV: Mario magna Mario eats ‘Mario eats’ * El/A magna qualchedun, qua ⁄. eats somebody here ‘Somebody eats here’
In (25b) and (25c), a null strong DV forces movement of clitic el (X0 movement and adjunction) and Mario (XP movement and ‘substitution’) respec-
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
tively from SpecvP. As Polesano obviously does not permit (subject) clitic doubling, both a clitic proper like el and a DP cannot be present. This is illustrated in the second example under (25c): a subject quantifier26 remains in situ and EPP is satisfied by a, a base generated DV. Given that SpecvP is already occupied by the quantifier, el cannot be generated there (and then be moved) either. At the same time, in (25a) a, a DV, satisfies EPP. Although the verb form magno (‘eat’) in the first example makes person and number manifest, this is apparently through agreement, as dropping of a is ungrammatical. The second example under (25a), a ze morto do fiole (‘there died two girls’), is even more intriguing: a heads the clause but does not agree in gender or number with the postverbal subject. This is reminiscent of constructions like there’s six million bacteria in a drop of water in most dialects of English and consists strong evidence for both the base generation of a and the irrelevance of the postverbal ‘subject’ do fiole for EPP purposes. In Paduan, a is also used as a quasi-argumental (‘meteorological’) expletive as in a piove (‘it rains’). This complementarity between moved D/DP subjects and base generated DV heads is not as exotic and stipulative as it may seem. Consider the English expletive there. There is no reason to assume that it occupies a SpecDVP position, rather than being a DV itself: if it bears only a [D] feature (as in Chomsky 1995: 287)27 it is not plausible to consider it a phrase; moreover it is the only element in English that can co-occur with associates, which brings it very close to Basso Polesano a. At the same time, it seems to be plausible to assume that expletive it is base generated in SpecvP and then moved to SpecDVP – even if it’s just because it does not tolerate associates: English is also a ‘non-doubling’ language and it could not co-occur with an associate, as both would originate in SpecvP. In this respect it, as an expletive or as a referential pronoun, is close to el in Basso Polesano, although it is an XP and el a head at the point of attachment. .. Arabic Another language28 that displays agreement for gender is Arabic. Given this fact, according to our analysis here, we are forced to posit that ‘verb agreement’ in Arabic is in fact subject clitics. Koranic Arabic has either ‘verb inflection’ for person, number and gender or a full lexical subject; like in Basso Polesano, DP subjects and ‘verb inflection’ are in complementary distribution. For illustration, compare (26a), where there is an overt singular subject, with (26b), where the overt subject is in plural: in both cases, the
Pro and empty pronouns
verb is the identical uninflected form akal. This contrasts with fully inflected akaluu in (26c). (26) a.
akal Ali-un al-tofaha-ta ate Ali. the-apple- ‘Ali ate the apple’ b. akal al-tullab-u al-tofaha-ta ate the-students-. the-apple- ‘The students ate the apple’ c. akal-uu al-tofaha-ta ate-‘3rd.’ the-apple- ‘He ate the apple’.
The rest of the analysis in the previous section should carry over to Koranic Arabic as well: either a subject clitic DP or a full referential DP can be merged in SpecvP, there exists only a null strong DV in this language, like in English (pace expletive there). DV in Koranic Arabic can attract any D constituent from SpecvP, either a clitic or a whole DP. Given that in Koranic Arabic gender agreement shows up on the verb with both subject clitics and overt subjects, an uninterpretable gender feature must be encoded either on DV or on verbal Num that needs checking by the gender feature of either the descriptive noun or the eN associated with the subject clitic. Compare (26a) with (27): although the verb akal is still in its citation form, gender agreement -at is now affixed to it. (27) akal-at Fatima-tun al-tofaha-ta ate- Fatima- the-apple- ‘Fatima ate the apple’
Complications in Arabic include the fact that this subject clitic, instead of behaving like an affix, rather fills in the rhyme slots in an onset stem like the well-known k-t-b (‘write’). The word order facts are even harder to explain: if DV is strong, it will attract either the subject clitic or the full DP subject, this one to its specifier. Thus, whether its [V] feature is strong or not, this would yield an SVO order. Nevertheless, Koranic Arabic is VSO in both embedded and main clauses (Ouhalla 1991: 116, among others). Sproat (1985) attempts to explain the VSO order of Celtic languages assuming a V to I to C movement. Perhaps an analysis according to which the verb would subsequently move to a head in the lower complementiser field (Rizzi 1997b) can account for the word order facts. This C head could well be Rizzi’s Fin(iteness), but
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
see our attempt to identify DV with Fin in endnote 18. This would anyway tie in very well with the fact that there are no infinitives in Arabic (Mohammed Al-Hammad, p.c.). Classical Arabic,29 also a null subject language, displays agreement for person, number and gender with overt subjects, as well, thus it is a ‘subject doubling’ language (unlike Koranic Arabic, see next section). Crucially, in Classical Arabic the verb agrees with an overt subject but only when it is postverbal. This can be taken by both the language learner and the linguist as a clue for the Topic status of preverbal subjects in (Clasical) Arabic, irrelevant to EPP. Given that the verb and the postverbal subject display strict adjacency, we are led to posit the following structure for Classical Arabic. (28) TopP
FinP
DP ‘preverbal subject’
DVP Top0 Fin0
DV0 Fin0
DV0
V
TP DV0 DP
V
…
DV0 ‘postverbal
subject’
The postverbal subject is in TP (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998: 524– 525) and adjacency with the verb (in Fin) is explained: only the DVP projection intervenes, but given that the clitic D has checked the strong feature of DV, SpecDVP will not project. The important question here is where the clitic came from. The obvious answer is SpecTP, as there would ensue a violation of Head Movement Constraint if it attempted to move over another head, say T. Let’s see how this comes to be in more detail. .. Subject clitic doubling Although in Basso Polesano and Koranic Arabic subjects and subject clitics are mutually exclusive, it is also the case that subject clitics (comprising ‘verb
Pro and empty pronouns
inflection’ marked for gender) can co-occur with subjects in Classical Arabic. How is subject clitic doubling (Torrego 1998: 211) made possible? Observe that, if subject clitic doubling exists, the behaviour of subject clitics is brought to a complete parallelism with that of object clitics. Next to Classical Arabic, another language that illustrates this is, possibly, Hebrew. In Hebrew, Past and Future 2nd person subject agreement morphology is marked for gender and Past and Future 1st and 2nd person are the only verb forms that allow null subjects. Null subjects are not permitted with Present (‘Benoni’) verb forms. An added twist is, as Doron (1988) points out, that pronouns cannot co-occur with Past and Future 1st and 2nd person forms. Recall that verb inflection and pronouns are morphologically identical in Hebrew (Ritter 1995). How can our account capture these facts? Suppose, first of all, that all subject agreement affixes that are marked for gender are subject clitics, as well as an analysis that takes Benoni forms to be distinct from ‘real verb’ (i.e. Past and Future) forms, cf. Shlonsky (1997: Part 1). Benoni forms need invariably an overt subject: they apparently take an English-like null strong DV and subject clitics cannot co-occur with a Benoni form (this will have to be stipulated in our account). Now, with Past and Future forms, a 2nd person clitic can move and check a null strong DV. On the contrary, if Ritter (1995: 423) is correct in that nonperson subject clitics are Num heads without a D-shell, then non-person clitics cannot check DV: a DP subject must be merged, moved to its Spec and check it. This apparently presupposes that both the full DP subject (the ‘double’) and the clitic DP must be merged under SpecvP, say in a configuration like [DP [DP double] [D [Num eN]]]. The incompatibility of subject clitics with pronouns could be a sort of a ban on merging a specifier (the pronoun ‘double’) identical to the rest of the phrase (the ‘clitic’). The double of course can be any other DP. Returning to Classical Arabic and (26), the label ‘postverbal subject’ in fact stands for the [DP [DP double] [D [Num eN]]] configuration. The clitic head D moves locally to DV and is spelt out as the ‘inflection’ of the verb by morphology. The specifier, the double, stays in SpecTP. .. Why not a strong DV throughout? Returning to North Italian dialects, Trentino and Fiorentino as discussed in Rizzi (1986b) and Brandi & Cordin (1989) also seem to permit doubling of subject clitics.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
Now, if subject clitics can be doubled, as seen above, then we lose one argument for the existence of DV heads other than the strong null one: a DP subject and a D0 one can co-exist without the second being a DV. Why can’t we posit a DV that is universally null and strong and assume all pieces of subject inflection to be subject clitics originating somewhere in SpecvP? This would make Spanish and Greek like Trentino, Fiorentino and Classical Arabic: subject clitic doubling languages. A conceptual advantage of treating all subject inflection as subject clitics would be simplicity. Moreover, an empty noun, eN in this case, would be shown to underline all instances of pronominality in natural language, including subject agreement morphology. All subject agreement as pronominals (cf. Taraldsen 1978) would unify all ‘non-R-expressions’ as DPs containing an empty noun (and this would reflect quite well on this particular piece of work…). At the same time, we would be forced to concede that DV and verbal Num cannot encode person and number features respectively, as this would be so on the subject clitics themselves. At the end of the day, DV and verbal Num would be nothing more than Agr1 and Agr2, with Agr1 universally strong, almost as in Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998). Our proposal would capture everything at the expense of being identical to a previous and better articulated one. There also appear to exist other arguments against arguing that all subject inflection is subject clitics. Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998: 531) mention phenomena that are sensitive to object clitics but not subject inflection, like Focus. This is exactly the case in languages like Modern Greek (see Chapter 2, Section 3.2.2). Moreover, if a piece of inflection does not mark gender or features other than person and number, why assume that it has been moved instead of base generated, if DV and verbal Num are real? Generally, we would like to have a mechanism that distinguishes between agreement inflection and pronominals (including pronominal clitics) for a number of reasons; to allude to just one, object clitic doubling and subject agreement doubling in Modern Greek have hardly comparable effects (Anagnostopoulou 1994; Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1999). Thus, morphologically overt DV heads in languages like Spanish and Italian must stay so, distinct from subject clitics. So, the distinction between an overt subject DV and subject D clitics must remain. It would now be useful to sketch how strength of DV and its affixal status are acquired: the language learner looks out for DV (person) morphology on
Pro and empty pronouns
the verb. If this is completely absent, as in some Scandinavian dialects and English (Kayne 1995), then s/he deduces strength of null verbal D and that is the end of the story: EPP can only be checked by DPs at SpecDVP or subject clitic heads, if available in the lexicon. If s/he encounters some sort of person agreement morphology, s/he then will attempt to define strength of DV. If SpecDVP is not always filled (i.e. if there exist null subjects) then the language learner scans ‘person agreement morphology’. If it encodes gender (like Arabic and Hebrew ‘inflection’ and North Italian clitics like el), s/he analyses it as subject clitics, otherwise s/he acquires it as DV heads (as in Spanish, Greek, Italian and the case of Yaguan sa). Regarding the (non-)affixal properties of DV, strength of [V] on DV will be decided according to the relative position of the verb: the availability of postverbal subjects and adjacency, or lack thereof, between verb and preverbal (French) or postverbal (Classical Arabic) subject. Finally, co-occurrence of ‘person agreement morphology’ encoding gender and a DP subject, will force the learner to assume a subject clitic doubling structure (as in Hebrew, Classical Arabic, Trentino and and unlike Koranic Arabic, Basso Polesano and Rovignese). .. Japanese and other East Asian languages Contrary to the rest of null subject languages discussed here, Mandarin and Japanese do not possess overt articles. Thus, nothing in principle prevents them to have null phrasal subjects of the form [DP Ø [NumP e [eN]]], whether these further topicalise or not (cf. Huang 1984).30 Should this analysis for null subjects in Mandarin (Huang 1984, 1989) and Japanese and Thai (cf. Huang 1991; Speas 1996 and references therein) be correct, it would capture the different behaviour of null subjects in languages where they are associated with verb inflection from that in Eastern Asian languages. In the case of Japanese, we have a way to shed a bit more light on the nature of its null subjects and support a structure like [DP Ø [NumP e [eN]]] for them. Let’s assume along with Nolan (2000) that Gender, Honorific and Politeness features are encoded on Japanese pronouns, apparently on their eN, locus of noun classification features such as gender. Let us further extrapolate that [DP Ø [NumP e [eN]]] is a null Japanese pronoun that, in principle, can be specified for these three φ (?) features. If Japanese is like English, possessing a null DV only, Gender, Honorific and Politeness on the verb can then be captured as syntactic agreement with a pronoun at SpecDVP, like with overt pronouns (but see Namai (2000) for arguments against a feature checking account of subject honorification in Japanese).
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Summary . A typology of null subject languages In this chapter we have taken our desire to eliminate a single invariable pronominal empty category one step further. Not only empty (‘grammatical’) nouns exist stored in the lexicon but also the null subject pronoun pro is epiphenomenal. EPP is recast as the obligatory presence of a DV in a clause.31 Languages that do not permit null subjects across the board, like English, only possess the null strong variety which attracts an XP from SpecvP. Null subject languages can be of four kinds: a. Some null subject languages possess a null strong DV, like English does. On the other hand, they also possess nominative Ds that can take eN inside their complement: ‘subject clitics’. Thus, either a full DP or a clitic DP can check the strong DV. This case is exemplified by North Italian dialects, Arabic and Hebrew. These languages can show a complementary distribution between ‘subject morphology’ (the subject clitic) and a full subject DP, as both originate in SpecvP (Basso Polesano, Rovignese and Koranic Arabic) or permit subject clitic doubling (Trentino, Fiorentino, Classical Arabic, Hebrew). They can mark gender agreement on the verb, as there is an eN involved in the subject and it is the locus of the interpretable gender feature, like in object clitics. b. Some null subject languages possess a null strong DV, but have only demonstratives (Noguchi 1997; Panagiotidis 2000b) as overt Ds. Thus, an empty pronominal of the form [DP Ø [NumP e [eN]]] can be merged to SpecvP and then move to SpecDVP. Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and Thai seem to fall under this category. c. ‘Genuine’ null subject languages like Spanish, Italian and Modern Greek possess only overt DV heads. As DVP heads are base generated in these languages, there will be no gender subject agreement and co-occurrence with DP subjects, generated in SpecvP, will be possible. A DP, if present, will not be attracted to DV but either stay in situ or move to SpecTP, yielding a VSO surface order. d. Finally, a language like Yagua possesses both overt DV heads, like sa, and a null strong one. When a null strong DV is merged, it will attract the DP subject (which must be present in the numeration – otherwise the derivation will crash) yielding SVO and no ‘subject clitic’ will be present. When
Pro and empty pronouns
sa is merged, a DP subject is optional but stays low, possibly in SpecvP, as nothing will attract it. . Further implications What emerges is that variation is down to the lexicon and on/off structural parameters or, even more problematically, macroparameters cannot capture cross-linguistic variation without introducing complex mechanisms in the grammar. It is made apparent from the discussion in this chapter that ‘pronominality’ is not a grammatical primitive. Moreover, an empty noun inside a DP will result in this DP being interpreted ‘pronominally’ but, crucially, ‘pronominality’ does not necessarily entail the presence of an empty noun: a DV-verbal Num cluster dominating TP will eventually be interpreted ‘pronominally’, as a pronominal argument. If ‘pronominality’ is the property of being a semantic variable at LF, then ‘pronominality’ is a continuum rather than the mirror image of ‘anaphoricity’ (cf. the typology in terms of [±pronominal] [±anaphor] in Chomsky 1982). A semantic variable may be the trace of an operator, the A-trace of an anaphor (assuming a Reinhart & Reuland 1993; Chomsky 1995 movement analysis for anaphors), a DV-verbal Num, or a DP containing an empty noun in Syntax. From this point on, the restriction – an operator, the moved anaphor, φ features – imposed on this semantic variable decides its ‘role’. That is why the trace of an empty Topic operator can range over almost as many entities in its possible interpretations as a non-person pro and why anaphors are as restricted as a DV-verbal Num that co-occurs with a DP subject – although in syntactically different ways.32
Notes . Expletive pro does not necessarily contradict this statement: overt expletives like it or Dutch het and French il are identical to definite determiners. . Expletive D according to Roussou & Tsimpli (1994), Longobardi (1994) and Tsimpli & Stavrakaki (1999); an intensionalisation semantic operator according to Giannakidou & Stavrou (1999). Nothing follows from which the correct characterisation is here. . This is not 100% accurate: the correct analogy would be Icelandic-style Transitive Expletive Constructions, where – arguably – an expletive is merged in SpecAgrP and the DP
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
subject moves only as far as SpecTP. For the purposes of exposition here, we can remain agnostic in relation to the differences between Expletive-Associate and Transitive Expletive Constructions. . If Groat (1999), following analyses by Moro and DenDikken, is correct in that EPP can never be satisfied by Merge and that in cases like (5a) the expletive there has actually moved, and not merged, to its surface position to satisfy EPP, then the problem restricts itself to whether X0 movement is more economical than XP movement. . But not necessarily vice-versa: see Section 4.3.4. Moreover, Mandarin Chinese does not seem to move V to AGR (or T), more on this in Section 4.4.5. . The discussion in this paragraph is based on Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1998: 531–533). . According to ‘Kayne’s generalisation’, the clitic in (6a) is assigned accusative Case by visto and the double has it assigned by the particle a; alternatively (cf. Jaeggli 1986), a ‘transmits’ accusative Case to the double. Given that a is necessary even without a clitic (visto a Juan) and seems to be irrelevant to Case, the Case of the double in (6a) is as ‘mysterious’ as that of (6b), where no allegedly dummy particles are present. See Suñer (1988: 398–402) on the irrelevance of a for Case. . Or maybe DPs lacking some sort of a [Ref] feature on D, as we have shown it to be a D anyway. . Object-related material is in boldface and subject-related material in italics. -a- in ferame is Tense and Aspect related morphology. . The v (‘Voice’) head in a Kratzer (1996) style account. Nothing hinges on this right here. . As shown in (6) above, Irish and Koranic Arabic have this option for subjects, too, as agreement marker and DP subjects are in complementary distribution. . Some of them to be discussed in Section 4; see also Jelinek (1996: 293) and references therein. . Benoni is, very roughly, a verb participle that may function as the standard ‘Present’ form. Shlonsky (1997) also argues that at least AgrS and AgrPart are required for Hebrew. . This is not an idiosyncratic peculiarity of Hebrew: e.g. Russian, Irish and Gaelic possess the same construction (Pereltsvaig 2000; personal communication). . Rizzi (1986b) and Brandi & Cordin (1989) argue that North Italian subject clitics are the overt manifestation of Infl heads; we will discuss this later. . The convention of marking subject material in italics and object material in boldface (see also endnote 9) is followed. . All accounts that relate person specification to the availability of null subjects (Rizzi 1986; Kenstowicz 1989; Ritter 1995; Shlonsky 1997; Vainikka & Levi 1999; Alexiadou
Pro and empty pronouns
2000 – to name but some) suffer from the straightforward assumption that ‘3rd person’ is no person. Alternatives like animacy and/or definiteness (A. Alexiadou, p.c.) as the relevant feature for ‘3rd person’ make perfect sense in the context of null subjects: ‘pro’ is always definite. . Although such a discussion is way beyond the scope of this study, linking DV with Rizzi’s Fin(iteness) head looks promising. Consider for instance Haegeman’s (1992) account of subject drop in West Flemish under an agreeing C head, which it could now be recast as follows: the agreeing complementisers are DV/Fin heads that are ‘enough’ for EPP purposes, like Yaguan sa. . In principle, EPP satisfied by the mere presence of a null DV. Its strength should not be related to EPP and could be taken to be relevant to its phonological impoverishment. The implicit notion is that strength is the result of a need for ‘morphological support’ and it is put to work in Panagiotidis (2000b) to explain peculiarities of the Modern Greek DP, see also references therein. Even if this formulation of strength is inaccurate, we will assume for exposition null DV to be universally strong. . The phrase structures are simplified and subjects are shown as merged at SpecVP (instead of SpecvP) for simplicity. Strong features appear in boldface, unbracketed. . The implication would be that verbal Num in English encodes an uninterpretable number feature. Given that DV is strong in English and does not seem to encode (interpretable) person features, unlike the overt DV in Spanish and Italian, Num would reduce to something like an ‘Agr2’ position (DV would still encode reference to an event). This is a problem that here I have no reasonable solution to. . Because subject clitics are, of course, proper arguments. . A lot hinges on what our assumptions about ‘adjuncts’ will be: are they specifiers of a relevant head, like adverbs (Alexiadou 1997; Cinque 1999) or ‘classic’ adjuncts? . Rohrbacher claims that German and Icelandic possess a version of long head movement directly from V to C. . The verbal NumP node is omitted for simplicity. The first XP step has been deduced be to SpecTP for “HMC” reasons – see also discussion of object clitics in Section 3.3 of Chapter 2. . A quantifier is used in this example (from Poletto 1996: 277), because quantifiers cannot be dislocated, as in Rizzi (1986b). . I quote: “the expletive has neither Case nor φ-features. FF(there) contains only D […] the expletive has no formal features apart from its category.” See Groat (1999) for a case for there movement. . I am grateful to Mohammad Al-Hamad and Eidah Al-Malki for discussing and elaborating the facts about Arabic. . By the term ‘Classical Arabic’ the akaluni al baragheeth ‘dialect’ is signified.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Claiming that a phonologically empty [DP Ø [NumP e [eN]]] can topicalise, would not entail that all null topics have this structure, as German (Huang 1984) and Portuguese (Raposo 1986) possess both null definite topics and definite articles. However, Spanish evidence (Campos 1986), where only indefinite null topics exist, might help us achieve a unification of them with null indefinite arguments à la Greek: it could be claimed that null indefinite arguments have the structure discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 (especially Section 3.2 of Chapter 2): in Modern Greek and similar languages, the null indefinite D cliticises, whereas in Spanish, the whole indefinite argument undergoes A′ movement to the Topic phrase. . This also holds for Small Clauses, a kind of DV being apparently the elusive functional head F that c-commands the predicate lexical phrase of small clauses (Chomsky 1986b; Kayne 1994). . Towards this, consider, for instance, the interaction between Operator-variable chains and clitic chains, as in Suñer (1992), Dobrovie-Sorin (1990) and Tsimpli (1999).
C 5
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
. . . . .
A propos of eN Semantic licensing of eN The functional-lexical distinction Selection and licensing Notational variants and conclusion
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. A propos of eN . Is eN necessary? DV and DP pronominals Although we have seen that eN is the lexical part in all ‘pronominal’ DPs like strong pronouns, (subject and object) clitic pronouns and elliptical DPs, we have also discussed languages like Italian, Spanish and Greek that possess overt DV heads. These DV heads agree with a verbal Num and function as pronouns; their different status from the very similar subject clitics can be detected by both the child learner and the linguist via tests such as interaction with Focus and doubling and, primarily, the features they are marked for. As briefly sketched at the end of the last chapter, the presence of an eN triggers pronominal reference of the DP it forms the lexical material of, but pronominality is not necessarily the result of the presence of eN. Crucially, the hypothesis for the existence of eN rests on two assumptions: selection is obligatory and gender (and similar ‘derivational morphology’ features) are encoded on lexical heads such as nouns. Additional evidence corroborating the hypothesis that eN is a real member of the mental lexicon is the existence of a series of phonologically overt empty (‘grammatical’) nouns such as one. At the same time, in the face of DV heads functioning as pronominals without the involvement of eN, isn’t the whole case for eN considerably weakened? If a θ recipient can c-command a TP, why can’t another θ recipient not c-command anything at all, why can’t there be any intransitive Determiners? A more serious problem is the one related to indexicals and especially 1st person singular pronouns. First of all, they resist complementation crosslinguistically, contrary to we (stockbrokers) or du (Sprachwissenschaftler); thus, the argument about selection being obligatory does not apply here: I/me never selects anything and it is highly dubious that number is relevant to its interpretation either (Kayne 1995; cf. Harley & Ritter 1997; but Taraldsen 1995 for arguments for the opposite). This leads us to a second problem about I/me and the like being Ds with an eN complement: they do not encode gender or similar features – even in Semitic languages where gender agreement seems ubiquitous (e.g. 2nd singular pronouns encode gender in both Hebrew and Arabic): why should I/me be anything more than Ds encoding an [ASE] and/or a [PSE] feature? That is, why can’t I/me be an intransitive determiner? Similar questions can be asked for it – why is anything other than D and Num relevant if it bears no gender?
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
. What is the role of eN at LF? A by far more serious issue regarding the existence of eN is its role at LF. In a nutshell, if pronominal reference results from the lack of descriptive content, why is eN necessary? We saw in Chapter 4 that DV need not be associated with an eN in order for it to behave pronominally. The natural question would then be why eN should be present in DPs like we if it is the lack of descriptive content in this DP that makes it pronominal and not some (‘pronominal’) feature on eN. This problem is not merely one of methodological parsimony and elegance. Neither should it be seen merely as yet another step in the ‘trimming down’ that linguistic theory has been undergoing in its minimalist phase.1 A ‘useful’ theoretical concept like ‘construction-specific transformation’ or ‘chain’ can be a gratuitous abstraction or indeed represent something real; it can be anywhere in the continuum between ‘phlogiston’ or ‘atom’.2 The only way to tell which end this useful concept is closer to is an empirical issue ultimately. Minimalist enterprises need to keep the distinction between baby and bath water in perspective. Hence, in principle eN should not be undesirable because it is more than nothing (i.e. intransitivity for some determiners). At the same time, its being the empty counterpart(s) of one and the like does not automatically make it desirable. Nevertheless, there can arise a very serious conceptual problem with eN, irrespective of methodological and theoretical trends. If eN and nothing at all receive the same interpretation at LF, why should we bother positing eN wherever empirical evidence (such as marking for gender) is not involved? Moreover, if Chomsky (1998) is correct in positing that the language module is the optimal solution that links thought and sounds or signs, conceptualintentional and articulatory-perceptual systems, the manipulation of eN by the computational system for human language becomes suspicious: eN has no PF interpretation and presumably no LF interpretation either. In order to provide convincing arguments that eN does exist we will have to look into three superficially unrelated issues: the role of empty nouns at LF and beyond, the lexical-functional distinction in grammar and the role an empty noun plays inside an Extended Projection (Grimshaw 1991). Finally, we will explore the implications the existence of empty nouns has for the categorial status of functional heads, head movement and the notion of licensing in grammar.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Semantic licensing of eN . The semantic type of determiners In order to begin understanding what role all empty nouns, including eN of course, play at LF, we must first discuss the semantic function of determiners. This is so because if we show that in principle intransitive determiners are undesirable at LF, then we have a strong case for the reality of eN and an LF interpretation for empty nouns. Intricacies concerning definite descriptions and related matters aside (for recent reviews from a linguistic point of view see Uriagereka 1998; Lyons 1999), we can follow Heim & Kratzer (1998: 52–53) and take determiners to be of the semantic type <<e,t>,e>: they take a predicate, type <e,t>, (the nominal expression, let’s say the NumP for concreteness) and yield an individual, type <e>. Illustrating, a determiner like the takes a predicate like key, true for all keys, and yields the individual referred to by the expression the key.3 The determiner thus denotes the function <<e,t>,e>. We can plausibly claim that the function the determiner denotes is satisfied at LF, in line with Heim & Kratzer (1998: 49). According to their Principle of Interpretability (ibid.) all functions must be satisfied at LF. In this sense, the Principle of Identification is an ‘extended’ θ-criterion that applies at LF. Crucially, if determiners denote functions that yield individuals, roughly expressions that refer to objects in the real world, we can derive why determiners are referential, as expressed in studies like Longobardi (1994), and why determiners are θ recipients. Given that not all predicates ‘pair up’ with determiners (see also endnote 4), we can follow Higginbotham’s (1985) account that specifically discusses the relationship between a noun and its determiner: a noun like key is a predicate that has an open position, a sort of referential θ role that needs to be discharged. It is exactly the determiner (the or other) that receives this θ role. Let us now suppose that a determiner like it or I/me can stand on its own, that it can be an ‘intransitive determiner’. The existence of an intransitive determiner at LF would result in a violation of principles in either analysis. Following Heim & Kratzer’s story, the function an intransitive determiner denotes would remain unsaturated due to the radical absence of a predicate (the <e,t> part), ultimately denoted by a noun. According to Higginbotham’s treatment, the determiner would not be θ marked by an N head and would thus not be licensed. Observe that ‘external’ licensing is not relevant here: the
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
key and me both externally receive θ roles from, say, verbs. What is important for the time being is that whichever treatment is the most accurate, an intransitive determiner would be an offending element at LF. An intransitive determiner would either be an unlicensed constituent (by an N head) or denote a function unsaturated at LF. Thus, intransitive determiners must be impossible at LF. Let us see now why an elementary noun, whether specified for formal features like gender or not and whether null (eN) or overt (say, one), enables a seemingly ‘intransitive’ determiner to stand alone. In a Heim & Kratzer style analysis, an empty noun would denote a ‘trivial’ predicate function of the type <e,t>. This predicate would take any individual and yield a ‘true’ value for it, it would be true for all individuals in the universe of discourse and from this perspective, as well, it is easy to see why the presence of such an empty noun in a DP would consequently trigger pronominal reference at LF. Similarly, according to Higginbotham’s story now, an elementary noun would assign just the one θ role4 and thus license a seemingly ‘intransitive’ determiner, like me or it. The grammatical noun’s lack of descriptive content and, consequently, lexical semantics would trigger a ‘pronominal’ reference at LF. Again, the non-descriptive noun would denote a ‘trivial’ predicate that would be true for any individual. . Determiners as functional heads The elimination of the concept of ‘intransitive determiners’ from a theory of grammar presents another conceptual advantage: Abney (1987: 285, see also Section 1.1 of Chapter 1), discussing the oddity of the concept of ‘intransitive determiners’ notices that determiners differ from other functional elements [as] determiners sometimes appear without a complement […] the appearance of functional elements as “intransitives,” in a pronominal usage, constitutes a systematic exception to the otherwise general requirement that they take an obligatory complement.
If intransitive determiners do not exist and all determiners are ultimately complemented by a noun, meaningful or empty, null or overt, then determiners are no different from the rest of functional categories that obligatorily take a lexical head somewhere in their complement (more on this issue in Section 3.3 and 3.4). Hence, a source of anomaly caused by a handful of lexical entries
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
within the functional category of Determiner, intransitive determiners, can be dispensed with. The above sketch justifies the existence of eN and other empty nouns at LF: a function like that denoted by determiners needs to range over predicates and (empty) nouns provide exactly these (trivial) predicates. Thus, in a sense, a raison d’ être for empty nouns at LF can now be formulated: eN and the rest of empty nouns are interpreted at LF as trivial predicates. The natural question is now whether this LF interpretation amounts to eN and the other empty nouns being thus licensed by a determiner. I wish to argue here that this is not the proper way to formulate the state of affairs that emerges naturally with the elimination of intransitive determiners, namely that a lexical head must be obligatorily present inside the complement of every functional head. I am going to propose that it is not lexical heads, even grammatical nouns, that need licensing from functional heads but functional heads that need to be licensed by lexical heads in their complement instead. It is the unavailability of intransitive determiners that exactly provides us with a window into this aspect of grammar, with farreaching implications to be partially explored later in this chapter.
. The functional–lexical distinction . Promotion to X′ status at a cost The distinction between lexical and functional elements in grammar is one present in most traditional grammars and in the majority of post-1957 approaches. In the generative literature, this contrast was formerly partially captured as a differentiation between projecting categories (lexical categories) and non-projecting functional categories (cf. Jackendoff 1977; Emonds 1985 and chapters in Muysken & Van Riemsdijk 1986). The realisation that a model in which functional categories also project has arguably a greater explanatory capacity and the ensuing revolution (cf. Chomsky 1986b) led to a unified X′ schema for all categories and the abandonment of nonendocentric projections like S (= IP) and S′ (= CP). At the same time a uniform X′ for both lexical and functional categories led to three undesirable consequences: a. The intuitive idea that the head of a phrase is what this phrase is about (as originally in Chomsky 1970 and as recently as in Pinker 1994: 106–
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
107) cannot be captured any longer in a straightforward fashion. For instance, the keys of heaven (ultimately about keys, a sort of keys) was formerly described as an NP headed by the N keys and complemented by the PP of heaven with Det the as its specifier. After the DP hypothesis, it would be a DP with the as the head of the whole phrase. Hence, the head of a phrase is not what the phrase ‘is about’ anymore. b. The empirical observation that the majority of functional heads in human languages are both affixal or phonologically dependent and semantically dependent on a lexical one is now harder to capture. Italian [lege-vano la gazetta] (‘read-PAST-3rdPLU the newspaper’), formerly readily analysable as a VP with an Infl specifier and an NP complement (the Theme object) has now to be accounted for in terms of its being an AgrSP (Chomsky 1993) or TP (Chomsky 1995). The affixal status of the T head (say, -va-) and the AgrS (our DV) head (say, -no) is reduced to a curiosity of morphology, independent from the fact that they ‘affect’ the event of reading. c. As implicit above, if lexical projections are in the complement of functional ones, they apparently have to be selected by them. Even conceding by this, if all selection is local, Ds select Nums that will select NPs. In legevano, AgrSP -no will not select the VP, but the TP -va- which will select the vP which will (perhaps) select the VP. Hence, a C, which is less related to the actual verb of a clause, will ‘select’ this verb as (in)directly as this verb’s Tense affix/operator (cf. Laka 1990; Stowell 1996). On the other hand, an X′ analysis of functional categories makes a lot of sense and this is why it is almost unanimously adopted. Perhaps we can resolve the three paradoxes sketched above by first taking a look at the differences between lexical and functional categories and then examining their relationship inside derivations. . Functional versus lexical categories Most researchers cite or allude to the following criteria (in Abney 1987: 64– 65) to differentiate between lexical and functional categories: 1. Functional elements constitute closed […] classes. 2. Functional elements are generally phonologically and morphologically dependent. They are generally stressless, often clitics or affixes, and sometimes phonologically null.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
3. Functional elements permit only one complement, which is in general not an argument […]. 4. Functional elements are usually inseparable from their complements. 5. Functional elements lack […] “descriptive content.” Their semantic contribution is second order, regulating or contributing to the interpretation of their complement […]. Given the existence and properties of grammatical lexical heads, such as empty nouns, Abney’s criteria 1 and 5 (lack of descriptive content) are not exclusive characteristics of functional categories. As far as morphophonological (criterion 2) and semantic dependence (in criterion 5) are concerned, these are phenomena requiring an explanation rather than primitives. Given that criterion 3 is also pretty irrelevant under more up-to-date views on phrase structure, we are left with no clear or single factor that distinguishes lexical from functional categories in grammar. Harley & Noyer (1998) describe the difference between lexical and functional heads within the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993; Halle 1997) roughly as follows: functional heads are “feature bundles for which the speaker normally has no choice as regards vocabulary insertion,” whereas for lexical heads “a speaker’s choice of V[ocabulary] I[tem] […] is not determined in advance and has truth conditional force” (Harley & Noyer 1998: 120). The above fleshes out an intuition already present at least in the structuralist tradition that is illustrated in (1): (1) a. Batman intercepted a bald mouse. b. The bald mouse intercepted Batman. c. A bald mouse intercepted Batman.
The speaker is free to choose among Batman, the bald mouse or anything else regarding who intercepted whom. On the other hand, grammatical features such as [definite], [indefinite] or [past] completely determine the forms the, a and -d and the speaker has no choice with respect to this. . Biuniqueness: elective affinities So far, it is clear that functional categories are dependent on lexical ones in more than one way. It further emerges that not any functional head can have any lexical one in its complement. In pre-theoretical terms this can be stated as the fact that nouns do not tolerate modals, tense or verbal ‘agreement’ and
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
that verbs are not inflected for Case and do not tolerate determiners (already observed by Aristotle in his Rhetoric). This selectiveness of functional categories has been lately explained within the framework of Distributed Morphology in a novel and interesting fashion. Marantz (1997), Harley & Noyer (1998) and Embick (2000), among others, argue, regarding lexical heads, that only roots exist and not distinct categories such as N or V. Nouns and verbs are constructions of morphology (a level after Syntax) that takes into consideration what functional head selects the root. In the case of the root walk, it is going to surface as a verb (walked, walks) when selected by T and/or v; similarly a walk or the walks is the result of the root having been selected by D and/or Num. Observe that, at least in a language like English, such an analysis is parsimonious (but see Marantz 1997) and straightforward. It can also be put to work in order to account for complex phenomena such as the lexically encoded verb/particle (apparently an ‘adjective’) alteration in Latin deponent verbs, where the labels ‘verb’ and ‘particle’ are irrelevant to narrow syntax (Embick 2000). Without entering into a detailed criticism of the thesis that only roots exist as far as lexical heads are concerned, I will attempt to demonstrate that categorial features are active in Syntax and that biuniqueness, captured as a unique relationship between certain functional and certain lexical categories, can help us shed light on both the differences between these two classes and the question of licensing of grammatical (empty) nouns. .. Why categorial features are necessary before morphology Let us first consider the functional head T(ense).5 It has been commonly assumed that T must select an event and c-command it at LF (cf. Laka 1990), or – alternatively – that it expresses the event argument of a predicate (cf. Higginbotham 1985; Stowell 1996). In the spirit of the analyses above, let us take a root expressing an ‘inherently’ eventive concept, like walk and see whether a Tense head can (ultimately)6 select it. (2) a. [Our walk home by the river] had a therapeutic effect b. We walked home by the river
Morphological intricacies of English aside, we see that (2b) is grammatical: not only did tense morphology show up affixed to the root walk, but also the specifier of a T head7 – the ‘subject’ we – is present. Neither of these is the case in (2a), where no T occurs in the bracketed clause and the root walk has been selected by the D our. We can further observe that in both examples
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
under (2), walk has kept its ability to license home, however this is done. An analysis like that of Marantz (1997), captures the state of affairs with no recourse to syntactic lexical categories like ‘noun’ and ‘verb’: a root selected by a Determiner, as in (2a), will be a ‘noun’, one selected by T, as in (2b), will be a ‘verb’. Nevertheless, the situation in (2) cannot be the full story. Consider (3) and (4): (3) a. b. c. d.
Jonathan booked two seats for the Tempest. Jeremy’s book is heavy, after all it is 626 pages long. Prospero’s book makes a brilliant textbook on alchemy. * Prospero booked his knowledge of alchemy.
(4) a. The Austrian chancellor’s ball was less than successful. b. * The Austrian chancellor balled (his guests) less than successfully.
The root book encodes a quite different concept when selected by a T in (3a), when it is a verb in other words, and when selected by a D (3b–c), that is, as a noun. This may mean that T can play a considerable role in actually defining the meaning of the root it selects (‘hold a seat’ versus ‘set of pages fastened together’), which is at least implausible. Alternatively, there are at least two different entries, two roots that encode different concepts, for book, each of which can behave only as a verb or as a noun “at morphology.” This option trivialises the idea of roots being selected by functional categories in a productive way. A possible solution to such a dead-end could be constructed as follows, in the spirit of Hale & Keyser (1993): the concept & is the ‘basic’ meaning of the stem, but given its ‘non-eventive’ nature, it shifts meaning when selected by a T – and the rest of the verbal functional complex, including v – so as to eventually take an abstract meaning along the lines of “to ROOT = to put something on a ROOT.” Such an analysis would provide a way to express the relationship between the verb in (3a) and the noun in (3b), definitely noneventive, as it is contextually forced to denote a book as a physical entity. Nevertheless, despite the ‘quasi-eventiveness’ of book in (3c), where a book is the result of an ‘authoring event’, book under this meaning is still not available as a verb, for selection by T, as (3d) illustrates, even by a condition like “to ROOT = to put something on a ROOT.” Moreover, to book hardly means ‘to put something on a book’, in Modern English anyway. We wish to claim here that the reason for this idiosyncratic behaviour is that nouns and verbs are pre-syntactic entities that are manipulated in Syntax as such, not morphologi-
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
cal epiphenomena. In English mental grammars there are two lexical entries with the phonological form /bυk/: one meaning &, invariably a noun and in the company of D and Num and one meaning ‘to hold a seat’, invariably a verb and in the company of DV, T etc. This is not an isolated exception but holds of a large number of verbs produced by ‘zero derivation’ from roots homonymous with nouns: Vchair–Nchair, Vship–Nship, Vcastle–Ncastle. The fact that T selects only verbs in Syntax, not just any root denoting an event, is more lucidly illustrated under (4). There, we see that, not only T seems to restrict itself to verbs when it comes to selecting, but also that not all event roots (4a) can be ‘made into’ verbs,8 intransitive or not: cf. the two versions of (4b), transitive and non-transitive respectively. Within Distributed Morphology assumptions that nouns and verbs do not exist in Syntax, such a gap is a mystery: is (4b) ruled out by some quirk of the morphological component? Is a root roughly meaning ‘dance’ unavailable to be selected by v and T? This is highly implausible, until more evidence of such “quirky” constraints is discovered. If nothing else, the fact that some stems cannot appear as verbs, even in English, entails at least that idiosyncrasies exist with respect to which stems can be selected by a functional head like T and which cannot. This in turn looks as something to be stated in the lexicon, “a list of exceptions, whatever does not follow from general principles” (Chomsky 1995: 234). The points made above for English can be made much more conspicuously in languages where special verbal morphology (of the ‘derivational’ sort and not associated with tense or aspect) marks verbs. In these languages, only lexical heads morphologically marked as verbs can be selected by T. This is briefly illustrated in (5) below. Loan words in Modern Greek can be readily made into nouns or adjectives, modulo phonological adaptation only. In order for them to function as verbs, though, a special verb morpheme is required, -ar- in the examples below. (5) a.
Nrok ‘rock’, as in ‘rock music’ b. * Vrok-o rock-1st. ‘I rock’ c. Vrok-ar-o rock-AR-1st. ‘I rock’
Akul
‘cool’, as in ‘cool guys’ *Vkul-o cool-1st. ‘I calm down’ Vkul-ar-o cool-AR-1st. ‘I calm down’
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
In (5a) we have the noun rok, a rendering of English rock that abides by Modern Greek phonology, and the adjective kul, similarly borrowed. Under (5b), we have failed attempts to construct verbs out of the stems rok and kul by just adding the -o affix that encodes 1st person singular agreement and Tense.9 Our attempt would be equally unsuccessful with any other affix for agreement and Tense. The correct and existent versions appear in (5c): they involve the stem (rok- and kul-), the -o affix and an -ar- form simply encoding ‘verbness’. Similar forms encoding only category, usually verbal, exist in a number of languages (Andrew Spencer, p.c.). .. Deriving the selectional properties of (functional) categories So far we have tried to establish that biuniqueness is not an epiphenomenon. Thus, (most) functional categories (ultimately) select specific lexical categories: T will only (ultimately) select V, D will only (ultimately) select N and so on. It is very important to make clear that biuniqueness is a property of categories, not individual lexical entries. For example, the property of T as a category to (ultimately) select verbs only is thus kept distinct from selectional properties individual lexical entries of Tense (e.g. past, non-past, present etc.) might possess. Towards an explanation of biuniqueness, Ouhalla (1991) hypothesises that functional heads bear the categorial feature of the lexical head in their complement. In other words, D has an [N] feature, T a [V] feature and so on. To further illustrate Ouhalla’s idea, if ball in (4) encodes an [N] feature, it will be unavailable for selection by T, which carries a [V] feature and a sort of feature mismatch takes place in (4b) that cancels the derivation. A similar hypothesis is made by Chomsky (1993, 1995): (at least some) functional categories carry the categorial feature of the lexical head inside their complement. The problem now is which lexical head? Consider the following: (6) the [little town savagely bombed by its liberators] was called …
The complement of the D above, quite uncontroversially, contains five lexical heads: two nouns (town and liberators), an adjective (little), a verb (bombed) and an adverb10 (savagely). Which of these does D bear the categorial specification of? The intuition of course is that town is the relevant lexical head here but, as discussed in Section 3.1, this cannot be expressed in a fashion as straightforward as one might think. For instance, take ‘embeddedness’ as a telling criterion and assume that D bears the categorial feature of the least embedded lexical head; such an assumption cannot be upheld if Kayne’s
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
(1994) analysis of relative clauses is correct: according to it, the noun town was merged in a very embedded position. In a similar context, Abney (1987) discusses the notion of the semantic head of a projection: the plus its complement are, ultimately, about a town (again, see Section 3.1). Grimshaw (1991) fleshes out this idea by positing the notion of Extended Projection, defined as follows: (7) y is an Extended Projection of x iff: a. y dominates x b. y and x share all categorial features c. all nodes between x and y share all categorial features d. For Fn(x) and Fm(y), n ≤ m
Her feature F0…2 is taken to be encoded on every lexical entry and defines this entry’s position in the Extended Projection it belongs to: lexical heads, that head Extended Projections, are specified as F0, Infl and Det as F1, Comp and P as F2. Crucially, functional heads are specified for the categorial feature of the head of their Extended Projection, as expressed in (7b–c) above. Biuniqueness is thus derived: T heads will always be inside the Extended Projection of a verb, and Ds inside that of a noun because they are specified for the categorial feature of a verb and a noun respectively. In (6), town is the head of the Extended Projection that has the D the as its syntactic head. The notion of Extended Projection is conceptually very attractive and has been tacitly adopted by a majority of syntacticians. First of all, it provides a new way to capture the intuition that DPs like in (6) are about a town: town is the head of the Extended Projection that comprises at least D, Num, N and their projections. Hence, DPs are Extended Projections of N and N has a privileged position in them, TPs of V and so on. Second, it is a way to materialise the intuition that functional heads like T do not select Asp/verbal Num/v and only remotely the lexical verb. The affiliations of functional heads are determined by their categorial feature, functional heads form part of the lexical head’s ‘court’ and, as Abney (1987: 65) observed “their semantic contribution is second order, regulating or contributing to the interpretation of [the head of the Extended Projection].” . Categorial features at LF In both Ouhalla’s and Grimshaw’s analyses a potential conceptual flaw discreetly lurks. Stated in Grimshaw’s terms, in an Extended Projection with, say,
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
five heads, five sets of categorial features identically specified are encoded. Let us illustrate such a case with a concrete English example: (8) I will not have finished
Assume informally that in (8), an Extended Projection of the verb finished, we have a DV head, with I at its specifier, a T head11 will, a Neg head not and an Asp head have. Whether this is 100% accurate or whether the surface order does not reflect the order these functional heads are merged in is not important here. What is important is the fact that, according to Ouhalla and Grimshaw, all DV, T, Neg, Asp and V are specified for a categorial [V] feature. What is the role of five instances of a feature [V] at LF? What is the LF interpretation of categorial features? Recall that, under plausible minimalist assumptions, no features uninterpretable at an interface level (PF or LF) must reach there, or the derivation will crash. As it is not obvious that categorial features are PF-related features, one wonders what their role at LF can be. Presumably, they will have to be eliminated somehow before LF and the apparent way towards this is feature checking. How can this be done? Let us try to address this problem by first speculating on the nature of categorial features. Suppose that it is in the lexicon where roots expressing concepts combine with abstract derivational morphemes – or a notational variant thereof – into lexical entries. So, nail combines with either [V] or [N], yielding Vnail and Nnail; book1 and ball combine with the morpheme encoding [N] (which also encodes classificatory features like ‘gender’ in a number of languages) to yield Nbook and Nball but not with the morpheme encoding [V] – one version of which in Modern Greek is -ar-. It is with this morpheme encoding [V] that book2 combines to yield Vbook, but not with the one encoding [N] and so on. The presence of a [V] feature on a lexical head will lead to the building of an Extended Projection that is clausal (this probably meaning: able to be given a truth value beyond LF), whereas the presence of an [N] feature to the building of an Extended Projection that is referential (or rather: able to function as of type <e> beyond LF, cf. Chomsky 2000). There are two differences here with the traditional interpretation of what categorial features encode (cf. Muysken & Van Riemsdijk 1986): [V] is not taken to encode predicativity, all lexical heads are predicates ‘in isolation’ (Higginbotham 1985), but rather ‘truth evaluativity’; similarly, [N] is not taken to be referential per se but it leads to the lexical head being selected by a ‘referential’ functional head (D), itself standing for something like ‘objectivisation’.12
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
Let us now look more closely at the categorial features. We agree with Ouhalla (1991), Grimshaw (1991), Chomsky (1993) and the somewhat less explicit claims in Chomsky (1995) that functional heads have the categorial specification of the head of their Extended Projection. Nevertheless, if we now assume that categorial features have some LF import, we cannot proliferate their numbers inside Extended Projections. The obvious solution within a checking framework is the following: the categorial features of functional heads are uninterpretable at LF. Let us see what kind of conceptual and empirical predictions such a proposal makes in a checking framework. .. Heads of Extended Projections and categorial features Abstracting away from how many and which categorial features are made available by UG, assume that they encode fundamental properties at LF, such as objectivisation. Even if an Extended Projection contains a number, restricted or large, of functional heads at LF, it will still encode only one categorial feature, that of the lexical head, of the head of the Extended Projection. Let us go by the minimalist assumption that grammatical structures are assembled via the merger of heads present in the numeration and that they are not templates filled with lexical items. Thus, the bracketed Extended Projection of the noun in (9a) will be a predicative NumP but in (9c) a referential DP (9) a. They all want to become [NumP monks] b. They all want to become [AP monkish] c. [DP The monks] enjoy reading Camus and Chomsky
Although the NumP in (9a) and the DP in (9c) fulfil two very different functions, they are both Extended Projections of N. Thus, the ‘objectivisation’ encoded by the categorial feature of N ‘characterises’ both these phrases and renders them unsuitable to become attributive modifiers, compare *monk behaviour (under the interpretation of monk as modifier) to monkish behaviour. Moreover, (9a) is different from (9b) in a subtle but real manner: you can be monkish without being a monk and vice versa… In any case, both the nominal phrases in (9a) and (9c) are about monks, whether they function predicatively or referentially. This can be captured by the fact that both Extended Projections DP and NumP have the same set of categorial features on their heads. Under the assumption that the lexical head of an Extended Projection is the sole source of categorial features at LF, we can clarify Abney’s notion of
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
‘semantic head’: the semantic head of a phrase, whether a ‘maximal’ Extended Projection or not, is the lexical head whose categorial features match those of the (functional) head of this projection: DVP, TP, vP for instance will have a V as their semantic head. In (6), repeated below for convenience, the semantic head will be the N town because the DP is the Extended Projection of an N, although other lexical heads are merged in it, of course. (6) the [little town savagely bombed by its liberators] was called …
At a more practical level, the uninterpretability of categorial features on functional heads entails that they cannot be heads of Extended Projections themselves and this is a most desirable consequence. In order to clarify how this follows, consider what would happen if an Extended Projection were headed by a functional head. This Extended Projection would feature only uninterpretable categorial features at LF and the derivation would unceremoniously crash. Moreover, suppose that this hypothetical Extended Projection is in object position with uninterpretable [N] features on all its head positions; the closest checker would be the interpretable categorial feature of the verb, [V], and checking would be impossible under feature mismatch. Consequently, functional heads can only ‘grow’ around a lexical head that matches their uninterpretable categorial features, the head of the Extended Projection they eventually belong to. If only lexical heads encode interpretable categorial features, the distinction between functional and lexical can now be easily stated. Functional and lexical heads will no longer be situated at the two ends of a continuum: only lexical heads can head Extended Projections. The informational content or salience of a lexical head is irrelevant for grammatical competence; whether a noun denotes complex concepts (like transubstantiation or quantum) or no concept at all, like grammatical nouns and verbs, it is a legitimate head for a ‘nominal’ Extended Projection, in a way that a determiner is not. At the same time, Mood, Tense, Asp and v heads will build around a V because V is a lexical head, whether it is get13 or cognise. A lexical head is such by virtue of its categorial specification (sometimes, like with impoverished eN, just by that), a functional head is such by virtue of the uninterpretability of its categorial feature(s).
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
.. Morphological and phonological dependence: generalised lexical X0 movement The idea that functional categories have uninterpretable categorial features provides a straightforward way to derive the ‘intimacy’ displayed between functional heads and the lexical head of their Extended Projection. If categorial features of functional heads are uninterpretable, they must not reach LF, because they will induce crash of the derivation. Thus, uninterpretable features on functional heads must follow the way of all uninterpretable features in grammar (as in Chomsky 1995) and will have to be checked by a matching interpretable one by LF. The lexical head of the Extended Projection does bear an LF interpretable categorial feature and is an appropriate checker for the uninterpretable categorial features of the functional heads inside its Extended Projection. Consequently, by LF, this lexical head (or its categorial feature) must have moved all the way up its Extended Projection. For the part after application of Spell Out, this can be plausibly be done by feature movement (X0 movement minus the phonological features). Feature movement of the interpretable categorial features through all the functional heads will result to a single set of categorial features per Extended Projection at LF. Does the above consequence of the uninterpretability of categorial features on functional heads relate to any empirical phenomena? In fact, it clearly does. Chomsky (1993, 1995) discusses the strange habit of lexical heads to tend to climb up on what we established here to be their Extended Projection. Hence, consider instances of overt head movement of N to Num (Ritter 1991), N to D (Longobardi 1994),14 V to v (Larson 1988; Chomsky 1995), V to T (Pollock 1989; Chomsky 1993, 1995; Pollock 1997; Rohrbacher 1999), V (to I) to C (Den Besten 1983; Rohrbacher 1999; et al.). Chomsky (1993, 1995) attributes overt head movement of the lexical head to one of the functional heads inside its Complete Functional Complex15 to a strong categorial feature on the attracting functional heads. So, in the case of V to T, T encodes a strong [V] feature. By extrapolation, N to D movement involves a strong [N] feature on D. Notice that strong categorial features cannot be located on lexical heads, especially if strength of a feature somehow entails its uninterpretability as well. Even if ‘strength’ is itself a feature,16 the ‘viral’ feature of Lasnik (1999), there are reasons to side with Chomsky (1995, 1998) that such features cannot encoded on lexical heads. Without getting into the details of the syntax-morphology interaction, it would be feasible to relate head movement or a notational variant thereof and
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
the affixal status of a large number of functional heads, in the spirit of Pollock (1989). Consider legevano once more: (a) it could be assembled by X0 movement of the V to T and DV where it picks up the affixes; (b) it could be fully inflected and check strong features on its way to T and DV; (c) or it could be merged in DV as the head of a chain with lower positions T and V. In all three scenarios, the correlation between affix status and categorial feature unintepretability (and “strength”) can now be readily expressed. As for the phonological dependence of non-affixed functional heads like might, this could again be related to their membership of a particular Extended Projection. Whatever motivates overt movement, it is surely a peculiarity of a given instantiation of UG, a given grammar. More intriguingly, there are instances of head movement of a lexical head inside its Extended Projection that are assumed to be universal. V to Agr/T (Chomsky 1993, 1995) and N to D (Longobardi 1994; Brugè 1996) are two cases in point. Naturally, in languages like English where these movement operations are never overt, they have to take place after Spell Out and, consequently, as movement of features. Thus, overt movement of, say, V to T or N to D will be the one way to ‘do’ a universal operation, the other being feature movement after Spell Out. The obvious question is what triggers covert (post Spell Out) V to T and N to D in languages like English? Apparently, factors related to LF interpretation. In order to foreground the peculiarity of the situation, it is interesting to observe that no movement of N to T or D to (a higher) V is attested17 either overtly or covertly – this is reminiscent of biuniqueness and is in fact a consequence of biuniqueness: uninterpretable categorial features only attract matching interpretable ones. To summarise so far, lexical heads tend to move up inside their Extended Projections overtly. Moreover, there is strong evidence that (at least some of) these movements must have covert counterparts in grammars not displaying them. N to D is universal, V to T, as well. This state of affairs can be explained away by the account sketched here. Lexical heads have to climb up to the highest head of their Extended Projection by LF in order to check all the uninterpretable categorial features on its functional heads. Thus, crash of the derivation is prevented. Which part of this climbing process must be completed by Spell Out is of course down to grammar specific properties. Thus, regarding verbal Extended Projections, English verbs make it as far as v before Spell Out, French ones to T, in V2 languages possibly all the way to the C complex. At the same time, given the uninterpretable [V] features on every head inside verbal Extended Projections, the [V] feature of the verb must have reached the C complex (or DV, if no C
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
heads are merged) by LF. This account of ‘generalised head movement’ can help us dispense with category-specific requirements, like the one in Longobardi (1994), which states that N-to-D movement must have taken place by LF for ‘referentiality’ to be checked: the categorial features of lexical heads must have checked the uninterpretable one(s) at the highest functional head inside their Extended Projection in all cases, the rest of the lexical head’s features will be pied-piped to the point where strong features exist: (10) English V-movement inside its Extended Projection D VP DP
TP DV
[V]
…
T DV [V]
vP
T
VP
DP v V
DP
V
v
As illustrated in (10) above, the V head moves to v, and this is where Spell Out finds it. Its categorial feature, say a feature [V], will have climbed up to DV by LF and have checked all the uninterpretable [V] features. If the above are accurate, then functional heads are not only relational to lexical ones (Grimshaw 1991), they are also parasitic on them – perhaps internal peculiarities of the language module: they cannot exist without a lexical head to check their offending categorial features. After some thought, one can also reach the conclusion that semantic, morphological and phonological dependence of functional categories on lexical ones is the manifestation of functional heads being impossible outside the Extended Projection of a lexical head, either as heads of their own Extended Projection or, even, as heads of a phrase (like ‘intransitive determiners’): in both cases, such syntactic objects would be illegitimate at LF.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Selection and licensing The discussion above has sweeping implications regarding the notions of selection and licensing, as well. While selection can be shown to reduce to either s-selection or feature checking, it also finally emerges that it is lexical heads that license the functional heads in their Extended Projections. The implications of this regarding the licensing model for empty categories (null nouns like eN and the rest) will be explored. . Selection Within a theory of grammar that, in principle, seeks to derive the selectional possibilities of categories from their conceptual properties, functional categories can potentially constitute a puzzle. Adopting the framework and arguments in Chomsky (1986), let us focus on the distinction between c-selection (roughly, selection in terms of grammatical categories) versus s-selection (selection in terms of meaning) and let us see first how c-selection and sselection compare when applied to selection by a lexical head. Take the lexical entry of the V realise. It does not have to encode an explicit statement that it can (c-)select either a CP or a DP as its Theme argument, as illustrated below: (11) I realised [CP that my theory is good fun] (12) I realised [DP this very important fact about Tarzan]
This must be so because an explicit c-selectional statement in terms of grammatical category labels such as CP and DP predicts the grammaticality of (11) and (12) but not the ungrammaticality of (13) under the intended meaning: (13) *I realised [DP Tarzan]
Chomsky goes on to argue that maybe all that needs to be stated in the lexicon for the case of verbs like realise is their s-selectional properties, namely that they take a proposition as their Theme argument. In addition to this statement, only the plausible assumption that CP (‘clause’) is the Canonical Structural Realisation of a proposition is needed; this of course does not preclude a DP from being assigned a Theme role by realise if it (abstractly) expresses a proposition – as is the case in (12) – but it rules out (13), on the grounds that the DP Tarzan cannot easily express a proposition.
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
If it is true that s-selection is enough to express the selectional properties of lexical heads, c-selection statements such as “realise selects either a DP or a CP” are rendered superfluous. One could extrapolate, as Chomsky (1986: 90) himself does, and attempt to further reduce all selection in grammar to sselection. Moreover, we could perhaps advance Chomsky’s claim even further and hypothesise that s-selection is ultimately in terms of logical properties of the concepts denoted by selectors and selected items respectively, i.e. that the source of selection in grammar is ultimately and essentially extra-grammatical. In other words, selectional properties are properties of concepts, not the lexical entries that denote them: the verb give selects three arguments with particular properties because of the logical properties of the concept GIVE. In Section 3.3.2 above we established selection by functional heads to be the result of their categorial feature specification. We further showed that sselection is irrelevant here: functional categories do not s-select, a T head will not select an event denoted by a noun but only a verb, a grammatical category neither isomorphic nor co-extensional with events. This situation is summarised by Ouhalla (1991: 14) as a provisional statement according to which functional heads do not s-select but rather c-select. Further sharpening this statement we should observe that s-selection seems to be a property of individual lexical items (such as realise above), not categories (such as V or T). Thus, no non-vacuous statement can be formulated regarding the sselectional properties of nouns or determiners. Having said that, one might possibly be able to discern some sort of s-selection among different lexical entries for functional categories as well. Consider:18 (14) a. I don’t know if/whether all government is evil. b. I cannot decide *if/whether to post it or not.
The next question is whether (14) illustrates a genuine case of (s-)selection. The answer is most probably negative: if is barred from ‘selecting’ infinitival clauses not in terms of extra-linguistic properties of the concept denoted by if (especially, as opposed to that denoted by whether); neither by virtue of the concept infinitival clauses denote as a class – as there should not exist such a thing. Rather, the ‘if versus whether’ and similar asymmetries regarding selection by lexical entries that belong to functional categories seem to naturally fall under syntactic requirements, such as feature checking. Given that functional categories do not denote concepts, functional heads are automatically excluded from the sets of both s-selectors and s-selectees.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
The C head that does not denote propositions but contributes in their grammatical encoding. This much is true for all functional heads. The state of affairs that emerges is the following: s-selection is extragrammatical and stems from conceptual properties of a given lexical item. This prevents both grammatical heads (like empty nouns, see Section 2 in Chapter 3) and functional heads from s-selecting or being s-selected. Furthermore, categories (lexical or functional), being intra-grammatical entities, are also irrelevant for s-selection. Some co-occurrence restrictions regarding functional heads like the Italian D la and the English C if have to do with feature checking: la has an uninterpretable feminine gender feature, if a finiteness one. Functional heads are irrelevant for any sort of selection altogether: being bunches of features inexorably tied to a con-categorial lexical head by their uninterpretable categorial feature, they have their presence conditioned entirely by their feature makeup, their uninterpretable features more specifically. Saying that T selects a verb or is selected by DV is extending the notion of selection, by now an extra-grammatical one, to include feature checking and/or c-command, purely grammar-internal operations and relations. The next step will be a discussion of what this situation means for the ‘licensing’ of eN and the rest of empty nouns. . Licensing Let us now investigate into the implications of the parasitic nature of functional heads regarding licensing of null nouns (as in Lobeck 1995 and Kester 1996 – see also Chapter 3). Extended Projections are built from functional heads around a lexical one, all of which are present in the numeration. The lexical head can denote a concept or be a grammatical one. In principle, this is irrelevant for the purposes of constructing a derivation; what is of ‘interest’ to Syntax is that this lexical head bears a categorial feature so that, at LF, this feature will have checked and eliminated the uninterpretable categorial features of the functional heads in its Extended Projection. Additionally, if this lexical head does denote a function, a predicate, this function must be saturated at LF, according to some version of the θ criterion. In the light of these, recall examples (1) and (2) from Chapter 1, presented again as (15a) and (15b) respectively:
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
(15) a. [DP We linguists] tend to be quite parsimonious. b. [D We] tend to be quite parsimonious.
The need for the ‘transitivity’ of we in (15b) was so far expressed in terms of selection being obligatory: if we ultimately selects a noun in (15a), it must do so in (15b) as well. Now that we saw that functional heads and functional categories do not select, we can recast this as follows: we cannot be intransitive because the derivation will crash: it thus needs a noun, its categorial feature more specifically, in order to be licensed. In the account here, categorial features are the glue that holds Extended Projections together, as lexical heads license the functional heads inside their Extended Projection by enabling them to ‘survive’ at LF. At least in this case, licensing reduces to feature checking. Thus, in the account developed here, lexical heads sanction the presence of a functional complex. In other words, it is lexical heads that license the functional heads in their Extended Projection19 and not the other way round: a lexical head of the category [V] will force v, Asp, T, DV and so on inside its Extended Projection and not Num, D etc. The categorial specification is an LF interpretable feature on lexical heads but a ‘selectional’ feature on functional ones, uninterpretable at LF. As one would expect of ‘selectional features’, they have to be eliminated before LF (Cormack 1995). Observe how syntactic licensing here, lexical heads licensing functional ones by virtue of their categorial features, can incorporate Higginbotham’s proposal discussed earlier, according to which a noun, a lexical head, ‘semantically licenses’ a functional D head via θ-assignment. Here, a noun licenses a D head syntactically by checking and eliminating its uninterpretable categorial feature; this can take place either before Spell Out, like in Danish via overt N to D movement (Santelmann 1993: 159), or after Spell Out, like English. To recapitulate, it was argued in this section that only s-selection exists, relevant to the concepts individual lexical entries denote. At the same time, the relationships between lexical and functional heads such as biuniqueness, the formation of Extended Projections and the tendency of lexical heads to X0-move inside their Extended Projection are the consequences of the categorial status of functional heads: functional heads encode LF-uninterpretable categorial features. This, in turn, derives the fact the lexical heads are, at the same time, heads of Extended Projections: they provide the sole interpretable categorial feature in an Extended Projection.
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
. Notational variants and conclusion Like the rest of this study, our discussion of the relationship between lexical and functional heads within an Extended Projection is largely stated in terms of Chomsky’s chapter Categories and Transformations in his Minimalist Program (1995). While there is no guarantee of the validity of most of the discussion herein outside a Principles & Parameters framework, I wish to claim that the conclusions drawn do not hinge entirely on theory-internal constructs but that they capture important generalisations about the nature of grammar. In work that follows the Minimalist Program book, Chomsky (1998, 1999) moves away from both the notion of uninterpretable features driving head-movement and that of feature movement. Moreover, he hints at head movement being a PF-motivated process, as it does not seem to have an effect on the LF interface.20 Without entering into the technicalities of Minimalist Inquiries (Chomsky 1998) and what follows it, we can observe the following. To the extent that head movement of a lexical head inside its Extended Projection is the visible step of a generalised process of categorial feature ‘climbing’, there is some justification for pre-Spell Out head movement. Of course, one can always assume head movement to be independent of categorial feature climbing and the two processes not sharing a common step before Spell Out. This would mean that overt head movement is not an instance of pied piping triggered by strong (uninterpretable) categorial features on functional heads. Concerns about parsimony aside, this is a valid option. Moving to the idea that uninterpretable features do not exist, we are presented with an interesting way to test the limits of the hypothesis that functional heads encode no LF-interpretable categorial features. The challenge is more interesting in the face of the scrapping of feature movement (covert/LF movement). Suppose that, in the spirit of Chomsky (1998), there are no uninterpretable features but only unspecified ones. Functional heads would be bundles of features with unspecified categorial features. Thus a bundle of features X, would be a D head when in the Extended Projection of an N and a DV when in that of a V (both D heads are referential); Y would be a Poss head (cf. Kayne 1994) inside the Extended Projection of an N and a v head inside that of a V (both may license external arguments). The operation Agree would replace feature movement, a possibly desirable development. Among the advantages of such an approach, namely postulating unspecified instead of uninterpretable categorial features on functional heads, one can include the following: first of all, the clause/DP distinction would now
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
boil down to the categorial feature of the head (clauses and DPs being Extended Projections of V and N respectively). This is why ‘verbal’ functional heads and ‘nominal’ functional heads are so similar: DV and D, verbal Num and Num, Poss and v. The situation in Marantz (1997) would be reversed: it is not a complex of functional heads (all of which must be somehow compatible with each other) that decides the nature of a root, it is the root-cum-categorial feature that decides the nature of the (possibly identical) functional complex as verbal or nominal. The main problem with such an approach turns out to be no other than biuniqueness: it falls short of explaining why T and Asp (in most languages) resist having their categorial feature specified as [N]. Recall from Section 3.3 that a ‘semantic’ explanation in terms of tense and aspectual features clashing with the meaning of [N] at LF is not straightforward at all. Whatever the most accurate account for the dependence of functional heads on lexical ones is, it has to be acknowledged that such a dependence is a real one and central in natural language. Before concluding, it is worth observing that, if functional categories encode uninterpretable categorial features, maybe a range of phenomena relating to language acquisition can be set against a more clearly defined background. Radford (1990) and Tsimpli (1997) discuss an early stage of language acquisition during which functional categories and aspects of parametric syntax have not been acquired. Interestingly, similar facts have been observed in the context of second language acquisition (Vainikka & Young-Scholten 1998). Generally, it appears to be the case that children (and learners of a second language) undergo a stage during which they have either no or underspecified functional categories and, if all parametrisation reduces to lexical properties of functional categories (Borer 1984; Wexler & Manzini 1987; Ouhalla 1991) this arguably affects aspects of their knowledge of parametric syntax. If the category of functional heads is encoded as an uninterpretable feature, then this could make the task of acquiring them harder either indirectly (due to the affixal/phonologically weak status this property usually entails) or directly (due to the presence of the uninterpretable feature itself).
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
Notes . Consider the undermining of the X0/XP distinction and that of specifier and complement (Chomsky 1995), the elimination of government from narrow syntax (Sportiche 1995; Chomsky 1995) and head movement (Chomsky 1998; Mahajan 2000), the elimination of non-local economy (Collins 1997), the dismantling of the empty categories typology (Brody 1986; Chomsky 1993, 1995; Sauerland 1998; Manzini & Savoia 2001), the banishment of intermediate projections and XP-adjunction (Speas 1991; Kayne 1994) and so on. . Observe that neither ‘chain’ nor ‘atom’ are final solutions, although they are closer to reality than ‘construction-specific transformation’ or ‘phlogiston’. . Here, issues of individuation and plurality are set aside. . Probably by virtue of its categorial feature [N], as empty nouns do not denote predicates that could assign familiar θ roles such as Theme (see Chapter 3, Section 2). . Chomsky (1998, 1999) considers it a lexical head, apparently for reasons relating to the definition of phases. We will adhere to the standard assumption of T being a functional head here. The material in the following sections has been presented as a talk in the Spring 2000 meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain: I wish to thank the audience for their comments and feedback. I am also grateful to Martin Atkinson for patiently and insightfully discussing these issues with me. . The caveat “ultimately” will henceforth accommodate the fact that other functional heads (can) intervene between T (or D) and the lexical verb (or noun). . As in Chomsky (1995) and contra Chapter 4 here. . I am grateful to Neil Smith for pointing this out to me. . ‘Non-past’, more accurately. . On the categorial status of adverbs, see Alexiadou (1997: Ch. 1 & 7). . Whether or not will marks Tense: Iatridou (2000) building on an analysis in Kamp & Reyle (1993). . See, for instance, Bloom (2000) on the prominence of object status in lexical acquisition. . A grammatical V according to Emonds (1985: 169). . N to D was also claimed to derive non-person pronouns in Zwarts (1993), Cardinaletti (1994) and Panagiotidis (1998). . As first defined in Chomsky (1986), taken here to be equivalent to the notion of Extended Projection. . Chomsky’s (1998, 1999) ‘EPP feature’.
Licensing and the categorial features of functional categories
. Clitic movement is never to V: Kayne (1989, 1994). Moreover, Incorporation (Baker 1988, 1999) is irrelevant here and Stowell (1991b) discusses LF requirements Incorporation can satisfy. . I am grateful to Eric Mathieu for discussing the if/whether contrast(s) with me. . I am grateful to Jamal Ouhalla for discussing this point with me. . This line of argumentation is taken up and pursued by Mahajan (2000). I wish to thank Martin Atkinson and Neil Smith for discussing ‘minimalist’ head movement with me. Alexiadou & Stavrou (1998) offer a non-movement account for ‘N-climbing’ (Cinque 1994) in Romance languages.
Conclusion
.
The bigger picture
This study has attempted to formulate the unifying factor that underlies all non-descriptive nominal expressions in natural language. Towards this end, it made a serious commitment to a Merge & Move model, refuting the claim that grammatical features can be located ‘wherever convenient’ in a given structural template. Through the development of a parsimonious account of selection and licensing, we foregrounded the Extended Projection as an important locus of all grammar-internal licensing. The picture that emerged is the following: functional heads can exist only as relational to, or parasitic on, a lexical one inside derivations. Together they form Extended Projections, the head of which is the lexical head. Extended Projections have been shown not to be primitives in grammar but rather the result of exactly the parasitic nature of functional heads. In this sense, lexical heads license functional ones, as lexical heads provide the feature checker functional heads need for their LF-uninterpretable categorial feature. It follows that the lexical head in an Extended Projection constitutes its semantic head. A straightforward consequence of the parasitic status of functional categories is the impossibility of intransitive determiners – or any intransitive functional heads, for that matter. Focussing on nominal phrases, the unavailability of intransitive determiners is prima facie contradicted by the apparent determiner status of pronominals in a large number of languages. Nevertheless, in the face of the existence of overt empty nouns and ample empirical evidence, one is forced to postulate null empty nouns as well. Empty nouns, both overt and null, license the functional projections that make up pronominal or elliptical nominal phrases; because they denote no concept, they also trigger pronominality, with possible referents of the whole DP initially restricted by features on both these empty nouns and the functional heads inside the DP. Hence, it follows that pronominality is not a primitive in syntax
Conclusion
(or anywhere), nor is it encoded in terms of a [+pronominal] feature. Pronominality is usually the result of the (minimal) contribution of empty nouns in an otherwise perfectly ‘normal’ DP. The non-primitive status of pronominality is corroborated by the fact that null subjects in languages like Italian, Spanish and Modern Greek do not involve an empty noun. Null subjects (a DV in turn agreeing with a verbal Num one) are ‘pronominal’ because there is no concept-denoting noun involved – due to the radical absence of such, this time. Of course, DV and verbal Num being functional heads belonging to the Extended Projection of a verb, they are properly licensed having their uninterpretable categorial features checked by that of the verb by LF. In a nutshell, pronominality could indeed be always the result of the radical absence of a noun – but not in human languages. If it is determiners that are referential, they will always need a matching lexical head (‘the head of their Extended Projection’) to check their uninterpretable categorial feature, as determiners are functional heads. In the case of DV, the verb is sufficient. In the case of D, an empty noun is invariably necessary. The resulting picture, if accurate, is yet another blow to a typology of empty categories based on features like [±pronominal] and [±anaphor]. Not only traces are not as ‘empty’ as previously thought, but also pro is an epiphenomenal entity that can be either of the following: (a) a fully fledged, but phonologically null, DP (as in Japanese and Chinese) (b) a DV with no strong features (like Yaguan sa and affixes in Italian, Spanish and Modern Greek) (c) an eN (null empty noun) licensing a displaced ‘subject clitic’. Such a ‘blow’ is only welcome in the context of a drive towards linguistic theories with more explanatory power and fewer mechanisms to this very end. Thus, no ad hoc licensing and identification mechanisms are required for some pronominal entities, just because of their overall or partially (null) PF representation: all of them involve items listed in the lexicon, whether phonologically overt or null.
. Open questions and loose ends The preceding discussion has left at least two loose ends, which I will now briefly address in turn. The first has to do with how “opaque” a DP is. We have argued throughout for pronominals being ordinary DPs that differ from R-expressions only
Conclusion
by virtue of their noun head: R-expressions are headed by contentful nouns, pronominals by empty ones. Nevertheless, binding can apparently distinguish between R-expressions and pronouns and imposes different conditions on co-reference. If this particular aspect of binding, namely the contrast between Principle B and Principle C, applies after LF, as opposed to at LF, this should be no serious problem. Apparently, a difference between DPs containing empty nouns and DPs containing concept-denoting nouns is visible after LF, by the Conceptual-Intentional systems. A more serious problem is that of the distribution of pronominal expressions in overt syntax, as a number of syntactic phenomena can differentiate between R-expressions and pronouns. Consider the following very wellknown contrasts (alluded to at the beginning of Chapter 1), adapted from Panagiotidis (2000): (1) a. She likes [all the postmen]. b. She likes [all you postmen]. c. She likes [you all]. (2) a. It is raining, so I took (the chair) in (the chair). b. It is raining, so I took (it) in (*it). c. It is raining, so I took (the bamboo one) in (the bamboo one).
If the syntactic component is blind to the semantic or phonological features of nouns inside DPs, then we have to deal with a serious problem in both (1) and (2). In (1) it appears that movement of the D (or the whole DP) you depends on the semantic content of the noun: postmen in (1a–b) versus eN in (1c). The choice of determiner is irrelevant, considering (1a) and (1b). In (2), phonologically overt ones in (2c), although as semantically empty as eN in (2b), patterns up with the phonologically overt but concept-denoting chair in (2a), as far as positioning possibilities of the DP they belong to are concerned. The intransitive determiner hypothesis would make more straightforward predictions here: the bare D in (1c) and (2b) obligatorily cliticises, possibly to comply with the Linear Correspondence Axiom (Kayne 1994). Alternatively we can pursue an analysis of it and you as weak pronouns (see also Section 3 in Chapter 2) as in Cardinaletti & Starke (1999); not an uncomplicated task. Although, abstracting away from English, it is not the case that only DPs with an empty/null noun exclusively undergo object shift or scrambling, I agree that what makes the pronoun move in (1) and (2) is the impoverishment of eN. Recall from Chapter 3 that the eN that complements indexicals, they and it (unlike that in he and she), is utterly impoverished, possibly a mere
Conclusion
categorial feature. Putting this into the perspective offered in Chapter 5, eN, or rather a mere [N] feature, is present only to ‘support’ the φ features on Num and D by checking the uninterpretable categorial features of these heads. It is possible that this elementary noun incorporates to Num (and D) and that this forces this ‘ultra-light’ DP to move. A second loose end is the nature of DV. It appears that DV is referential in that it can be assigned a truth value after LF. We also saw that Yaguan sa and all the DV heads in Italian, Spanish and Modern Greek also refer to individuals, the subjects of the clause. Thus, a DV in Spanish can ultimately be of both type and type <e>! How is this made possible? A first answer is by virtue of the φ features of DV: the English-style null strong DV does not seem to encode any. Is then strength related to the presence of φ features? These questions are anything but trivial or easy to tackle but will have to remain open for further research, as well.
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Index
A adjective 47 affix 14 agreement 22, 49, 101, 109 allomorphy 15 animacy 25 antecedent 51 AP 98, 104 Arabic 130, 154, 156, 157, 159, 166 arbitrary interpretation 71, 125, 126 argument 126, 131, 136 ASE feature 18 Asturian 59 B Balkan 117 Basso Polesano 151, 153, 154, 156, 159 binding 10, 97 biuniqueness 173, 177, 182, 189 borrowing 32 Brazilian Portuguese 75 Bulgarian 75 Burmese 30 C C(onceptual)-I(ntentional) systems 11, 39 case 99, 110, 130 category 170–183 c-command 22 Celtic 130 Chain 4, 133 checking 99 Chinese 10, 71, 130, 159 clitic 62–69, 74, 101 clitic movement 62 CLLD 75
closed class 29, 111–116 concept 111, 112 control 105 D Danish 15, 188 declension class 27 definiteness 19, 125 definition of pronominality 11 definition of pronoun 11 deixis 18 demonstrative 12, 16, 41 derivational morphology 28 descriptive featuress 111 disambiguation 11, 13 Dogrib 10 doubling 132, 137, 142, 154, 156, 157 DP hypothesis 12 Dutch 15, 107 E ellipsis 14, 17, 47–69, 102 empty operator 97 eN 50 English 27, 33, 55, 108, 116, 154, 159, 175 epithet 38 EPP 127, 128, 130, 141, 142, 143, 154, 156, 159 extended projection 167, 177, 179, 180, 184, 187 F feature 63, 114 features of indexicals 22 Fiorentino 130, 151, 157, 159
Pronouns, clitics and empty nouns
French 25, 26, 49, 102, 150, 159 functional determination of empty categories 94 functional head 13, 170–183 G gapping 48 gender 25 gender features 26 German 15, 25, 50, 53, 101, 150, 151 Germanic 68, 117 Ghomala 41 Greek see Modern Greek H head 66 Hebrew 139, 157, 159, 166 Holmberg’s Generalisation 68 human noun ellipsis 56 Hungarian 19 I Icelandic 150 identification 96, 105, 110, 114 indefinite argument 126 Indefinite Argument Drop 70 indefiniteness 77 indexical 15, 16, 35, 101, 166 interpretable features 138 intransitive determiner 12, 13, 16, 62, 169 intransitive functional head 13 intrinsic feature 20 Italian 13, 19, 20, 25, 27, 49, 71, 95, 102, 126, 128, 131, 147, 158, 159, 171 J Japanese 10, 30, 32, 118, 127, 130, 159 L Latin 173 lexicon 94, 109 LF 11, 14
licensing 15, 110, 168, 169, 170, 187 licensing of empty categories 96 M Malay 30 mass 59 mass noun ellipsis 57 mass nouns 26 minimal pair 30 Modern Greek 21, 25, 27, 49, 70, 71, 75, 91, 126, 136, 144, 149, 158, 159, 175 modification 32 morphology 61 N nominalisation 50, 79 nominal theta roles 90 non-configurational 131, 137, 142 non-person 19 North Italian see North Italian dialects North Italian dialects 148, 151, 152, 159 noun ellipsis 51, 55, 74 NPpro 87 N-pronoun 17, 29, 33 null argument 104 null pronoun 10, Chapter 4 num 20, 21, 22 number 20, 22 number features 24 O one 17, 30, 33, 47 open class 32 optional feature 20 P Paduan 151, 154 parameter 132, 137, 142, 161 partitive 57 person 11, 18 person features 23 phonological clitic 14 placement of pronominals 10
Index
plural indexical 22 Polesano 154 Portuguese 72 possessor 92 Potawatomi 24 preposition 89 principle 98 principle B 52 pro 71 PRO 79 pro 95, 98, 126 pronominal determiner 12, 17 pronominal feature 16, 35 pronominality 12, 13, 35, 38–39, 63, 167 pronominal noun 17, 29, 33 PSE 19 PSE feature 18 Q Quiteño Spanish 75 R restrictive 40 R-expression 19, 37 Romance 21, 117 Rovignese 151, 153, 159 Russian 19, 50 S Scandinavian 159 selection 15, 17, 184–187 semantic variable 11, 35, 54 Serbo-Croatian 15 Servigliano 59 Slavic 25, 117 sloppy reading 52 Spanish 49, 64, 72, 102, 126, 134, 144, 147, 158, 159
Spec–Head 49 stripping 48 strong pronouns 11 superlative 57, 61 T Thai 10, 30, 54, 118, 159 theta assignment 135 theta criterion 168 theta licensing 89, 90, 91 theta role 131, 133, 135, 168 topic 71 trace 14 Trentino 130, 151, 157, 159 Turkish 10 two-step movement 62, 65 U uninterpretable feature 21 Universal Grammar 14 V variable 71 verb agreement 95 verb movement 68, 71 VP ellipsis 71 W weak pronoun 68 X X0 movement 65, 181, 183 X′ theory 87 Y Yagua 141, 143, 153, 159
