Decomposing Spanish dative clitics

In Spanish, dative clitics have standardly been analyzed differently from accusative ones. The apparent different constraints that regulate each of these clitic doubling constructions have been at the base of the differing analyses. In this paper, we will argue that in spite of the alleged differences, clitic doubling in Spanish (both accusative and dative) has more in common than meets the eye. In light of a generally neglected structure in which Spanish dative clitics may not show agreement with their plural double (a.k.a. le-for-les), we will argue for a decompositional analysis of Spanish dative clitics. For us, dative clitics instantiate an applicative (Cuervo 2003, a.o.) morpheme which may be combined with a Dº head (Uriagereka 1995). This analysis will allow us not only to explain the le-for-les phenomenon observed, accounting for its distribution and syntactic licensing, but also the definiteness interpretation that an agreeing dative clitic is subject to, in turn providing a uniform account for the parallelisms between accusative (i.e., purely Dº) and dative (i.e., Applicative + optional Dº) clitic doubling. Finally, certain contexts in which les surfaces and that fail to be accounted for under our proposal are provided an account in terms of “harmonic agreement,” while still keeping the analysis proposed to account for both new and old data and observations.

States in the decomposition of verbal predicates

This paper proposes a new diagnostic for the detection of stative sub-events in the decomposition of verbal predicates. The diagnostic is based on a certain type of presupposition triggered by additive operators like Greek ke ‘also’, which we call Stative Presuppositions. It is argued that the generation of such Stative Presuppositions requires the existence of a syntactically accessible constituent that denotes a predicate of states that additive operators can take scope over. We investigate the distribution of Stative Presuppositions and observe that not all verbs that support inferences to a result state give rise to them. Based on this distribution we argue for a non-uniform analysis of result verbs; whereas some verbs require an event-decompositional analysis, others are better captured by scalar- and incrementality-based analyses. We cast our analysis in the framework of Distributed Morphology and propose to explain non-uniformity based on how different types of verbal roots interact with verbal functional material. Moreover, treating roots as the locus of encyclopedic information explains lexical variation in the generation of Stative Presuppositions within sub-classes of result verbs. We strengthen our conclusions by considering and rejecting alternative syntactic and semantic mechanisms for generating Stative Presuppositions. We conclude that the availability of Stative Presuppositions with additive operators is currently the most reliable diagnostic for the detection of syntactically accessible result states in verbal decomposition.

Event Structure and Syntax

This chapter examines the syntactic decompositional view of event structure. On this view, the event is composed of distinct syntactic heads that correspond to its meaning ingredients. The chapter critically reviews the various arguments presented in the literature for a decompositional analysis of pairs of verbs that differ roughly in that one of them has one more argument than the other. It focuses on the inchoative alternation, comparing it to the Japanese and Hungarian causative alternations. The chapter shows that these alternations differ from one another in important respects, and only the Japanese causative alternation deserves a syntactic decompositional treatment. The chapter thus contributes a critical evaluation of the scope and limitations of syntactic representations of lexical decomposition.