Title: Ethical Datives, Clitic Doubling andthe Theory of pro
Abstract: Ethical datives pose a dual problem for syntactic categorization, that is, (i) their occurrence abides by different rules to those governing their morphological peers, object clitics, and (ii) they do not show a homogeneous behavior as a group, but fall under different types, which are characterized by a diverse morpho-syntactic distribution. The purpose of this paper is three-fold. First, it determines the distribution and nature of ethical datives in Spanish. Second, it posits three classes of Spanish ethical datives drawn from their different syntactic, semantic and morphological behavior. Third, it discusses the implications that clitic doubling and two specific occurrences of ethical datives have for a theory of pro. This study shows that the “innocuous” deletion of the ethical dative clitic turns out to be the main property that all these ethical datives have in common. That is, all the examples with ethical dative clitics can be uttered without these clitics and the sentence will still be grammatical and preserve the same meaning. This fact supports the idea that ethical datives are adjuncts, especially if one bears in mind that, unlike what happens with optional dative arguments, the aspectual interpretation of the sentence does not vary upon the presence of absence of the ethical dative clitic. Relevantly, optionality of the clitic in argumental dative clitic doubling constructions also plays a role in the discussion put forward in this research with respect to the conceptual necessity of having a theory of pro. Contra Ackema (2001), Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1998), Holmberg (2000) and Panagiotidis (2002) among others, this article contends that pro is still necessary for a uniform theory of feature checking under operation Agree (cf. Chomsky 2002). Furthermore, the positing of pro in canonical object positions ensures the well-formedness of the derivation by endowing argumental clitic chains with a desirable visibility for the checking of uninterpretable features and by preventing co-occurring ethical dative clitics from interfering in the probe-goal relation.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 7
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