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RIVISTA DI GRAMMATICA GENERATIVA

Volume 31, anno 2006

Direttori:

Guglielmo Cinque (Università di Venezia)

Luigi Rizzi (Università di Siena)

Comitato di lettura:

Manuela Ambar (Univ. de Lisboa) - Paola Benincà (Univ. di Padova) -

Adriana Belletti (Univ. di Siena) - Luciana Brandi (Univ. di Firenze) -

Luigi Burzio (The John Hopkins Univ.) - Noam Chomsky (MIT) -

Patrizia Cordin (Univ. di Trento) - Violeta Demonte (Univ. Autonoma

de Madrid) - Alessandra Giorgi (Univ. di Venezia) - Giorgio Graffi

(Univ. di Verona) - Richard Kayne (New York University) - Michael

Kenstowicz (MIT) - Giulio Lepschy (Univ. of Reading) - Giuseppe

Longobardi (Univ. di Trieste) - Lidia Lonzi (Univ. di Milano) - Maria

Rita Manzini (Univ. di Firenze) - Joan Mascaró (Univ. Autonoma de

Barcelona) - Marina Nespor (Univ. di Milano-Bicocca) - Jean-Yves

Pollock (Univ. de Marne-la-Vallée) - Annarita Puglielli (Univ. di Roma

Tre) - Andrew Radford (Univ. of Essex) - Lorenzo Renzi (Univ. di

Padova) - Alain Rouveret (Univ. de Paris VIII) - Leonardo Savoia

(Univ. di Firenze) - Sergio Scalise (Univ. di Bologna) - Laura Vanelli

(Univ. di Padova) - Jean-Roger Vergnaud (Univ. of Southern

California)

Redattore capo: Nicola Munaro (Università di Venezia)

Redattori:

Cristiano Chesi (Università di Siena) Francesco Costantini (Università di Venezia)

Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, 31 – 2006, 3-17

3

SUBJECTLESS LANGUAGE: SYNTACTIC ASPECTS

OF SAMUEL BECKETT’S “ROCKABY”*

Valentina Bianchi

Samuel Beckett’s Rockaby is a very intriguing text from a linguist’s point of

view. In this paper I discuss certain aspects of its syntax for which a linguistic

analysis proves particularly fruitful. First, I argue that the text shows some syntactic

phenomena typical of the novelists’ free indirect style (Banfield 1982), and in

particular, some phenomena belonging in the domain of logophoricity. Secondly, I

show that Beckett reduces to the minimum the number of finite predicates and uses

unembedded nonfinite predicates, which are interpreted by means of logophoric

control. Finally, the most peculiar aspect of the syntax of Rockaby is the omission of

pronominal subjects with finite verbs. This phenomenon is not found in the ordinary

use of language, but only in the “abbreviated” written register of diaries (Haegeman

1990). It is shown that the distribution of overt and omitted subjects in Beckett’s text

is syntactically conditioned: the omitted subjects are limited to the most prominent

position of root clauses; more importantly, all the overt subjects except for one

impersonal subject are found in syntactic environments where subject omission is

impossible, namely, in clauses introduced by a subordinating conjunction or a wh-

word (cf. Haegeman 1990, Rizzi 2000). The linguistic analysis thus shows that

Beckett avoids overt subjects as much as is syntactically possible. In the final

section, an interpretation of these facts is attempted on the grounds of the linguistic

theory of logophoricity.

1. The syntax of the “stream of consciousness”

The Woman’s “voice outside the body” in Rockaby seems to be the theatre

equivalent of the novelists’ stream of consciousness: in fact, the text read by the

recorded voice presents various syntactic phenomena typical of free indirect style,

according to the seminal work of Banfield (1982).

* I wish to thank Francesca Rizzi for having drawn my attention to this text and to the

problems related to its translation into Italian. All misunderstandings are my own.

Valentina Bianchi

4

Free indirect style – or, in Banfield’s terms, represented speech and thought – is

syntactically non-embedded, contrary to indirect discourse, and it is shares certain

features of direct discourse. The source of direct discourse is a speaker; the source of

represented speech and thought is instead a “centre of consciousness”, a self that is

referred to by first or third person pronominals. The discourse is a pure expression

of this self, and not a representation of communication; accordingly, free indirect

style necessarily lacks the second person – referring to the addressee – and all

addressee-oriented forms, like e.g. vocatives and imperative verb forms. Furthermore,

it is not in the present tense, which is anchored to the moment of utterance; however,

it may contain deictic and demonstrative expressions, which are consistently shifted

and anchored to the self’s spatial and temporal point of view (see Banfield 1982,

chapter 3).

Banfield’s identification of the self (subjective point of view) as a separate entity

from the speaker has had important consequences for the development of the theory

of logophoricity (see in particular Sells 1987): also in the ordinary use of language,

various syntactic phenomena have been discovered which are anchored to a self

distinct from the speaker. It is impossible here to fully summarize Banfield’s

analysis, as well as the linguistic literature on logophoricity that followed her seminal

work. I will only discuss some specific phenomena characteristic of free indirect

style, which are also found in Beckett’s text.1

The text read by the Woman’s recorded voice is in the third person and in the past

tense (like the free indirect style of e.g. Mrs. Dalloway); the pronominal third person

refers to the “centre of consciousness” (here, the Woman sitting on the rocker).

Actually, in Rockaby there is an apparent exception to the lack of second person: the

final lines contain imperative verb forms, which should in principle be disallowed

(cf. Banfield 1982, 113 ff.):

saying to the rocker

rock her off

stop her eyes

fuck life

stop her eyes

rock her off

rock her off

These imperative forms seem to be contained in a reported speech, even though

the object pronoun her referring to the Woman should be a first person pronoun in a

1 In the following discussion I use the term reprise to identify the four parts of the text that are

separated by a pause and by the word “more” uttered by the Woman sitting on the rocking

chair.

Subjectless language: syntactic aspects of Samuel Beckett’s “Rockaby”

5

reported direct discourse: I will return to this problem in the final section. Anyway,

note that the imperative forms are addressed to the rocker: this constitutes an

“internal addressee”, that is, an addressee internal to the Woman’s stream of

consciousness.

Another typical feature of free indirect discourse is the use of the anaphoric

elements him/herself in non-reflexive contexts to refer to the centre of consciousness

(see Zribi-Hertz 1989). The phenomenon is also found in the ordinary use of

language (see e.g. Maling (1984) and Sigurdhsson (1990) on Icelandic; Kuno (1987),

Sells (1987) on English; see also Cole et al. (2001) for a recent cross-linguistic

overview). In the syntactic literature, these elements are commonly dubbed logophoric

anaphors.2

The logophoric and reflexive uses of the anaphors can be easily distinguished by

means of the following test. A logophoric anaphor can be substituted for by a

pronoun with the same reference (indicated by coindexing):

(1) a. shei looked for another creature like herselfi

b. shei looked for another creature like heri.

On the contrary, a reflexive anaphor cannot be replaced by a pronoun with the

same reference:

(2) a. shei said to herselfi …

b. shei said to her k≠ …

Note also that the logophoric use of the anaphor is subject to a syntactic constraint:

as discussed by Reinhart & Reuland (1993), an anaphor cannot be logophoric if it is

the direct argument of a semantic predicate (roughly, a verbal or adjectival predicate

endowed with a subject), because here it necessarily receives a reflexive interpretation;

a logophoric anaphor can only be a complement to a noun or a preposition. In the

syntactic environments where the logophoric anaphor is disallowed, we find the

pronoun her instead (e.g.: rock her off in the final lines of Rockaby quoted above).

In Rockaby we find various instances of the logophoric use of the anaphor

herself rferring to the centre of consciousness, e.g. in the first section:

for another

another like herself

another creature like herself

[…]

2 This syntactic feature of free indirect style is difficult to translate in a language like Italian:

as argued in Bianchi (1999, 115-117), the Italian anaphors se stesso/a do not allow a

logophoric use, and the only possibility is to use the pronominal forms lui/lei stesso/a, which

however have a strong emphatic flavour.

Valentina Bianchi

6

one other living soul

going to and fro

all eyes like herself

and in the second section:

for another

at her window

another like herself

[…]

one other living soul

at her window

gone in like herself

Third, recall that in free indirect style deictic and demonstrative elements are

anchored to the physical (spatial and temporal) point of view of the centre of

consciousness. In Rockaby we find some instances of a demonstrative used in this

way, in the third section:

another creature there

somewhere there

behind the pane

and in the fourth one:

right down

into the old rocker

those arms at last

[…]

the rocker

those arms at last

Finally, free indirect style – like direct discourse, and unlike real indirect

discourse – allows for exclamations and incomplete sentences (Banfield 1982, 71

ff.). Once again, in Rockaby we find some instances of these phenomena, e.g. in the

first and second sections:

when she said to herself

whom else

in the third one:

one blind up

no more

never mind a face

behind the pane


7

[…]

no

a blind up

like hers

a little like

one blind up no more

and in the fourth one:

off her head they said

[…]

dead one day

no

night

dead one night

[…]

saying to herself

no

done with that

In sum, the syntax of the Voice’s text in Rockaby presents various features that

are characteristic of free indirect style, suggesting that it is a sort of stream of

consciousness of the protagonist.

2. Nonfinite predicates

A striking feature of Beckett’s text is the avoidance of finite verb forms, and the

frequent use of nonfinite verbs. For instance, in the third section we find an

exceptionally unembedded gerundive form:

sitting at her window

quiet at her window (repeated three times)

In generative syntax, nonfinite verb forms without an expressed subject are

assumed to have an implicit subject. The reference of this implicit subject is

determined by the context in a number of ways (for a thorough discussion, see

Landau 2000). When the nonfinite form is selected by a matrix predicate, the

reference of its implicit subject (indicated as PRO) coincides with one of the

arguments of the matrix predicate; this phenomenon is called obligatory control:3

3 Obligatory control also obtains when the nonfinite form is contained in a restricted set of

adverbials (see Williams 1992, 1994). I leave side here nonfinite verbs used as restrictive

modifiers.

Valentina Bianchi

8

(3) Shei wanted PROi to stop.

When the nonfinite form is within an adverbial clause or is an unembedded

infinitive, the reference of its implicit subject is fixed in a less rigid way. According

to Landau, Williams and others4, in this case the implicit subject is controlled by the

“centre of consciousness”, namely, there is logophoric control. The point can be

illustrated by means of the following example (from Williams 1992, 300):

(4) PRO having travelled all day, the hotel was a vision indeed.

Clearly, the person who has travelled all day is the person whose subjective point

of view is reported – that is, the person who perceives the hotel as a vision. By

default, in ordinary language this is the speaker, but in a narrative it may well be a

self distinct from the speaker or the author. In the passage of Rockaby quoted above,

the subject of the unembedded gerundive verb sitting is the Woman on the rocker,

by logophoric control. The same holds in the following passages of the second

section:

so in the end

close of a long day

went back in

in the end went back in

saying to herself

[…]

close of a long day

saying to herself

Note that in its first occurrence, the gerundive saying is syntactically adjoined to

the matrix clause and it is controlled by the unexpressed subject of the a finite verb

(went back in; I will return to this unexpressed subject below); in the second

occurrence, the finite verb is not repeated and the gerundive form, unembedded, is

logophorically controlled. The suppression of the finite verb in the repeated lines

also occurs in the first section, strenghtening our impression that Beckett studiously

avoids finite verbs as much as possible.

A third case of logophoric control is the infinitival form in the following passage

of the fourth section, which have a purposive flavour:

she so long all eyes

famished eyes

all sides

high and low

4 Kuno (1987); Rooryck (2001). Of couse, here I am glossing over several differences in the

specific analyses offered by these authors.


9

to and fro

at her window

to see

be seen

In other cases (fourth again), a nonfinite verb form has an expressed subject;

note however that the subject is inanimate:

head fallen

and the rocker rocking

rocking away

Besides nonfinite verbs, in various cases the main predicate is simply a directional

particle. Consider the following passages from the third section:

all blinds down

never one up

hers alone up

[…]

for a blind up

one blind up

[…]

no

a blind up

[…]

one blind up no more

and from the fourth section:

let down the blind and down

right down

into the old rocker

Finally, in the following passage from the third section the main predicates are

past participles and adjectives, and the subject they are predicated of (the mother) is

left unexpressed:5

off her head they said

gone off her head

but harmless

no harm in her

5 This implicit subject cannot be easily interpreted as an instance of control, but it resembles

more closely the phenomenon of “topic drop” discussed by Haegeman (1990), as the mother

is the topic of the whole passage.

Valentina Bianchi

10

dead one day

no

night

dead one night

3. The syntax of the subject

The syntactic devices discussed above give the impression of a “verb-less” and

“subject-less” language. In fact, in the ordinary use of language every finite verb in

English has an expressed subject, even when the latter has no actual reference, as in

the case of weather verbs (5a) and of extraposed subject clauses (5b):

(5) a. It is raining.

b. It is clear that you made a mistake.

c. She is speaking.

In generative syntax, Modern English is dubbed an “absolutely non-pro-drop

language”, since it cannot drop a pronominal subject of a finite verb, not even an

expletive one. Other languages like e.g. Russian allow for partial drop of expletive

subjects, and fully pro-drop languages like Italian can drop any pronominal subject;

for a thorough discussion, see among othjìers Rizzi (1986) and Jaeggli & Safir

(1989).

At this point we can discuss the most striking aspect of the syntax of Rockaby.

Besides avoiding finite verbs, Beckett strongly deviates from the ordinary use of

language in that he often omits the subject of finite verbs. (Note in passing that this

exceptional character of the syntax of Rockaby cannot be properly rendered when

translating the text in a pro-drop language like Italian, which has free omission of

pronominal subjects, as mentioned above.) If I counted correctly, out of 62 finite

verbs 41 have an expressed subject, and 21 an omitted subject.6 I report here all the

unambiguous cases of subject omission with a finite verb:

6 In the case of two coordinated verbs, the expressed subject precedes the first one, but also

the second one was obviously counted as having an expressed subject. In some cases,

however, it is unclear whether a finite verb is really coordinated to the preceding one, e.g. in

the following passage (repeated several times):

till in the end

the day came

in the end came

close of a long day…

I counted the second occurrence of came as endowed with an expressed subject like the first

one, but actually this is not a straightforward case of coordination. If we consider the second

occurrence of came subjectless, the number of expressed subjects is 37 out of 62 finite verbs.


11

second section:

so in the end

close of a long day

went back in


[…]

so in the end

close of a long day

in the end went and sat

went back in and sat

at her window

let up the blind and sat

quiet at her window

[…]

fourth section:

so in the end

close of a long day

went down

in the end went down

down the steep stair


right down

into the old rocker

[…]

so in the end

close of a long day

went down

in the end went down



right down

into the old rocker

those arms at last

and rocked

rocked

with closed eyes

[…]

was her own other

Valentina Bianchi

12

own other living soul

so in the end

close of a long day

went down



right down

into the old rocker

and rocked

rocked

saying to herself…

Given the syntactic characterization of English as a non-pro-drop language, these

sentences should be utterly ungrammatical. This is not quite correct, however. As

discussed by Haegeman (1990), Hageman & Ihsane (2001) and Rizzi (2000), in the

written register of diaries subject drop with a finite verb is allowed. Consider the

following example, quoted by Haegeman (1990):

(6) A very sensible day yesterday. ___ saw noone. ___ took the bus to

Southwark Bridge.

___ walked along Thames Street….

(Virginia Woolf, Diary, vol.5, 1936-41, pp. 203-4)

As discussed by Haegeman and Rizzi, this type of subject omission with a finite

verb has structural properties very different from those of full pro-drop in a

language like Italian: the omitted subject is limited to root clauses, and it must occur

in the structurally highest position of the clause. Thus, subject omission is impossible

in a finite clause that is introduced by a wh-phrase or by a subordinating conjunction.

According to Rizzi’s analysis, these syntactic constraints are due to the nature of

the understood subject. By hypothesis, subject omission involves an unpronounced

pronominal category whose content must be syntactically recoverable (in technical

terms, it must be identified). In a full pro-drop language like Italian, the reference of

the unpronounced subject can be recovered by means of the “rich” inflection of the

finite verb, which specifies the values of the person and number features. In Modern

English, instead, the verbal inflection isn’t “rich” enough to identify a null pronoun.

Therefore, the unpronounced subject of the written register of diaries is not

syntactically identified within the clause, but its reference is recovered by its being

connected to the surrounding discourse.7 According to Rizzi, this type of discourse

7 Furthermore, this unpronounced subject differs from that of Italian in that it is not a

pronominal category but a “null constant”. I will leave aside these technical details here, as

they are not relevant to my purposes.


13

identification is only possible when syntactic identification is impossible, namely,

when the unpronounced subject is in the structurally highest position in the clause,

so that there isn’t any more prominent category that can in principle act as an

identifier. This is why subject omission in the written registers of English is limited

to the highest position of root clauses.8

I have dwelled into this somewhat technical discussion because it can help us

understand the distribution of omitted and explicit subjects in Beckett’s text. In all

the 21 examples reported above, the finite verb with omitted subject is in a root

clause; furthermore, the finite verb is only preceded by a coordinating conjunction

or by the adverbial expression (so) in the end. I will tentatively hypothesize that the

latter is syntactically peripheral, so that it does not block discourse identification of

the unpronounced subject.

The syntactic analysis is even more significant for the distribution of the 41 overt

subjects of finite verbs in Beckett’s text. Apart from one impersonal pronominal

subject in a parenthetical clause in the fourth section (off her head they said),9 all

overt subjects of finite verbs, both pronominal and nonpronominal, are in a

syntactically nonprominent position, where discourse identification would be

impossible: namely, they are preceded by a subordinating conjunction or by a wh-

word. I report a few examples below; the subjects and the preceding subordinating

conjunctions are underlined.

8 More specifically, on Rizzi's analysis discourse identification is made possible by the fact

that the topmost part of the syntactic structure of the clause can fail to be realized, leaving the

subject position as the topmost position in the clause. The same phenomenon is found in a

specific stage of the acquisition of English, around the age of two years. According to Rizzi,

the marked possibility of “truncating” the syntactic structure of the clause in child language

also allows for other phenomena, like the use of nonfinite verbs and nominal predicates in

matrix clauses. As noted above, this type of verb-less predication is also found in Beckett’s

text, confirming the clustering of syntactic properties proposed by Rizzi. The correlation is

linguistically interesting, but I don’t think that the language of Rockaby could possibly be

considered an imitation of child language (though such an hypothesis may at first sight seem

appealing, given the regressive character of the Woman’s stream of consciousness). See Rizzi

(2005) and Haegeman (2007) for a different analysis of the phenomenon in terms of phonetic

deletion of the highest position of the root clause.

9 Following Liliane Haegeman (personal communication, Venice, November 21st 2007), this

exception may be explained away if we think of the phrase “off her head” as a quotation: this

may either occupy a high structural position in a root clause, or license a phonologically null

operator in the periphery of a parenthetical clause (see e.g. Collins & Branigan 1997, 10-13);

in either case, it follows that the subject of the latter does not meet the structural condition for

subject drop.

Valentina Bianchi

14

First section:

till in the end

the day came

in the end came

close of a long day

when she said

to herself

whom else

time she stopped

time she stopped…

Second section:

so in the end

close of a long day

went back in


saying to herself

whom else

time she stopped

time she stopped

going to and fro

time she went and sat

at her window…

Fourth section:


right down

into the old rocker

mother rocker

where mother sat…

If we adopt Haegeman’s and Rizzi’s analysis of this exceptional subject omission

with finite verbs, we come to the conclusion that (apart for maybe one impersonal

subject), all the expressed subjects in Beckett’s text are syntactically conditioned,

that is, they occur in a context where an unpronounced subject is impossible.

4. Some speculations

In the preceding discussion, I have tried to show that a careful linguistic analysis

may uncover certain significant aspects of Beckett’s text in a non-impressionistic

way. The next step is to offer an interpretation of these observations, and this requires


15

a literary, not an exclusively linguistic competence. Nevertheless, I wish to offer

some speculations, starting once again from my linguistic background.

We have noted that the most prominent aspect of the syntax of Rockaby is the

avoidance of finite verbs and of expressed subjects. These two categories are

linguistically related: cross-linguistically, expressed subjects are always possible

(and even required, in non-pro-drop languages) with finite verbs, whereas nonfinite

verbs usually have implicit subjects. In recent work (Bianchi 2001, 2003, 2006) I

have proposed a hypothesis to account for the correlation between finiteness and

overt subjects. The basic insight is that the subject of a finite verb can have any

value of the person feature, and finite verbs, contrary to nonfinite ones, are endowed

with person agreement.10

The person feature is intrinsically deictic because, as

Jakobson (1971, 134) synthetically puts it, “person characterizes the participants of

the narrated event with reference to the participants of the speech event”: first

person refers to the speaker, second person refers to the addressee, and third person

to anyone and anything else (leaving aside courtesy forms). Holmberg & Platzack

(1995) have observed that the finite verb has the property of expressing another

deictic feature, absolute tense, which is interpreted with respect to the time of the

utterance. Putting these observations together, I have proposed that the finite verb

syntactically encodes the speech event, which functions as the centre of deixis: the

tense feature is interpreted w.r.t. the time of the speech event, and the person feature

is interpreted w.r.t. the participants of the speech event (speaker and addressee).11

Going back to Rockaby, let us reconsider the avoidance of finite verbs and the

marked omission of subjects. These features might be interpreted as the hallmarks of

an abbreviated register: according to the well known ‘principle of lessness’, Beckett

strives to obtain a language as synthetic as possible. However, given the linguistic

considerations offered above, we can attempt a different interpretation: by using

nonfinite verbs with logophorically controlled implicit subjects and finite verbs with

discourse-identified implicit subjects, Beckett reduces to the minimum the expression

of the person feature, and in particular, the opposition between referentially distinct

10

There are some exceptional cases of nonfinite verbs with inflection for person, like e.g. the

inflected infinitive of European Portuguese (see Raposo 1987); these are however cross-

linguistically rare. See Bianchi (2001) for some discussion.

11 As noted above, Banfield (1982) argues that represented speech and thought is a form of

pure expression, not of communication: there is no real speech event, no utterance. The centre

of deixis is the self’s temporal and physical perspective; as for the person feature, the self can

be referred to by first person (as in Molly Bloom’s stream of consciousness) or third person

(as in Mrs. Dalloway), but second person is not licensed. In my recent work, I have proposed

that the speech event is just one instance of a broader notion of logophoric centre: any speech

or mental event (even a reported one) can function as a centre of deixis, but only the “external”

utterance event can license a full-fledged person feature.

Valentina Bianchi

16

values of the person feature. Note that in uttering of the words “time she stopped” or

“rock her off”, the “centre of consciousness” is apparently using a third person

pronoun rather than a first person one to refer to herself, as if the use of first person

were linguistically impossible (compare the Mouth’s “vehement refusal to relinquish

third person” in Not I). This corroborates the impression that the language of the

disembodied Voice is virtually person-less.

We may interpret this collapse of the person category by referring to Emile

Benveniste’s view of the corrélation de personnalité. According to Benveniste

(1966, 260), the dialogic dimension is constitutive of the linguistic category of

person:

C’est cette condition de dialogue qui est constitutive de la personne, car elle

implique en réciprocité que je deviens tu dans l’allocution de celui qui à son

tour se désigne par je. […] La polarité des personnes, telle est dans le langage

la condition fondamentale…

An obsessive refrain in the Woman’s stream of consciousness is the complete

absence of another creature like herself, of any potential interlocutor (when she said

to herself / whom else…), until in the end the mother-rocker is turned into an

interlocutor (the addressee of the final imperative verbs). In the gradual fade out of

the Woman’s consciousness, the complete absence of an interlocutor makes the

deictic category of person virtually vacuous.

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The Acquisition of Syntax. London, Longman.

Rizzi, L. 2005. Phase Theory and the Privilege of the Root. Ms., University of Siena.

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Sells, P. 1987. Aspects of logophoricity. Linguistic Inquiry 18, 445-479.

Sigurdhsson, H. A. 1990. Long-distance reflexives and moods in Icelandic. In: Modern Icelandic

Syntax, ed. J. Maling & A. Zaenen, 309-346. New York, Academic Press (Syntax and

Semantics 24).

Williams, E. 1992. Adjunct control. Control and Grammar, ed. R. Larson et al., 297-322.

Dordrecht, Kluwer.

Williams, E. 1994. Thematic Structure in Syntax. Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press.

Zribi-Hertz, A. 1989. Anaphor binding and narrative point-of-view:English reflexive pronouns in

sentence and discourse. Language 65, 695-727.


19

FOCUS IN THE IP:

THE PARTICLE MA IN FLORENTINE*

Jacopo Garzonio

0. Introduction

Many works on the cartography of CP and IP (among others Rizzi 1997, Belletti

2001, Belletti 2004, Benincà and Poletto 2004) have shown that in standard Italian

there are two types of Focus encoded in the syntax, a structurally high contrastive

Focus and a structurally low informational Focus. Both types of Focus are

associated with a dedicated projection: the high Focus is associated with a FocP in

CP, between the Topic layer and FinP, the low Focus is associated with a FocP

between IP and vP. In both cases a constituent is moved to the specifier of FocP in

order to check the [+Focus] feature.

In Florentine, a variety of Central Italy very similar to standard Italian, both

Focus types are present, the high contrastive Focus (1a), signaled like in Italian by a

special intonation indicated here in capitals, and the low informational Focus (1b):

(1) a. [A MARIO]focus ho dato i libro (non a Giorgio).1

to Mario have given the book not to Giorgio

‘TO MARIO I gave the book (not to Giorgio).’

b. l’ho dato [a Mario]focus, i libro.

it have given to Mario the book

‘I gave the book to Mario.’

* The content of this article was presented at the XIII Giornata di Dialettologia (Padova, 21

June 2007) and at a postgraduate seminar at the University of Venice (July 2007). I thank

both the audiences for the helpful discussion. Moreover, for further comments and advice, I

thank Paola Benincà, Andrea Cattaneo, Guglielmo Cinque, Federico Damonte, Nicoletta

Penello and Cecilia Poletto. All errors are obviously my own.

1 In this paper, I do not use the traditional Florentine orthography according to which forms

that diverge from standard Italian should be written with an apostrophe to indicate the missing

consonants (Florentine i' ‘the’ vs. Italian il; Florentine 'un ‘not’ vs. Italian non).

Jacopo Garzonio

20

However, Florentine also displays a third type of Focus, which is contrastive and

is marked by the particle ma:

(2) l’ho dato ma [a Mario]focus, i libro (non a Giorgio).

it have given ma to Mario the book not to Giorgio

‘I gave the book to Mario (not to Giorgio).’

In this paper I will describe the syntax and the interpretation of this peculiar

Focus type. The particle ma, homophonous with the conjunction ma ‘but’, precedes

the focused item, like other focus markers like solo ‘only’, anche ‘too’ and perfino

‘even’. However, it has a more restrictive syntactic behaviour (for instance, it must

follow the inflected verb), hence it is possible to assume that it has a precise and

unique position in the phrase structure. More precisely, I will propose that ma is the

head of a projection associated with a [+Exhaustive Identification] feature, from

which derives the contrastive interpretation of the focused item.

The paper has the following structure: in section 1 I will present some data about

the syntax of the ma Focus and the position of ma in the clause; in section 2 I will

take into consideration two specific properties of the syntax of ma, that suggest that

the focused element is not in its basic position; in section 3 I will briefly describe

some cases of focusing of CPs and other large constituents; in section 4 I will deal

with the semantic side of the ma Focus, and show that an operation of exhaustive

identification is involved; section 5 contains some conclusive considerations.

1. The position of maP in the clause structure

The particle ma is a head, since it cannot be modified nor focused itself. This is

shown in the following examples. In (3a) ma is modified by proprio ‘just, really’,

while in (3b) it is emphasized by the intonation. Both examples are ungrammatical:

(3) a. *l’ho dato proprio ma [a Mario]focus, i libro.

it have given just ma to Mario the book

b. *l’ho dato [MA]focus a Mario, i libro.

it have given ma to Mario the book

I will call the projection headed by this particle maP. It is not possible to insert

other elements like DPs, PPs or adverbs between ma and the focused item:

(4) a. *ho dato ma i libro [a Mario]focus (non a Giorgio).

have given ma the book to Mario not to Giorgio


b. *ho dato ma a Mario [i libro]focus (non i giornale).

have given ma to Mario the book not the newspaper

‘I gave to Mario the book (not the newspaper).’

Focus in IP: the Particle ma in Florentine

21

c. *l’ho dato ma subito [a Mario]focus, i libro (non a Giorgio).

it have given ma immediately to Mario the book (not to Giorgio)

‘I gave immediately the book to Mario (not to Giorgio).’

These data suggest that there is an adjacency constraint on the formation of this

Focus structure. From this point of view ma is very similar to quantificational

elements like solo ‘only’, anche ‘also, too’, perfino ‘even’. Nevertheless, it has

different syntactic properties.

First of all, ma can appear only in post-verbal position. It can focus-mark

subjects, objects or adjunct PPs, but the complex ma+[focused item] cannot precede

the inflected verb:

(5) a. Mario vende ma [mobili]focus (non macchine).

Mario sells ma furniture not cars

‘Mario sells furniture (not cars).’

b. la ruppe ma [i tu fratello]focus, sta finestra (non io).

it broke ma the your brother this window not I

‘It was your brother who broke the window (not me).’

c. c’andaron ma [le su amiche]focus (non lei).

there went ma the her friends not she

‘It was her friends who went there (not her).’

d. ci vado ma [con Mario]focus (non con Giorgio).

there go ma with Mario not with Giorgio

‘I will go there with Mario (not with Giorgio).’

a’. *ma [mobili]focus, Mario vende.

b’. *ma [i tu fratello]focus ruppe sta finestra.

c’. *ma [le su amiche]focus c’andarono.

d’. *ma [con Mario]focus, ci vado.

Elements like solo ‘only’ or anche ‘too’ do not display similar restrictions:

(6) a. solo i tu fratello ruppe sta finestra.

‘Only your brother broke the window.’

b. anche le su amiche c’andarono.

‘Also her friends went there.’

Secondly, ma can focus-mark PPs and adjectives only if they are verb complements:

(7) a. quella casa gl’è ma [di legno]focus (non di mattoni).

that house clit. is ma of wood not of bricks

‘That house is made of wood (not of bricks).’

Jacopo Garzonio

22

b. Mario gl’è ma [paziente]focus (non nervoso).

Mario clit. is ma tolerant not unquiet

‘Mario is tolerant (not unquiet).’

a’. *ho visto una casa ma [di legno]focus

have seen a house ma of wood

‘I have seen a wooden house.’

b’. *Mario gl’è una persona ma [paziente]focus

Mario clit. is a person ma tolerant

‘Mario is a tolerant person.’

In similar contexts it is possible to use solo or anche that have scope on a PP or

an adjective inside a DP:

(8) a. ho visto una casa solo di legno.

b. Mario gl’è una persona anche paziente.

Finally, ma cannot focus-mark a DP inside a PP, while this is marginally possible

with elements like solo2:

(9) a. *quello gl’era un paese di ma [vecchi]focus

that clit. was a village of ma old

b. quello gl’era ma [un paese di vecchi]focus

a’. quello gl’era un paese di solo vecchi.

that clit. was a village of only old

‘That one was a village inhabited only by old people.’

All these facts are evidence that ma is a clausal element and that maP has a

unique position in the clause structure. In the following sections I will analyse the

relationship between maP and the two FocPs assumed by the cartographic framework.

1.1 MaP is not in the left periphery

As I have shown in the preceding section, the complex ma+[focused item]

cannot appear before the inflected verb. This fact suggests that maP is not in the left

periphery of the clause and, thus, has nothing to do with FocP in CP. However,

additional evidence is necessary, since we cannot exclude that the focused item is

moved to [Spec, Foc] in CP and the rest of the sentence undergoes remnant movement

2 For similar problems regarding the position of only in English, see Kayne (2000).


23

to a higher position, for instance the specifier of maP. This explanation is proposed

by Belletti (2004) for post-verbal contrastive Focus in Italian.

I present two facts as evidence that maP is lower than CP. Firstly, consider that

Florentine allows the use of the default subject clitic gl’ and the lack of agreement

on the verb with a post-verbal plural subject. While it is impossible to have this

configuration with a pre-verbal focused plural subject, as in (10b)3, this option is

perfectly acceptable with a post-verbal subject focused by ma, as in (10d):

(10) a. [LE TU SORELLE]focus le son venute (non le mie).

the your sisters clit.FEM.PL are come.FEM.PL not the mine

‘YOUR SISTERS have come (not mine).’

b. *[LE TU SORELLE]focus gl’è venuto.

the your sisters clit.DEFAULT is come.MASC.SG

c. Le son venute ma [le tu sorelle]focus

d. Gl’è venuto ma [le tu sorelle]focus

Secondly, if the focused element is a Negative Polarity Item like nulla ‘nothing’,

the pre-verbal negation is absent with a left periphery Focus, and it is obligatory

with a ma-Focus; in other words, a Negative Polarity Item focused by ma cannot be

the only negative element of a clause. Hence, it has not moved through a position c-

comanding the finite verb (Laka, 1990; Zanuttini, 1991):

(11) a. [NULLA]focus hanno fatto.

nothing have done

b. *(un) hanno fatto ma [nulla]focus

NEG have done ma nothing

‘NOTHING they have done.’

On the basis of these facts, it can be assumed that maP is not in the left periphery

of the clause. This is a striking result, as it implies that there is a dedicated projection

for contrastive Focus in IP.

1.2 The position of maP in IP

At this point, the question that has to be addressed is the exact position of maP in

IP. If we check the relative order of the complex ma+[focused item] and the

aspectual adverbs, it clearly emerges that ma must follow all these adverbs. In (12) it

3 Note that this data contrast with those presented by Brandi and Cordin (1981). However, the

variety I’m taking into consideration here is Urban Florentine, spoken in the city of Florence,

while Brandi and Cordin have analysed the conservative Rural Florentine of Vaiano, a

locality 40 kms from Florence.

Jacopo Garzonio

24

is shown that ma+[focused item] must follow più ‘any more’, ancora ‘still’, sempre

‘always’ and digià ‘already’:

(12) a. Mario un mangia più ma [formaggio]focus (non carne).

Mario NEG eats any-more ma cheese not meat

‘Mario does not eat cheese any more (not meat).’

b. Mario gl’è ancora ma [in piazza]focus (non a i bar).

Mario clit. is still ma in square not at the bar

‘Mario is still in the town square (not in the bar).’

c. Mario mangia sempre ma [carne]focus (non formaggio).

Mario eats always ma meat not cheese

‘Mario always eats meat (not cheese).’

d. Mario gl’è digià ma [in piazza]focus (non a i bar).

Mario clit. is already ma in square not at the bar

‘Mario is already in the town square (not in the bar).’

a’. *Mario un mangia ma [formaggio]focus più.

b’. *Mario gl’è ma [in piazza]focus ancora.

c’. *Mario mangia ma [carne]focus sempre.

d’. *Mario gl’è ma [in piazza]focus digià.

Usually ma also follows bene ‘well’, but it should be pointed out that the adverb

follows ma when is the focused item. This configuration is very frequent when bene

is argumental, for instance with verbs like sentirsi ‘feel’ or comportarsi ‘behave’.

On the contrary, if the focused item is different, bene must precede ma. In (13) it is

shown that with a post-verbal subject focused by ma, only the order bene-ma yields

grammaticality:

(13) a. capisce bene ma [Giorgio]focus (non Mario).

understands well ma Giorgio not Mario

‘It is Giorgio who understands well (not Mario).’

b. *capisce ma [Giorgio]focus bene.

The data in (12) and (13) are evidence that the position of maP in the IP is very

low. Ma must follow aspectual adverbs, and even adverbs like bene, which occupy a

very low position in the clause structure, according to the hierarchy of Cinque

(1999). Since maP is in a low position in the IP, it is adjacent to the low FocP

proposed by Belletti (2001; 2004). On the basis of the observation of the data

presented so far, it is possible to formulate a first hypothesis about the ma Focus: ma

lexicalises the head of a projection associated with contrastive interpretation; in

order to receive this contrastive interpretation, an element (DP, PP, adverb) has to


25

raise to a position adjacent to ma, say the specifier of the low Focus projection. This

first hypothesis is exemplified by the structure in (14):

This first hypothesis implies that the contrastive interpretation encoded by ma

requires also the checking of the [Focus] feature. In other words, “contrast” is a

property given by ma to an element already marked as Focus.

Before adopting this hypothesis, some other facts must be considered.

2. More about the syntax of ma

In this section I will describe more in detail two properties of the syntax of ma

that can be provided as evidence that the focused item is moved from its basic

position, i.e. the focused item is not in VP or vP. The first one concerns

Marginalization (“Emarginazione” in the sense of Antinucci and Cinque, 1977) and

clitic Right Dislocation, the second one the focusing of the entire VP.

2.1 Marginalization and Right Dislocation

So far I have examined mainly sentences with only one internal argument.

Consider now the case where there are two internal arguments, for instance a direct

object and a dative PP. In this case, it is possible of course to focus by the particle

ma one of them. However, the non-focused argument must appear as a clitic Right

Dislocation. This is shown in (15):

(15) a. l’ho dato ma [a Mario]focus, i libro (non a Giorgio).

it have given ma to Mario the book not to Giorgio


b. gl’ho dato ma [i libro]focus, a Mario (non i giornale).

to-him have given ma the book to Mario not the newspaper

‘I gave the book to Mario (not the newspaper).’

(14) IP

2

maP

2

ma FocP

2

XP Foc’

2

Foc° vP

Jacopo Garzonio

26

On the other hand, Marginalization is not possible in the same contexts. In other

words, the resumptive clitic of the sentences in (15) is obligatory:

(16) a. *ho dato ma [a Mario]focus, i libro (non a Giorgio).

b. *ho dato ma [il libro]focus, a Mario (non i giornale).

If there are two or more non focused arguments, they all must be right dislocated.

Following Cardinaletti (2001) I assume that clitic Right Dislocation and

Marginalization are structurally different. In the case of Marginalization it is

possible to demonstrate that what follows the focused element remains in its basic

position. In the case of Right Dislocation, what follows the focused element is

moved by some type of process outside its basic position. The main argument in

favor of this analysis is that after a focused postverbal subject the order of objects is

free if they are right dislocated, but it is the same as the unmarked order of

arguments in the case of Marginalization. I report in (17) the relevant Italian

examples in Cardinaletti (2001):

(17) a. ce l’ha nascosto [il bambino]focus, il libro, sotto il letto.

there it has hidden the child the book under the bed

‘It is the child who has hidden the book under the bed.’

b. ce l’ha nascosto [il bambino]focus, sotto il letto, il libro.

c. ha nascosto [il bambino]focus, il libro, sotto il letto.

d. *ha nascosto [il bambino]focus, sotto il letto, il libro.

In Florentine clitic Right Dislocation is obligatory in direct wh questions and

with post-verbal informational focuses. This is shown in (18) and in (19) respectively:

(18) a. chi *(l’)ha nascosto, i libro?

who it has hidden the book

‘Who has hidden the book?’

b. icché tu *(gl’)hai dato, a Mario?

what you to-him have given to Mario

‘What have you given to Mario?’

(19) a. *(l’)ha nascosto [i bambino]focus, i libro.

it has hidden the child the book

‘It is the child who has hidden the book.’

b. *(gl’)ho dato [un libro]focus, a Mario.

to-him have given a book to Mario

‘I have given a book to Mario.’


27

Thus, ma Focus distributes like direct wh questions and Focuses in the IP: one

element is moved outside its basic position to check some feature ([+Interrogative]

or [+Focus]), while the other arguments must be right dislocated. This fact supports

the idea that the focused element in a ma Focus structure is moved outside of VP or

vP to a position lower than maP, which is very likely the specifier of FocP.

Why Right Dislocation is obligatory in these structures is not clear. As for what

concerns the ma Focus, the relevant fact is that it is similar to other constructions

with feature driven movement. We may assume that obligatory Right Dislocation is

related to the raising of the verb, which I will consider remnant VP (or vP)

movement (in the spirit of Hinterhölzl’s, 1997, proposal). Thus, the derivation of a

ma Focus structure is the following: firstly, one of the arguments is moved outside

VP to [Spec, Foc]; then all other arguments must be right dislocated; finally the

“evacuated” VP is raised past maP. This proposal is exemplified in (20):

(20) [IP glx’ho [VP dato y x]z [maP ma [SpecFoc [i libro]y [VP z ]]]] [a Mario]x (=15b.)

The DP i libro ‘the book’ is moved to the specifier of the Focus projection,

enters in a ma Focus configuration and receives contrastive interpretation; the dative

PP a Mario ‘to Mario’ is right dislocated and the evacuated VP is raised higher than

maP.

2.2 Focusing of the VP

When the verb occurs in an analytic form, the particle ma can appear between

the auxiliary and the lexical verb. This is shown in (21); in (21a) ma is located

between the auxiliary avere ‘to have’ and the past participle of the lexical verb; in

(21b) it is located between the durative auxiliary stare ‘to stay’ and the gerunde of

the lexical verb:

(21) a. ho ma letto un libro.

have ma read a book

‘I have read a book’

b. sto ma leggendo un libro.

stay ma reading a book

‘I am reading a book.’

These sentences are potential counterexamples for the hypothesis I have

proposed at the end of section 1, and more in general they challenge the idea that ma

has a precise and unique position in the clause structure. However, these cases of ma

higher than the lexical verb (but not higher that the inflected verb) present further

properties that must be taken into consideration.

Jacopo Garzonio

28

Firstly, when ma is between the auxiliary and the lexical verb, and an adverb is

present, ma must precede the adverb, while the opposite order yields ungrammaticality.

This is shown in (22):

(22) a. Mario ha ma sempre mangiato carne.

Mario has ma always eaten meat

‘Mario always has eaten meat.’

b. Mario sta ma digià andando in piazza.

Mario stays ma already going in square

‘Mario is already going to the town square.’

a’. *Mario ha sempre ma mangiato carne.

b’. *Mario sta digià ma andando in piazza.

Note that this happens also with adverbs that occupy a very high position in

Cinque’s (1999) hierarchy, like probabilmente ‘probably’. These adverbs can appear

before the auxiliary or after ma, but not between them4:

(23) a. ?Mario probabilmente ha ma comprato un libro.

Mario probably has ma bought a book

‘Probably, Mario has bought a book.’

b. ?Mario ha ma probabilmente comprato un libro.

c. *Mario ha probabilmente ma comprato un libro.

Secondly, if there are more arguments, with ma between the auxiliary and the

lexical verb, they must appear in the unmarked order. Direct objects must precede

datives and adjuncts. Other orders of arguments result in ungrammaticality of the

sentence. Crucially, in this case no resumptive clitic is present:

(24) a. Mario (*gl’)ha ma regalato un libro a Giorgio.

Mario to-him has ma given a book to Giorgio

‘Mario has given as a gift a book to Giorgio.’

b. Mario (*ci) sta ma portando i bambino da i medico.

4 The sentences (23a) and (23b) are marginal because the contrastive reading conflicts with

the semantics of probabilmente ‘probably’. However, they are perfectly acceptable when used

to contradict a previous statement containing probabilmente, like:

(i) A: Mario ha probabilmente comprato un profumo.

‘Probably Mario has bought a perfume.’

B: No. Mario ha ma probabilmente comprato un libro.

‘No. Probably Mario has bought a book.’

See further for more details about the interpretation of ma Focus with ma between the

auxiliary and the lexical verb.


29

Mario there stays ma taking the child to the doctor

‘Mario is taking the child to the doctor.’

c. i bambino (*ci) ha ma nascosto i libro sotto a i letto.

the child there has ma hidden the book under to the bed

‘The child has hidden the book under the bed.’

a’. *Mario ha ma regalato a Giorgio un libro.

b’. *Mario sta ma portando da i medico i bambino.

c’. *i bambino ha ma nascosto sotto a i letto i libro.

Thirdly, these sentences are appropriate in different contexts. More precisely, a

sentence like (24a) can be used to contradict all the following assertions:

(25) a. Mario ha regalato un libro [a suo fratello].

‘Mario has given as a gift a book to his brother.’

b. Mario ha regalato [un profumo a sua moglie].

‘Mario has given as a gift a perfume to his wife.’

c. Mario ha [comprato i giornale].

‘Mario has bought the newspaper.’

Answer: No. Mario ha ma [regalato [un libro [a Giorgio]]].

‘No. Mario has given as a gift a book to Giorgio.’

It seems that in similar ma Focus structures, it is possible to interpret as the

contrasted item the most embedded constituent, or larger constituents of the predicate,

up to the whole VP. However, it is not possible to interpret as the contrasted item a

constituent of the VP excluding the most embedded ones:

(26) a. Mario ha regalato [un disco] a Giorgio.

‘Mario has given as as gift a record to Giorgio.’

b. Mario ha [prestato] un libro a Giorgio.

‘Mario has lent a book to Giorgio.

Answer: #No. Mario ha ma [regalato [un libro [a Giorgio]]].

I will take all the data presented in this section as evidence that, in sentences

where ma is inserted between an auxiliary and the lexical verb, the whole VP is

moved to the specifier of FocP.

Ma, in these cases, must precede any adverb. I assume that these adverbs are

generated in a lower position, as heads taking the whole VP as complement, and

then moved with it to the specifier of FocP (see Cinque, 1999, 31):

Jacopo Garzonio

30

As we have seen, multiple arguments must appear in the unmarked order. I will

consider this fact a crucial piece of evidence suggesting that the VP is moved to a

higher position. If it is not moved, it is very hard to explain why its arguments

cannot be right dislocated, which is obligatory when [Spec, Foc] is occupied by only

one argumental DP or PP.

To summarise, we have seen that in a ma Focus construction, the [+Focus]

feature is checked by the raising of an element to [Spec, Foc] in the IP. If this

element is an argument, all other eventual arguments must be right dislocated and

the verb undergoes remnant movement to a position higher than ma. If this element

is the whole VP, no remnant movement applies, and the arguments appear in the

unmarked order.

We can now refine our first hypothesis by adding two details to it: firstly, in a ma

Focus the verb undergoes remnant movement to a higher position; secondly, the

[+Focus] feature can be checked not only by DPs or PPs, but also by the whole VP.

This is not surprising if we consider the data I will present in the next section, where

I describe some cases of “large” constituents marked as contrastive Focuses by ma.

3. Focusing of Modal complements and CPs

In this section I will describe some cases of focusing of large constituents. Ma

can mark as contrastive Focuses also infinitival complements of modal verbs. Some

examples are given in (28):

(28) a. tu devi ma [stare zitto]focus, in questi casi.

you must ma stay quiet in these cases

‘You (S) must be quiet, in such cases.’

b. vu lo potete ma [comprare]focus

(27) maP (=22a.)

2 ma FocP

2 [sempre [mangiato carne]] Foc’

2 Foc° sempreP

2 sempre VP

5 mangiato carne


31

you it can ma buy

‘You (P) can buy it.’

Note that some speakers accept (28b) also if the direct object clitic is reduplicated

on the infinitive:

(28) b’. vu lo potete ma [comprarlo]focus

This example shows that ma somehow blocks the deletion of the lower copy of

the object clitic in a clitic climbing structure.

Ma can also focus whole CPs if they are complements of verbs like volere ‘to

want’ or dire ‘to say’:

(29) a. Mario vole ma [che noi si vada via subito]focus

Mario wants ma that we clit. go away immediately

‘Mario wants that we leave immediately.’

b. Giorgio ha detto ma [che un ne sa nulla]focus

Giorgio has said ma that NEG of-it knows nothing

‘Giorgio has said that he does not know anything about it.’

I leave a complete analysis of these sentences for further research. For now, it is

sufficient to say that ma can focus-mark very different types of elements, but in any

case it must follow the inflected verb. This fact cannot receive an adequate explanation

if we do not assume that ma is IP internal and that there is a FocP in the low IP area.

4. Deriving the interpretation of the ma Focus

In the preceding sections I have proposed that ma takes scope on an element

moved to [Spec, Foc] in order to check a [+Focus] feature. The presence of ma gives

to this focused element a contrastive interpretation, similar to that of the left periphery

Focus in Italian and Florentine. This contrastive interpretation is always present in a

ma Focus structure, as it can be inferred by the fact that a ma Focus cannot be used

to answer a wh question:

(30) a. A: a chi tu l’hai dato, i libro?

to who you it have given the book

‘Who have you given the book to?’

B: #l’ho dato ma [a Mario]focus

it have given ma to Mario

‘I have given it to Mario.’

b. A: icché tu voi comprare?

what you want buy

Jacopo Garzonio

32

‘What do you want to buy?’

B: #voglio comprare ma [un divano]focus

want buy ma a sofa

‘I want to buy a sofa.’

Note by the way that a ma Focus cannot appear in isolation, even if it is used to

contrast a wrong supposition of the addressee:

(31) A: icché tu voi comprare? (una poltrona?)

‘What do you want to buy? (An armchair?)’

B: *ma [un divano]focus

This fact can be explained in two ways: either by assuming that the ma Focus

does not allow ellipsis of the background part of the sentence, or by postulating that

the fragment answer is not the Focus in IP (which is the Focus position in the scope

of ma). This second solution is similar to some recent proposals, like the one

advanced by Brunetti (2004), who identifies fragment answers as left periphery

Focuses followed by sentence ellipsis.

A ma Focus is acceptable in contexts where an informational post-verbal Focus

is marginal. As pointed out by Brunetti (2004, 122) among others, in Italian, post-

verbal subjects are more acceptable if the event expressed by the predicate is related

to an explicit or implicit locative:

(32) a. ha telefonato Gianni. (from Brunetti, 2004)

has telephoned Gianni

b. ??ha dormito il bambino.

has slept the child

(32a) is acceptable only if it means ‘Gianni called here’ or ‘Gianni called us’,

while (32b) is not so good because dormire ‘to sleep’ has no implicit locative

meaning. The sentence is better with an overt locative:

(33) in questo letto ha dormito il bambino.

in this bed has slept the child

Ma focus does not display a similar restriction. No implicit locative is needed to

form a ma Focus structure with a post-verbal subject:

(34) ha dormito ma [i bambino]focus (non io)

has slept ma the child (not I)

‘It is the child who has slept (not me).’

All the previous examples show that, even if FocP under maP is activated, the

presence of ma changes the contexts where theese sentences with post-verbal Focus


33

can be used. In the following section I will try to individuate the precise contribution

of the particle to the interpretation of the focused element.

4.1 Ma as a quantificational head

Consider now the interaction of ma with other focusing elements. In (35)-(37) it

is checked the compatibility of ma with solo ‘only’, almeno ‘at least’ and perfino

‘even’:

(35) a. *Mario ha ma solo dato un esame.

Mario has ma only given one exam

b. Mario ha ma dato solo un esame.

‘Mario has passed only one exam.’

c. *Mario ha dato ma solo un esame.

d. *Mario ha solo dato ma un esame.

(36) a. *Mario ha ma almeno dato un esame.

b. ??Mario ha ma dato almeno un esame.

‘Mario has passed at least one exam.’

c. *Mario ha dato ma almeno un esame.

d. *Mario ha almeno dato ma un esame.

(37) a. *Mario ha ma perfino dato due esami.

b. Mario ha ma dato perfino due esami.

‘Mario has passed even two exams.’

c. *Mario ha dato ma perfino due esami.

d. *Mario ha perfino dato ma due esami.

As it can be observed only the sentences in (b) are acceptable. In the

grammatical sentences the focusing element modifies an argument, while ma marks

the whole VP, since it is between the auxiliary and the lexical verb. All the other

combinations are excluded: it is not possible to have ma and solo/almeno/perfino

both as VP modifiers (sentences in (a)), both as argumental modifiers (sentences in

(c)), and solo/almeno/perfino as VP modifier with ma as argumental modifier. I

argue that this incompatibility derives from the fact that ma is a quantificational

head. The elements corresponding to ‘only’, ‘at least’ and ‘even’ are quantificational

heads, and it is not possible for the same element to undergo similar quantificational

operations, as those encoded by these elements and by ma.

The ungrammaticality of the sentences in (d) is crucial: as we have seen, ma has

a precise position in the clause structure, and its presence prevents the insertion of

similar quantificational elements in a higher position, even when it focuses only an

argument and not the whole VP.

Jacopo Garzonio

34

Ma Focus is similar from this point of view to the so-called Identificational

Focus of Hungarian, studied by Brody (1990), É. Kiss (1998), Horvath (1986; 2000;

2007) among others. This Focus is associated with a precise position in the clause

structure and diverges from the Informational Focus in expressing exhaustive

identification: the Focus identifies a particular subset of the contextually relevant set

of alternatives and excludes all the others.

In a recent paper, Horvath (2007) has claimed that the syntactic position occupied

by the Identificational Focus is not a Focus position at all, but a quantificational

position, and Focus movement is not driven by a [+Focus] feature, but by an

[+Exhaustive Quantification] feature. While it is not clear whether the CP Focus in

Italian or Florentine expresses exhaustive identification (see Rizzi, 1997, and

Brunetti, 2004, for some discussion about this problem), the ma Focus distributes

exactly like the Identificational Focus of Hungarian. This can be observed in the

following examples.

Firstly, É. Kiss (1998) observes that Hungarian Identificational Focus is not

compatible with universal quantifiers:

(38) *Mari [minden kalapot]focus nézett ki magának.

Mari every hat picked out herself.DAT

*‘It was every hat that Mari picked for herself.’

Ma Focus displays a similar restriction. A universal QP cannot be focused by

ma:

(39) *Maria ha scelto ma ogni cappello.

Maria has chosen ma every hat

Secondly, É. Kiss points out that the Identificational Focus is not compatible

with even-phrases and also-phrases:

(40) a. *Mari [egy kalapot is]focus nézett ki magának.

Mari a hat also picked out herself.DAT

?‘It was also a hat that Mary picked for herself.’

b. *Mari [még egy kalapot is]focus nézett ki magának.

Mari even a hat also picked out herself.DAT

*‘It was even a hat that Mary picked for herself.’

I have already shown in (37) that ma and perfino ‘even’ cannot modify the same

constituent. (41) shows that a similar restriction is observable also with anche ‘also,

too’:


35

(41) *Maria ha scelto ma anche un cappello.

Maria has chosen ma also a hat

Finally, É. Kiss argues that Identificational Focus takes scope, as it is shown by

the fact that exhaustive identification interacts with other scope-taking elements, like

univesal quantifiers. Take a sentence like (42):

(42) minden fiú [Marival]focus akart táncolni.

every boy Mari-with wanted to-dance

‘For every boy, it was Mari that he wanted to dance with.’

In (42) the universal quantifier takes scope over exhaustive identification, and

the sentence means that every boy wanted to dance with Mari and not with any other

girl. If we compare two sentences with a universal quantifier in topic position5, the

first with a standard Informational Focus, the second with a ma Focus, they diverge

precisely in this respect: only the sentence with the ma Focus means that for every

boy it was only one specific girl that he liked. The other sentence does not exclude

that some boys liked also other girls:

(43) a. a ogni ragazzo piaceva [Maria]focus.

to every boy liked Maria

‘Every boy liked Maria.’

b. a ogni ragazzo piaceva ma [Maria]focus.

to every boy liked ma Maria.

‘For every boy, it was Maria that he liked.’

On the basis of these data I propose that maP is associated with an [+Exhaustive

Identification] feature. At this point it is possible a further refinement of the first

hypothesis about the ma Focus.

A ma Focus structure is formed by two syntactic processes: the first one is the

syntactic movement of a constituent to the specifier of FocP in the IP, the second

one is the insertion of the particle ma, bearing the [+Exhaustive Identification]

feature, in the low IP area. The syntactic domain of the particle is the focused

constituent in [Spec, Foc]. Under this configuration, the element in [Spec, Foc]

receives the exhaustive identification interpretation, and VP undergoes remnant

movement to a higher position.

5 See Cardinaletti (2004) for some discussion about the precise position of “dative subjects”

of verbs like piacere ‘to like’.

Jacopo Garzonio

36

4.2 Ma, ‘only’ and ‘even’

From what I have said so far, the only difference between ma and solo ‘only’

seems to be that ma has a precise and unique position in the clause structure, while

solo can appear in different positions, similarly to its English equivalent. However,

it should be pointed out that an element focused by solo can but does not have to be

a contrastive Focus, while ma Focus is always contrastive. I think that this distinction

derives from the fact that the quantification processes operated by solo and ma are

slightly different.

Consider the opposition of elements like ‘also’ and ‘even’. From the point of

view of quantification, they are similar, since they indicate that some property is true

for an element x, and that the same property is true for elements other than x (Bayer,

1996, 51). Both the sentences in (44) mean that John invited his sister, and that he

invited also someone else:

(44) a. John invited also his sister.

b. John invited even his sister.

However, the sentence in (44b) has a further meaning: John’s sister is less likely

to be invited by John than others are.

I think that a similar difference exists between ma and solo. More precisely, solo

indicates that some property is true for an element x and that the same property is

not true for elements other than x. On the other hand, ma indicates that some

property is true for an element x, that the same property is not true for elements

other than x, and that these other elements are less likely to be associated with the

property. This is why the ma Focus is contrastive and is used to express that some

explicit or implicit supposition of the addressee is wrong.

(45) a. Giorgio ha invitato solo la su sorella.

Giorgio has invited only the his sister

b. Giorgio ha invitato ma la su sorella (non la su mamma).

Giorgio has invited ma the his sister not the his mother

The relation between ma and solo can be observed in diachrony. In some

northern Italian varieties, the word for ‘solo’ derives from the Latin non magis quam

‘no more that’: Piedmontese mak, old Paduan nomé, old Lombard nomà. In

Florentine, like in many other Italian varieties, the word for ‘only’ has a different

origin. I propose that Florentine ma derives from (non) magis (quam), that has been

preserved with this particular meaning.


37

5. Conclusive remarks

In this paper I have presented some data about the syntax and the interpretation

of the focusing particle ma in Florentine. This particle is the head of a dedicated

projection in the low area of IP. Since maP is associated with a [+Exhaustive

Identification] feature, these data from Florentine confirm that quantificational heads

can have a precise position in the IP.

A ma Focus structure requires the movement of the focused constituent to the

specifier of a lower projection, which is the syntactic domain of the particle, and

which I have proposed to identify with the low FocP of Belletti (2001) and

subsequent works. Since maP cannot be located higher than IP, my proposal

assumes that Belletti’s postulating a Focus position in the IP is correct. This idea has

been recently confuted by Brunetti (2004), who claims that there is not a Focus

position in the IP, and that constituents can be focused in situ by entering in an

Agree relation with the [+Focus] feature in CP. The data presented here cannot be

directly compared to Belletti’s and Brunetti’s data, which are mainly from standard

Italian. However, the peculiar configuration required by ma Focus implies that at

least in Florentine there is a Focus position in IP.

On the other hand, these data about ma show, contra some of Belletti’s

conclusions, that a contrastive Focus is not necessarily in CP.

Some words should be spent on the notion of Contrast. É. Kiss (1998) argues

that Identificational Focus is characterised by the features [± Exhaustive] and [±

Contrastive], and that languages vary in the value of these two features. A [+

Contrastive] Focus “operates on a closed set of entities whose members are known

to the participants of the discourse” (É. Kiss, 1998, 267). I think, following Brunetti

(2004), that “contrast” is not an appropriate syntactic feature. For instance, a left

periphery Focus in Italian (or in Florentine) is usually contrastive, but in some cases

it is informational (Benincà and Poletto, 2004). Thus, [+Contrastive] does not seem

a movement driving feature. In the case of ma Focus, contrast is a pragmatic effect

derived from the quantificational operation associated with ma. As I have proposed,

this operation is exhaustive identification (and, thus, ma is similar to solo ‘only’)

accompanied by a sort of “evaluation” about the non-identified subset of the

contextually relevant set of alternatives. This type of quantification is worth of

further research. As it has been noted by Cinque (1999, 180n), perfino ‘even’ does

not allow its complement to raise past it, while this is possible with solo. As we have

seen, the same holds for ma, which must precede the focused constituent. In these

cases a distinctive semantic feature seems to correlate with distinctive syntax.

References

Antinucci, F. & G. Cinque. 1977, “Sull’ordine delle parole in italiano: l’emarginazione”. Studi di

Grammatica Italiana 6, 121-146.

Jacopo Garzonio

38

Bayer, J. 1996, Directionality and Logical Form. Dordrecht, Kluwer.

Belletti, A. 2001, “Inversion as Focalization”. In: A. C. J. Hulk & J.-Y. Pollock (eds.) Subject

Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar. Oxford - New York,

Oxford University Press, 60-90.

Belletti, A. 2004, “Aspects of the Low IP Area”. In: L. Rizzi (ed.) The Structure of CP and IP.

Cartography of Syntactic Structures 2. Oxford - New York, Oxford University Press, 16-

51.

Benincà, P. & C. Poletto. 2004, “Topic, Focus and V2. Defining the CP Sublayers”. In: L. Rizzi

(ed.) The Structure of CP and IP. Cartography of Syntactic Structures 2. Oxford - New

York, Oxford University Press, 52-75.

Brandi, L. & P. Cordin. 1981, “Dialetti e italiano: un confronto sul parametro del soggetto nullo”.

Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 6, 33-87.

Brody, M. 1990, “Some Remarks on the Focus Field in Hungarian”. UCL Working Papers in

Linguistics 2, 201-225.

Brunetti, L. 2004, A Unification of Focus. Padova, Unipress.

Cardinaletti, A. 2001, “A Second Thought on Emarginazione: Destressing vs. “Right

Dislocation” ”. In: G. Cinque & G. Salvi (eds.) Current Studies in Italian Syntax. Essays

offered to Lorenzo Renzi. Amsterdam, Elsevier, 117-135.

Cardinaletti, A. 2004, “Toward a Cartography of Subject Positions”.In: L. Rizzi (ed.) The

Structure of CP and IP. Cartography of Syntactic Structures 2. Oxford - New York,

Oxford University Press, 115-165.

Cinque, G. 1999, Adverbs and Functional Heads. Oxford - New York, Oxford University Press.

É. Kiss, K. 1998, “Identificational Focus versus Information Focus”. Language 74.2, 245-273.

Hinterhölzl, R. 1997, “A VO-based approach to verb raising”. In: K. Kusumoto (ed.) Proceedings

of the North East Linguistic Society 27. Amherst, Ma, GLSA, University of

Massachusetts, 187-202.

Horvath, J. 1986, FOCUS in the Theory of Grammar and the Syntax of Hungarian. Dordrecht,

Foris.

Horvath, J. 2000, “Interfaces vs. the Computational System in the Syntax of Focus”. In: H.

Bennis, M. Everaert & E. Reuland (eds.) Interface Strategies, Amsterdam, HAG, 183-

207.

Horvath, J. 2007, “Separating “Focus Movement” from Focus”. In: S. Karimi, V. Samiian & W.

K. Wilkins (eds.) Phrasal and Clausal Architecture. Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 108-

145.

Kayne, R.S. 2000, Parameters and Universals. Oxford - New York, Oxford University Press.

Laka, I. 1990, Negation in syntax: On the nature of functional categories and projections.

Doctoral Dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rizzi, L. 1997, “The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery”. In: L. Haegeman (ed.) Elements of

Grammar. Handbook in Generative Syntax. Dordrecht, Kluwer, 281-337.

Zanuttini, R. 1991, Syntactic Properties of Sentential Negation: a Comparative Study of Romance

Languages. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.


39

DEVELOPMENTAL PATTERNS IN THE ACQUISITION

OF COMPLEMENT CLITIC PRONOUNS

COMPARING DIFFERENT ACQUISITION MODES

WITH AN EMPHASIS ON FRENCH

Cornelia Hamann and Adriana Belletti

1. Introduction

Recent research has highlighted the particular status of pronominal clitics in first

language acquisition of French. Hamann et al. (1996) and Jakubowicz et al. (1997)

have indicated the delay of complement clitics as opposed to subject pronouns.

Studies on bilingual and early L2 acquisition have reached a similar conclusion

(Belletti and Hamann (2004), White (1996), Hulk (1997), Crysmann and Müller

(2000), Kaiser (1994)) as did studies on SLI children acquiring French (Jakubowicz

et al. (1998), Hamann et al. (2003), Paradis et al. (2003)). In this paper we reconsider

the issue, survey data available in the literature, provide new data on French and for

comparative purposes also on Italian. We undertake a fine grained comparison of the

developmental patterns in this domain of acquisition which will allow us to uncover

subtle distinctions hidden under the global term of delay and possibly reveal

properties of the different modes of acquisition. At the same time, we point out that

the error types and stages in the different modes of acquisition can reveal properties

of different grammatical systems, which may remain unnoticed if solely the adult

system and L1acquisition data are considered. Our comparison can therefore serve

as a special tool to enhance our general understanding of subtle properties of

different grammatical systems.

In this perspective, the analysis of different kinds of clitic placement errors,

typically found in L2 and sometimes in bilingual acquisition data, but missing in

monolingual and SLI data constitutes a domain on which we focus our attention.

Although the brute numbers and percentages of these types of errors are relatively

limited throughout the literature we review, still we take their existence to be

meaningful and possibly illuminating for the comparisons undertaken here, concerning

both the modes of acquisition and the properties of the languages involved. A


40

comparison of these error types in French, especially in combination with German

or Italian, and in Italian, especially in combination with German, proves to be

particularly revealing.

Our main proposal is that the delay in the acquisition of complement clitics,

which is found across all acquisition modes, is primarily due to the more complex

and articulated syntactic derivation that syntactic clitics undergo as compared to

other classes of pronouns, weak or strong (assuming Cardinaletti and Starke’s (1999)

typology; see the discussion below). Characteristically, the delay gives rise to stages

where the clitic complement is omitted (in obligatory contexts), across the different

modes.

However, a specific interpretation is required for placement errors in (early and

adult) L2 and some bilinguals, which are lacking in monolinguals and SLI. We

propose that these errors are crucially linked to the coexistence of different

grammatical systems which can occasionally make available a uniform analysis of

object pronouns.1 Finally, for those placement errors which do not find a reasonable

source in the possible interaction or contact between different grammars, we suggest

a direct active role of UG making different options available in principle.

1.1. Structure of the Article

Section 2 is devoted to spelling out our general background assumptions. In 2.1.

we present properties of the Romance pronominal systems, focusing on the difference

of complement clitics and subject pronouns in French and its syntactic source. This

section also introduces some facts about Italian and contrasts the Romance pronoun

systems with Germanic pronouns, especially the German system. In section 2.2 we

outline our assumptions about the different modes of acquisition. The theoretical

assumptions lead to certain expectations, outlined in section 2.3. Section 3 describes

the methods under review involving spontaneous and elicited production and some

grammaticality judgements. Section 4 presents the results on complement clitics. In

section 4.1. we first present data on the delay of complement clitics, discussing,

monolinguals, bilinguals and L2 learners (early and adult) and the findings for SLI

children. Different types of placement errors observed in our early L2er will be

further investigated in section 4.2 with respect to different modes of acquisition; a

comparison with Italian data in section 4.3 rounds off the result section. A

summarizing discussion concludes the article in section 5.

1 Naturally, SLI who are also L2ers may display a different behavior than monolingual SLI in

this respect. We are not in a position to supply significant data bearing on this subtler

distinction.

Developmental patterns of complement clitics

41

2. General Background: Complement Clitics, Derivation, and Modes of

Acquisition

2.1. Assumptions on Deriviation

Romance complement2 clitic pronouns are assumed to fill a special functional

head position in the clause structure. According to different implementations of the

basic account of their distribution, clitics are assumed to fill a head in the high part

of the clausal functional structure dedicated to clitic pronouns (Sportiche’s (1996)

“clitic voice”); they can be taken to move to an Agr-type head in the high part of the

clause (Kayne (1991), Belletti (1999) and references cited there).The characteristic

of Romance complement clitic pronouns resides in the fact that they are nominal

arguments strictly connected to the verbal domain. Clitics are DPs which undergo a

computation whose crucial step only concerns the head of the DP. Clitic heads and

the head ultimately hosting the verb are intimately interrelated or actually coincident

with both the clitic and the verb filling the same functional head position, as in the

case of cliticization into finite verbs in French, Italian and other Romance languages.

Whatever the exact implementation of the cliticization process we want to adopt, a

functional head ultimately hosting the clitic is assumed to be present and active in

the high part of the clausal functional structure. We can assume that languages differ

as to whether such a functional head is activated or not: in languages with clitics it

is, in languages which do not have clitic pronouns it is not.

In finite clauses, Romance complement clitics are attached to the finite part of

the verbal construction. If the finite verb is lexical, this results in the order Cl Vfin in

declaratives. In both French and Italian, in periphrastic complex tenses involving an

auxiliary and a past participle, the complement clitic pronoun ends up attached onto

the auxiliary which carries the features related to finite morphology (e.g. person,

number and tense) and which is the highest verbal form in the clause structure,

yielding the order Cl Aux Past Participle (Cl Aux PPart). This is a typical ordering

in Romance. To our knowledge, an order Aux Cl PPart is admitted (only) in

Brazilian Portuguese (Bianchi and Figueiredo (1994)), where the status of object

clitics is probably different and closer to that of weak pronouns of the Germanic

type (Cardinaletti and Starke (1999; 2000) ). For complement clitics the cliticization

process ultimately involves movement of the clitic as a head (D°)3, whereas weak

pronouns move as maximal projections (DP) from the complement position to some

2 Under the cover term complement clitics, we here include both direct and indirect object

clitics (e.g. le, lui and reflexive clitics me te, se… in French) and prepositional clitics (e.g. en,

y, in French).

3 In the last step of the derivation, in a movement analysis of cliticization (Belletti (1999) and

references cited there).


42

intermediate dedicated position in the clause structure. Hence, the host of a weak

pronoun is not a verbal head as in the case of typical Romance object cliticization.

The overall computation affecting syntactic clitics is more complex than that affecting

weak (and also strong) pronouns as a final further head movement step is included in

the former but not in the latter. Throughout, we discuss the possible relevance of

these distinctions in interpreting different outcomes in the acquisition of complement

clitics. Our central hypothesis is that the complexity of the computation affecting

complement clitics is precisely at the source of the difficulty manifested in the

different modes of acquisition.4

A peculiar distributional property concerning complement clitics is that in various

Romance languages, including e.g. Italian, but excluding French, a complement

clitic can be attached to the finite matrix verb of a complex sentence. In this kind of

structures, the complement clause is an infinitival and the clitic belongs to the

embedded clause (e.g. Italian: Lo voglio leggere ‘I it(cl) want to read’). This option,

often referred to as “clitic climbing”, is characteristically conditioned by the nature

of the matrix verb typically including modals and aspectuals (e.g. Italian: Lo finisco

di leggere ‘I it(cl) finish to read’). The size of the verb classes allowing “clitic

climbing” varies from one Romance language to the other, with French disallowing

it altogether, Italian allowing it with modals, aspectuals and some raising verbs, with

differences among speakers and varieties, and, e.g., Spanish allowing it with partly

different classes of verbs taking an infinitival complement (Cinque (2004) and

references cited therein for relevant recent discussion). As climbing of the clitic into

the matrix verb is generally an option, often a much preferred one, the hypothesis

has been undertaken at least since Rizzi’s (1978) original work, that the option comes

as a consequence of analyzing an originally biclausal structure as a monoclausal

one. Whence, the name Restructuring for the process leading to reanalysis. Indeed,

cliticization is a very local process and a clitic normally cliticizes onto the verb

4 See Zesiger et al. (2006) for a subtler hypothesis whereby complement clitics may be

considered problematic since they give rise to a particular instance of crossed chains, typically

hard at some (initial) stages of acquisition. This factor may be particularly relevant for the

different profiles observed in elicitation studies (though not necessarily in spontaneous

production) for the development of the reflexive se and accusative clitics but does not concern

us here. For concreteness, in this paper we do not elaborate on this alternative and assume the

hypothesis presented in the text, according to which the complexity of the derivation counts

as the primary source of difficulty in the acquisition of complement clitics. In the same vein,

we adopt the working hypothesis that the internal structural make up of the different classes of

pronominal DPs, with clitics corresponding to a more reduced (deficient in Cardinaletti &

Starke’s terms) internal structure than weak (and strong) pronouns, does not directly bear on

the acquisition issues addressed in this paper. We assume that the different external

computations rather than the possibly different internal make ups are the crucial differential

factor in acquisition. See also Hamann (2003) for further discussion of this point.


43

which has it as its complement or onto the aspectual auxiliary, as in the case

discussed above5. It is only in Restructuring contexts that the clitic climbs higher

than the clause to which it belongs. For the purposes of our discussion here, it

suffices to have identified the basic descriptive properties of the restructuring

phenomenology; in this context, it is not crucial to take a stand on whether

restructuring should be considered a process, as in the original account, or whether a

clause displaying a climbed clitic should be analyzed as monoclausal altogether as in

some more recent accounts (Cinque (2004)).6 In the course of our discussion below

we will use the term Restructuring to refer to structures where the clitic has climbed

onto a matrix modal or aspectual verb, the core cases of restructuring in the

languages displaying the phenomenon.

Although the main focus of our discussion in this paper will be the acquisition of

complement clitics in French, we will also provide some comparative considerations

on the acquisition of French subject clitics. Some preliminary terminological and

theoretical considerations are in order here. Although French personal pronominal

subjects (je, tu, il, elle, on, nous, vous, ils, elles ‘I, you, he, she, one, we, you, they

(m), they (f)’) are often referred to as clitics, their status is not the same as that of

object complement clitics. Both object and subject clitics are phonological clitics in

that they do not bear an independent stress and form a phonological word with the

verb they combine with (directly or in a cluster with other pronominal clitics);

however, only complement clitics can be properly analyzed as syntactic clitics. If

complement clitics ultimately count as heads and behave according to this status

syntactically, subject clitics behave as maximal projections (DP) throughout the

entire syntactic derivation (Kayne (1991), Cardinaletti and Starke (1999), Laenzlinger

and Shlonsky (1997)).7

According to the distinction mentioned above between weak and clitic pronouns,

we then assume that French object clitics are syntactic (as well as phonological)

5 The clitic can also be the complement of the head noun of a DP complement of the verb or

be an adjunct. We make abstraction of these distinctions which are not directly relevant for

the point at issue here.

6 See also the references cited there for a rich bibliographical information on restructuring.

For different versions of the more traditional account see Rizzi (1978; 1982), Burzio (1986),

Zubizarreta (1985).

7 We assume the status of weak pronouns for subject clitics in Standard French, (and also in

Colloquial French where the facts are less clear; see Friedemann (1995), Hamann (2002) for

discussion). See Auger (1995), Zrib-Hertz (1994) and references cited there for an alternative

view according to which also French subject pronouns should be analyzed as filling a head

inflectional position, hence ultimately as syntactic heads. This analysis essentially assimilates

French subject pronouns to the subject clitics of Northern Italian dialects; see Brandi &

Cordin (1989), Poletto (2000) and references cited there for critical discussion.


44

clitics, while subject clitics are syntactic weak pronouns and clitics just phonologically.

In the course of our discussion we will occasionally refer to the French pronominal

subjects as subject clitics following current practice. However, the theoretical and

distributional distinction concerning their syntactic nature should be kept in mind as

it directly bears on the different outcomes known from the literature on the

acquisition of subject vs. object complement clitics.

Note here that other Romance languages such as Standard Italian do not have

conspicuous instances of of weak pronouns (neither subjects nor complements).8 For

the interpretation of our findings in French we exploit this difference in the

pronominal systems of the two languages. In this connection, we refer to recent

results on the acquisition of Italian object clitics by bilingual/L2 speakers and point

out differences in error patterns in French and Italian, most typically emerging when

the first or concomitant language is German (Ferrari (2006); Leonini and Belletti

(2004); Leonini (2006)).

To round off our discussion of pronominal systems, we summarize here some

facts about Germanic pronoun systems which we will refer to throughout, using

German as our main example. In contrast to French/Romance clitics, German personal

pronouns are ambiguous between strong and weak use and behave differently

accordingly. As strong pronouns they can be stressed, and coordinated, provided

they are referring to [+human] arguments. Inanimate subject and object pronouns

cannot be strong and cannot be coordinated. As weak pronouns they can

phonologically cliticize to nouns and complementizers. Crucially, they are not verbal

clitics as the Romance clitics are.

German also has a series of so called demonstrative pronouns (der, die das, den,

etc.) which are identical in form to the definite determiners. These d-pronouns are

again ambiguous between weak and strong use but always show up in the same

positions as full DPs. (Ich hab’ den schon gesehen ‘ I have this (the, him) already

seen’/Ich hab’ den Film schon gesehen ‘I have the film already seen’). 3rd

person

French accusative clitics also coincide in form with the definite determiners. They

cannot occur in DP-positions, however, but must attach to a functional head, as

discussed above (Je l’ai déjà vu ‘I it have already seen’/j’ai déjà vu le film ‘I have

already seen the film).

2.2. Different modes of acquisition

Our point of departure is the parametric approach to L1 acquisition according to

which invariable properties of Universal Grammar (UG) are activated by input data

which also contain the relevant triggers for the different parametric choices that the

8 Weak pronouns are limited to the obsolete subject pronoun egli ‘he’ and dative pronoun loro

(Cardinaletti (1991)) for detailed discussion.


45

child has to make. Parametric choices are supposed to concern functional heads and

their feature specifications.

We also assume that simultaneous bilingual acquisition of more than one

language from birth follows essentially the same pattern as monolingual acquisition

for each of the languages involved, thus presupposing early separation of their

different grammars, as originally proposed by Meisel (1989) (see also Genesee et al.

(1995), Salustri (2003), and Meisel (2006) for recent discussion). In this view

interference/contact of the two languages is allowed –if at all- only in the special

circumstance when input from one of the languages can be reasonably, though

incorrectly, analyzed by the grammar of the other language (Hulk and Müller

(2000), and some of the discussion below). In contrast, L2 acquisition, early and

adult, presupposes by its very nature the existence of an L1 grammar in the language

learner’s mind. A major issue in L2 acquisition therefore is to make precise the

impact, if any, of the L1 grammar with its parametric choices on the L2 acquisition

process. Following proposals on this issue by White (1989; 2000; 2003), Schwartz

(1998) and related work, we adopt the view that the L2 initial state is the L1

grammar, that areas of difficulties in L2 acquisition are typically expected in cases

where the two languages differ in parametric choices leading to misparsing of the L2

input through the L1 setting. Thus, L2 acquisition characteristically manifests

Transfer phenomena. However, parametric choices are likely not to be automatically

transferred, but transfer is characteristically expected in cases of ambiguous input

prompting an analysis through the L1-grammar.9 In addition, we also assume an

active role of UG so that parameters, more specifically the functional feature

specification they involve, can be reset and functional features not instantiated in the

L1 can be acquired (Schwartz and Sprouse (1996), Duffield et al. (2002)) in the

course of L2 acquisition.10

We maintain that in L2 acquisition by young children, here referred to as early

L2, cases of transfer can be overcome quickly, presumably because UG is more

readily accessible. In fact, it has been argued that early L2 resembles L1 acquisition

9 In this sense the interference/contact situation in bilingual acquisition and transfer

phenomena in L2-acquisition may show important similarities. If the input clearly contradicts

the L1-setting, the transferred setting will typically be very short-lived; see Haznedar (1997)

for relevant evidence of a short-lived transferred parameter; Haberzettl (2005) for relevant

discussion reaching partly different conclusions.

10 The view on adult L2 acquisition referred to above has been labeled the “No impairment”

hypothesis and stands in contrast to a different view according to which parameters in L2

acquisition cannot be reset and UG is not operational beyond a critical period (Hawkins

(2001), Towell and Hawkins (1994), Hawkins and Franceschina (2004), Meisel (2006)). L2

grammars are thus “impaired” grammars (see White (2000) and Duffield et al. (2002) for

discussion).


46

(White (1996)). However, precisely as for some specific transfer phenomena, early

L2 seems to rather resemble adult L2 acquisition (Belletti and Hamann (2004)).

Some of the discussion below bears on this issue.

Specific language impairment (SLI) has been approached from two similar basic

points of view. On the one hand, it is assumed that language development in

children with SLI may be substantially delayed but is essentially the same as in

normal L1 acquisition, which could be interpreted as SLI children having an

operational UG but needing more trigger experiences to arrive at the valid parameter

settings. On the other hand, it has been proposed that this type of acquisition is

deviant from L1 acquisition, which indicates that UG is not fully functional. As it

has been claimed that error patterns in L2 and SLI resemble each other (see

Hakansson and Nettelblatt (1996)), we might expect to gain insights into the

underlying mechanisms of L2 acquisition and SLI by a close comparison of

development and error patterns in a well investigated area such as clitic use, where

robust results on L1 acquisition can form the background for investigations of early

L2, adult L2 and SLI.

The particular interest of comparing SLI and young L2 learners lies in the

possibility of teasing apart which phenomena of L2 acquisition are due to transfer

and which are due to a developmental difficulty with a particular area of grammar,

as has recently been pointed out by Paradis (2004). Such comparative studies have

been undertaken only recently, however, and tend to focus on a particular phase of

development. We maintain, and hope to provide evidence for the claim, that though

similarities during certain stages of both types of acquisition can be observed

(Hakanson and Nettelblatt (1996), Paradis (2004)), differences are revealed by a

consideration of developmental/longitudinal data: SLI ultimately shows a developmental

pattern closer to that of monolinguals (though slower), whereas early L2ers rapidly

overcome the difficulties in those cases where they resemble SLI.

2.3. Main expectations

Given the above assumptions about the different modes of acquisition and the

linguistic outline of the pronominal systems in French, Italian/Romance, on the one

hand, and the Germanic languages on the other hand, we come back to the proposals

briefly outlined in the introduction. If French object/complement clitics are syntactic

clitics and are therefore computationally more complex than subject pronouns,

which are weak pronouns, then we expect a delay and omissions for complement

clitics in all modes of acquisition. This is so because avoidance and omissions can

alleviate processing load induced by computational complexity - if only because no

phonological matrix must be spelled out. Placement errors, however, cannot solely

be motivated by the greater computational complexity; we propose that in some


47

instances they are due to the coexistence of grammars leading to misclassifications

and in other instances to the exploitation of UG options.

In particular, our assumptions about the role of the L2 system, which may allow

an analysis in terms of the L1 parameter settings, make us expect that a German

child learning French may try out an analysis whereby (all) pronouns are treated as

weak. This analysis would be suggested by the existence of weak pronouns in both

her L1 and in French (see the status of subject pronouns) and would be aided/

strengthened by the similarity in form of object pronouns and determiners, found in

both languages (2.1.).

Though such a similarity in form also exists in Italian, the basic absence of weak

pronouns in the Italian system (footnote 8) should indicate to L2-learners that such

an analysis is not tenable. Hence it should not be entertained in the typical case. If

transfer were a stage regardless of properties of the L2, we would expect German(ic)

learners of Italian and French to manifest the same placement errors. In contrast, we

propose that the L2 system plays an active role and thus we expect placement errors,

with pronouns showing up in DP positions, to be more likely when the target/second

language is French than when it is Italian.

As for the role played by UG in L2-acquisition, we also expect that

Restructuring errors may occur during the acquisition of French as a target language,

Restructuring being a UG option. Furthermore, this option could also be tried out in

some bilingual settings.11

3. The Method

The core of the French data considered in our discussion is taken from the L1,

SLI and bilingual/early L2 corpora collected in the framework of the Geneva project

on “Language and Communication: Acquisition and Pathology”. The Italian data

(spontaneous and experimental) referred to here were collected in different projects

within the frame of the research activities undertaken at the Interdepartmental Center

of Cognitive Studies on Language at the University of Siena.12

We will also refer to

examples and, where available, quantitative analyses from the literature in order to

round off the picture.

The basis and measure of comparison for this investigation are longitudinal

studies of the spontaneous production of normally developing monolingual French

11

To the extent that Restructuring errors are not attested in monolingual L1 acquisition, we

can speculate that the possible UG option is not equally entertained as it is overwhelmingly

disfavored on the basis of unambiguous positive evidence, see discussion in section 5.

12 Many of the results we will be referring to with respect to the Geneva and Siena data have

been published or have given rise to dissertations. Here they are considered from a fresh

comparative perspective.


48

speaking children: Augustin: 10 recordings (2;0- 2;9); Marie: 17 recordings (1;8-

2;6), Louis: 12 recordings (1;9 - 2;3) as described in Hamann et al. (1996) and

Rasetti (2003). We also use data from Daniel (1;8-1;11), Nathalie (1;9-2;3), Gregoire

(1;9-2;3), and Philippe (2;1-2;6) from the Lightbown corpus, and the Leveillé and

Champaud corpora known from Childes.

As for impaired language we primarily use the spontaneous productions of 11

monolingual French children clinically diagnosed as SLI as recorded in Geneva/

Lausanne with an age range of 3;10-7;11 at the beginning of recording. For these

data we make reference to Hamann et al. (2003) and to Baranzini (2003) (see also

Cronel-Ohayon (2004)). We will also refer to data from Jakubowicz et al. (1998),

Jakubowicz (2003), Paradis et al. (2003) and Paradis (2004) and others.13

Our main source for bilingual/early L2 data is a corpus recording two young

children with different source languages (exposure from birth), who are communicating

with each other in French: Elisa, whose first language is German and who was

recorded between the ages of 4;0-5;5 and Lorenzo, who is of Italian origin and who

was recorded between the ages of 3;5-4;11. Belletti and Hamann (2004) showed that

Elisa’s speech exhibits phenomena which are also discussed in the literature on

(adult) L2, she will therefore be called “early L2er” here. Lorenzo, on the other

hand, shows a development parallel to that of monolingual French acquisition, so

that he will henceforth be termed “bilingual”. Systematic exposure to French was

roughly the same for these two children, and there are 5 recordings, distributed as

shown in table 1 (see Belletti and Hamann (2004) for further details).

Table 1: Recordings and ages of Lorenzo and Elisa

recording Lorenzo age Elisa age

1 3;5 4;0

2 3;7 4;2

3 3;8 4;3

4 4;4 4;10

5 4;11 5;5

13

The typically developing children and the SLI children considered here are in comparable

developmental stages as they fall roughly into the same MLU range (Hamann (2004)). The

mean ages of the groups of SLI children discussed in the literature and which we use for

comparison here are 7;6 (Paradis (2004)), 7;8 and 9;1 (Jakubowicz (2003)), allowing

comparisons in some cases and projections of further development in others.


49

The corpora collected in Geneva were transcribed and analyzed by the same

procedure for all acquisition modes. In particular clitic omissions and placement

errors were counted in the same way. All judgments have been verified by native

speakers, which is especially relevant for the identification of omissions. For details

on the counting and analysis procedures see Hamann et al. (1996), but also White

(1996), Jakubowicz et al. (1997, 1998), Hulk and Müller (2000) who all identify

omissions on the basis of the verb’s argument structure and the discourse context.14

In addition to our data from the bilingual/early L2 children, we will use data on

Anouk (Dutch/French bilingual) as discussed in Hulk (1997; 2000), and data on Ivar

and Caroline (both German/French bilingual) as discussed in Crysmann and Müller

(2000). For clear cases of early L2 acquisition we also consult the productions of

Kenny and Greg (L1:English and L2:French) as reported in White (1996) and in

Prévost and White (2000). Ages and amount of exposure will be provided in the

context of the relevant discussion.

As to adult L2-learners of French, we will refer to the literature, especially

Prévost and White (2000), Herschensohn (2004), and Granfeldt and Schlyter (2004)

and the speakers they studied. We will occasionally refer to the study of Landow

(2002) conducted in Geneva with 25 adult L2-learners of French (with Chinese,

German, English and Romance languages different from French as their L1) to

strengthen tendencies already observed.

The Italian data used for comparison are taken from the work by Leonini &

Belletti (2004), Leonini (2006) for adult L2 acquisition and Ferrari (2006) for

bilingual acquisition.

A word of caution is in order before we proceed. Although our comparisons will

consider data and results obtained in different studies through different procedures,

including spontaneous production, elicited production and also some grammaticality

judgments, we believe that the comparisons are revealing and significant as they

illustrate consistent trends throughout.

As for placement errors, the different data sources are not specially problematic

as the errors are clearly manifested. With respect to omissions, the differences in

data taking may raise the issue of defining what counts as an obligatory clitic

context. In elicited production all contexts are by definition obligatory, whereas in

spontaneous production, although for native speakers it may be clear that what is

missing is a clitic pronoun, there will always remain a doubt that what is being

omitted could be a lexical complement or a licit omission (see Pirvulescu (2006) for

discussion). Native speakers’ judgments guided us in the identification of obligatory

complement clitic pronoun contexts. Although a certain amount of indeterminacy is

unavoidable in this connection, especially in spontaneous production, many of the

14

Note especially that omissions which several native speakers judged legitimate are not

included in our counts.


50

studies we use for complementation of our data have employed the same procedures

for the identification of omissions (see references above), so that we work under the

assumption that the relevant cases of omission from the literature can also be

classified as pronominal clitic omissions.

4. Results on Complement Clitics

4.1. The ‘Delay’ of Complement Clitics and Error types in different modes of

acquisition

Complement clitics display a delay in acquisition with respect to subject clitics

which is rather significant and has given rise to several studies (see the references

quoted above, and also Schmitz and Müller (in press), Pirvulescu (2006)). In

monolingual, typical children it concerns a time span of about six months, and in

SLI children the absence or very rare use of object clitics may persist for several

years (Jakubowicz et al. (1998), Hamann et al. (2003), and Paradis et al. (2003)).

Bilinguals seem to show the delay also observed in monolinguals (see Hulk (2000),

Crysmann and Müller (2000), and Schmitz and Müller (in press)), whereas early and

adult L2 speakers produce their first object clitics even more than six months later

than subject pronouns. In comparison to SLI children, the period of non-use of

object clitics is much shorter in early L2 speakers, however, and they quickly evolve

in their use as documented also in their error patterns.

4.1.1. Monolinguals

The general consensus on subject clitics in monolingual acquisition is that they

are used from roughly the second birthday, whereas complement clitics are omitted

till they occur tentatively about 4 months later and more systematically about 6

months later. Augustin, the child investigated by Hamann et al. (1996) shows this

clearly in his development between 2;0 and 2;10, see table 2. Louis, one of the

Geneva children studied by Rasetti (2003) with respect to clitic use, shows the same

profile. He produces 29.4% subject clitics at the age of 1;9,26, the beginning of

recording, (Rasetti 2003,155). At this time, he produces no complement clitics. He

starts using them at a rate of only about 5% from 2;0,8 till 2;1,20 and shows a rise to

about 11% between 2;2,20 and 2;3,29 (Rasetti 2003,257). Marie, another child

studied by Rasetti already uses 66.7% subject clitics at the age of 1;8,26, which is a

rate attained by Augustin at the age of 2;9,30 (p. 155). So it comes as no surprise

that she uses complement clitics at a rate of 16.7% at that early age already (p. 257).

Still, even if complement clitics are not radically absent in her early recordings, they

are much rarer than subject pronouns and her speech also shows a high percentage

of object omissions at the same time (58.3% at the beginning and 16.7% at 2;5,26).

Studies on elicited production (Jakubowicz et al. (1996; 1997) and Zesiger et al.

(2006)) show roughly the same picture, and the recent study on spontaneous


51

production conducted by Schmitz and Müller (in press) shows an initial absence and

about the same delay (5 months) for the child Gregoire from the Childes database

(see also Friedemann (1992) and Rasetti (2003) for the same conclusions regarding

this child).

Table 2: Occurrences of subject and complement clitics

in relevant utterances in the Augustin-corpus

age

(y;m,d)

verbal

utterances

subject

clitics

% of verbal

utterances

complement

clitics

% of relevant

utterances

2;0,2 57 17 29.8 0 0

2;0,23 30 4 13.3 0 0

2;1,15 22 4 18.2 0 0

2;2,13 55 16 29.1 1 3.8

2;3,10 45 12 26.6 0 0

2;4,1 62 10 16.1 0 0

2;4,22 54 11 20.4 1 5.0

2;6,16 116 25 21.6 2 3.9

2;9,2 175 80 45.7 10 14.3

2;9,30 115 99 63.4 22 33.9

Total 771 278 36.1 36 10.5

Moreover, table 3 indicates that if complement clitics are radically absent in

Augustin’s speech at the beginning of recording, they reach a level of around 30%

occurrence, the level found for subject clitics at the very beginning, only in the last

recording where we observe a concomitant decrease in the rate of the occurrence of

lexical complements as well as in the rate of clitic omissions. The same is true for

Louis (Rasetti (2003, 257)).15

15

See also Wexler, Gavarró, Torrens (2004), Babyonyshev and Marin (2004) for recent

discussion on the different omission rates in different Romance languages (Spanish, Catalan,

Romanian in particular) in L1 acquisition.


52

Table 3: The use of complement clitics in comparison with lexical

complements and omissions in the Augustin corpus

age

comp.

contexts omissions %

complement

clitics %

lexical

complements %

2;0,2 12 4 33.3 0 0 8 66.6

2;0,23 20 5 25 0 0 15 75

2;1,15 10 4 40 0 0 6 60

2;2,13 19 5 26.3 1 3.8 13 69.9

2;3,10 23 9 39.1 0 0 14 60.9

2;4,1 20 5 25 0 0 15 75

2;4,22 21 4 19.0 1 5.0 16 76

2;6,16 50 10 20 2 3.9 38 76.1

2;9,2 69 10 14.4 10 14.3 49 71.3

2;9,30 65 14 21.5 22 33.8 29 44.7

Total 309 70 22.7 36 11.6 203 65.7

A clear fact that has emerged from recent research is that object/complement

clitics are placed correctly from their first occurrences as was pointed out by

Hamann et al. (1996) for Augustin. This finding was recently corroborated by

Rasetti (2003, 293) who states that “no placement error is attested in the entire

Geneva corpus”, i.e. of the monolingual children Augustin, Marie and Louis.16

4.1.2 Early L2/bilingual children

The child called early L2er, Elisa, shows a delay of complement with respect to

subject clitics which is similar to Augustin’s development, as shown in table 4. Note

specifically that complement clitics tend to be absent in the early recordings.

16

As to the order of acquisition of particular complement clitics, it is interesting to note that

appearance of clitic en generally coincides with the stages where complement clitics begin to

be systematically produced by the different children analyzed. (Hamann et al. (1996, 324f),

Rasetti (2003, 293)), see also footnote 21 below.


53

Table 4: Elisa’s quantitative development of clitic use

%subjects in finite contexts %complements in complement contexts

age lexical

subject

clitic

subject omission total

lexical

compl.

clitic

compl. omission total

4;0 1/4.2 23/95.8 0 24 4/100 0 0 4

4;2 2/4.7 41/95.3 0 43 4/50.0 4/50.0 0 8

4;3 2/9.1 19/86.4 1/4.5 22 4/100 0 0 4

4;10 0 100/100 0 100 22/55.0 16/40.0 2/5.0 40

5;5 11/7.3 139/92.7 0 150 38/50.7 33/44.0 4/5.3 75

total 16/4.7 322/95.0 1/0.3 339 72/55.4 52/40.0 6/4.6 130

A similar delay has been reported by White (1996) for the early L2 children

Kenny (5;10-8;1) and Greg (5;6-7;9), both with English as source language (recording

started after two months of exposure for both children). Kenny produces subject but

no object clitics between month 7 and month 11 of exposure which is not due to lack

of complement constructions because he does produce lexical complements. White

further reports that complement clitics are often omitted in the period when they

start being produced.

Paradis (2004) reports similar findings. She investigated 10 Canadian learners of

French with English as their source language whose mean age is 7.3 years and who

had been exposed to French for two years in French schools before data taking

began. She reports that at this stage of acquisition the L2-learners supplied object

clitics in only 41.5% of the contexts which required pronominalization (i.e. when the

referent of the clitic had been mentioned in the discourse). Calculating the omission

rate in all clitic contexts from Paradis’ analysis of particular errors, gives a percentage

of 37.4% omissions in obligatory contexts.

In contrast to Augustin and the other monolingual children described so far,

Elisa’s early recordings show placement errors of a specific kind. We note that

either complement clitics are absent or that they are found in non-clitic positions,

notably positions that appear to coincide with those of lexical DPs or strong

pronouns. This is illustarted in (1) where the clitic appears in isolation (and with

stress) or, and more systematically so, in the position of lexical DP complements

(2a, b), an error which has also been reported by White (1996) concerning the early

L2er Greg (2c). We will call these particular errors the ‘*Cl in isolation’ and the


54

‘*Cl in object position’ error17

. Note that Elisa does not use complement clitics in

the recordings made at the ages of 4;0 and 4;3. In between, at the age of 4;2, we find

4 uses of object clitics, which all occur in non-clitic positions. At the same time, she

does not omit complements, but uses lexical DPs, something which has also been

observed by Paradis (2004) for her early L2-ers of French.18

(1) E: c’est à moi, le L: le quoi? Elisa 4;2 in isolation, with stress

it’s to me, him/the the what

‘it’s mine, that one the what?’

(2a) alors, tu joue avec le Elisa 4;2 after a preposition (2 occurrences)

so, you play with him

‘so, you play with it’

(2b) non, on laisse le Elisa 4;2 in canonical object position

no, one leaves him

‘no, we leave him/it alone’

(2c) moi, j’ai trouvé le Greg (month 14 of exposure)

me, I have found him/it

‘Me, I’ve found it’

Seven months later, at 4;10, she uses complement clitics at a rate of 40% and the

particular errors exemplified in (1) and (2a,b) have vanished. However, we still find

placements errors, albeit of a different kind: the clitic is now sometimes located

between auxiliary and past participle, an error also observed by Hulk (1997) for the

(Dutch/French) bilingual child Anouk (at age 3;6 and 3;9)19

. There are 8 contexts

with auxiliaries in the last recording of Elisa at the age of 5;5, and two uses are

erroneous: instead of the correct order Cl-Aux-PPart, we find (3a) and (3b) which

show ‘*Aux-Cl-PPart’, which will henceforth serve as a name for this error20

.

17

We keep them distinct for ease of reference although they may actually be instances of the

same error type.

18 This tendency also emerged in a clitic elicitation task with adult L2ers of Italian discussed

in Leonini & Belletti (2004) discussed in 4.2.5. below. The tendency to use full lexical DPs in

place of a pronominal clitic also appears to be present in monolingual acquisition, during the

omission stage (Jakubowicz et al (1997), Schaeffer (2000)).

19 Clitic in object position errors are also signaled by Anouk’s mother, as we point out in

section 4.2.3.

20 Note the interesting lack of change of auxiliary (from “have” to “be”) in (3b). Similar data

are reported in Crysmann & Müller (2000), see section 4.2.3.


55

(3a) ça a m’ étranglé Elisa 5;5 (repeated)

that has me strangled

‘that strangled me’

(3b) regarde, là j’ ai m’ étranglé Elisa 5;5 (repeated)

look, there I have me strangled

‘look, there I strangled myself’

Note that modal/periphrastic contexts are faultless in Elisa’s speech (4a,b):

(4a) et maintenant tu vas la rattrapper Elisa 4;10

and now you will her catch

‘and now you will catch her/it’

(4b) je vais les chercher Elisa 5;5

I will them search

‘I will go get them’

Hulk (2000) reports for Anouk that she sometimes places the clitic before the

finite verb in these constructions which we will henceforth call ‘Restructuring’

errors presented in more detail in 4.2.3.

We also note that complement omission occurs only in the later recordings

(though rarely) and seems to surplant the ‘Cl-in object position’ error. It is thus not

surprising that Paradis (2004) reports clitic omissions but does not find placement

errors of the kind described here for her older L2 children who had a longer

exposure before data taking. She observes another tendency, not observed in our

early L2er, which may be reminiscent of the ‘Cl-in-object position’ error: her L2

children sometimes inserted a strong pronoun or the demonstrative ça ‘that’ in

canonical object position (e.g. J’ai vu elle ‘I have seen her’). They thus obey the

pragmatics of anaphoric reference which leads to the use of a pronominal element

and also choose the pronoun-type which would in principle be compatible with this

position. However, the children appear not to have acquired the additional

constraints which limit the use of strong pronouns in French (see Cardinaletti and

Starke (1999; 2000) for discussion). This error then seems to show that at this stage

the children have differentiated between clitic and strong pronouns, but only as far

as their distribution is concerned. Note that some of the younger L2-children known

from the literature do not show this differentiation as clitic forms are located in

complement positions (as in (1) and (2a,b,c) above) or strong forms occur in clitic-

like positions (see Belletti and Hamann (2004:158, examples (11a,b)) on

misplacement of ça ‘that’).


56

Note particularly that with respect to omissions, placement errors and clitic use

we find strong development for Elisa, our younger, longitudinally followed L2er, as

discussed in Belletti & Hamann (2004,161; Table 6).

The child of Italian origin whom we call bilingual, Lorenzo, shows no problems

with clitic use (see Table 5). Subject pronouns are used correctly and are the

predominant subjects occurring with finite verbs (see Belletti and Hamann (2004)

for a discussion of the significance of this finding with respect to the Italian null

subject option). Complement clitics are present from the beginning in contrast to

Elisa. Note also that we find no placement errors in Lorenzo’s speech, in particular

none of the three error types identified for Elisa.

Table 5: Lorenzo’s quantitative development of clitic use

% subjects in finite contexts % complements in complement contexts

lex-s cl-s o-s total lex-o cl-o o-o total

3;5 1/1.6 56/87.5 7/10.9 64 13/72.2 4/22.2 1/5.5 18

3;7 2/2.0 97/96.0 2/2.0 101 25/64.1 14/35.9 0 39

3;8 7/6.1 105/92.1 2/1.8 114 21/84.0 4/16.0 0 25

4;4 1/1.5 64/98.5 0/0 65 13/56.5 10/43.5 0 23

4;11 6/3.9 146/94.2 3/1.9 155 24/53.3 21/46.7 0 45

Total 17/3.4 468/93.8 14/2.8 499 96/64.0 53/35.3 1/0.7 150

As to the order of acquisition of particular complement clitics, Lorenzo shows a

similar pattern to the early L2er Elisa (Belletti & Hamann (2004, 165; Table 11).

Note that for Elisa, Lorenzo as well as monolingual Augustin and Louis the

appearance of clitic en (‘of that’) seems to coincide with an overall high rate of clitic

use.21

21

En appears late in Lorenzo as well as in Elisa. This data is reminiscent of the remark in

footnote 16 concerning monolinguals. Moreover, en ‘of that’ seems also prone to omission. It

is the only clitic which is omitted by Lorenzo (twice, once at the age of 3;7 and once at the

age of 3;8, not counted in table 7 where only verbal complement clitics are considered). It is

also omitted by Elisa, at the age of 4;2, though she later also omits le ‘him’, at 4;10 and 5;5.

We leave open speculations on the seemingly particular status of en in this respect.


57

4.1.3. Adult L2

For adult L2ers it has been noted that placement errors and omissions occur

frequently, (see Towell and Hawkins (1994), Granfeldt and Schlyter (2004) and

Herschensohn (2004) for a recent discussion). Interestingly, the stages identified by

these authors, 1. ‘Pronoun in object position’, 2. ‘Object Omission’ and 3. ‘Pronoun

in intermediate position’ are also observed for Elisa (examples (1), (2) and (3)); the

three types of placement errors produced by Elisa, ‘* Clitic in isolation’, ‘*Cl in

object position’, and ‘*Aux-Cl-Ppart’, are the same as described for adult L2. The

examples in (5) and (6) taken from Granfeldt and Schlyter (2004) illustrate the two

placement errors occurring in the different phases:

(5) On prend le gaz et refroidir le Karl, 8 mths exposure *Cl in object position

one takes the gas and cool him/it

‘you take the gas and cool it’

(6) j’ai le vu Karl, 10 mths exposure *Aux-Cl-Ppart

I have him/it seen

‘I have seen him/it’

In addition, in adult L2 productions errors of clitic placement in modal contexts

have been found, where instead of the French order ‘Modal Cl Infinitive’, the order

‘Cl Modal Infinitive’ with the clitic climbed onto the modal occurs. This is the error

we call Restructuring error, illustrated in (7) below. In a grammaticality judgement

experiment conducted by Landow (2002), Restructuring errors as in (7) were also

found and the ‘Clitic in isolation’ error illustrated in (8) also occurred confirming

the results obtained from production studies:

(7) *Il nous peut parler Restructuring

He us can talk

‘He can talk to us

(8) *Qui regardes-tu? LA *Cl in isolation

Who look at you? HER

‘Who are you looking at? HER’

A closer discussion of these misplacements is taken up in section 4.2.4.

4.1.4. Children with SLI

In comparison to the general mastery of subject clitics by children with SLI,

complement clitics appear extremely delayed. The mastery of subject clitics has

been observed by Jakubowicz et al. (1998) for elicited production and was

corroborated in Hamann et al. (2003) with an investigation based on the spontaneous

speech of the children recorded in Geneva. In the first recordings of these 11 children,


58

subject clitics occur between 58.9% and 96.0% for the individual children.22

For

further analysis the authors group the participants under and up to five years of age

into the “younger group” (age range 3;10-5;0) and call the children older than five

years, the “older group” (age range 5;7-7;11, mean age 7.3).

The younger group has an average omission rate of 16% and an average object

clitic use of 18%. The older group has fewer omissions, average 8%, but still produces

complement clitics on average only in 23% of the contexts which require a

complement (see also Hamann et al. (2003,155, figure 3)). While omissions are

replaced (in part) by the use of lexical DPs, no real increase in the use of clitics can

be observed.

In this first cross-sectional survey, the comparison of the younger and the older

group indicated that there is no dramatic development in clitic use as found for the

monolinguals, the bilingual, and the L2 children.23

Paradis (2004) corroborates the

rather low percentage of clitic suppliance found for the “older group”. Her 10 SLI

children are of almost the same age (mean age 7.6 years) and supply clitics in only

47.3% of obligatory contexts. However, an increase in clitic use has been found for

older SLI children (mean age 9;1) as discussed in Jakubowicz (2003).

Placement errors of the types discussed here where not observed in our SLI

population. Note that Paradis (2004) observes a higher suppliance of lexical objects

in pronominalization contexts for her SLI children than for her other groups. She

also reports absence of the ‘Cl-in-object-position’ error and rare occurrence of the

‘strong pronoun in object position’ error which she found in her L2 speakers.

4.1.5. The delay of complement clitics in normal development, SLI, L2, and bilingual

acquisition

In order to highlight the difference of normal development and SLI on the one

hand and the similarity of normal and early-L2/bilingual development with respect

to the described delay, a further comparison can be made. Hamann et al. (1996)

found that though complement clitics are expected to occur less than subject clitics

in adult speech, they occur at a ratio of 1:3 on average, i.e. about 75% of all clitics

used are subject clitics and the remaining 25% are complement clitics. On the basis

of this adult ratio, the authors showed that Augustin’s clitic use undergoes a dramatic

22

This holds generally with the exception of 2 children with high infinitive rates. Corentin

uses only 6.2% and Rafaelle only 15.8% subject clitics whereas their rates of subject omission

are particularly high. Lexical subjects or strong pronouns without a clitic are not frequently

used, neither by the younger children (3;10-5;0), nor by the older children (5;7-7;11).

23 The delay in the production of complement clitics as evidenced by a high omission rate is

particularly pronounced in the child Rafaelle who was followed in her development till the the

age of 5;1. At this age she still produces less complement clitics than the monolingual child

Augustin at the age of 2;10.


59

development: Whereas only 7.3% of his clitics are complement clitics at the

beginning of recording, he is close to the adult ratio with 18.2% at the end. The

same sort of analysis conducted by Hamann et al. (2003) shows that there is no

development from the younger to the older group of the SLI children they

investigated (age range 3;10-7;11): the rate of complement clitics remains constant

and resembles Augustin’s before the ‘clitic-spurt’ as shown in table 6. As for this

ratio then, SLI children stagnate in the use of complement clitics, at least in the age

bracket investigated here.

Table 6: The use of subject and complement clitics in the speech of adults from the

Augustin corpus, of Augustin and of the younger and older group of SLI children

adults % Aug

2;0-2;9

% Aug

2;10

% SLI

3;10-5;0

% SLI

5;7-7;11

%

sub-cl 2.332 76.4 179 92.7 99 81.8 333 91.7 681 92.5

comp-cl 791 23.6 14 7.3 22 18.2 30 8.3 55 7.5

total 3.123 193 121 363 736

We performed the same analysis for our two bilingual/early-L2 children (see

table 7) and found that Elisa’s development resembles Augustin’s in showing a clear

rise in complement clitic suppliance. Lorenzo does not show much development but

could be considered proficient from the beginning. A closer analysis of his

‘complement contexts’ in the last recording revealed that they often involved lexical

expressions like faire la cuisine ‘do the kitchen – cook’ where pronominalization is

impossible. Clitics are actually used at a rate of 100% in contexts which require

pronominalization.


60

Table 7: Ratio of subject to complement clitic use in Lorenzo and Elisa

Lorenzo Elisa

file sub-cl comp-cl total sub-cl comp-cl total

1 56/93.3 4/6.6 60 23/100 0/0 23

2 97/87.4 14/12.6 111 45/91.8 4/8.2 49

3 105/96.3 4/3.7 109 19/100 0 19

4 64/86.5 10/13.5 74 100/86.2 16/13.8 116

5 146/87.4 21/12.6 167 139/78.5 38/21.5 177

total 468/89.8 53/10.2 521 326/84.9 58/15.1 384

4.1.6. Intermediate Summary

Summarizing what has been observed so far, L2 development emerges as

different from impaired language development. We have pointed out that the delay

of complement clitics can be observed for monolinguals, for bilingual and early L2

children, for adult L2 and for children with SLI. However, monolinguals, bilinguals

and early L2 learners show a clear rise in the use of complement clitics, whereas the

SLI children we analyzed do not show a comparable development (even if their

omission rates drop)24

. With respect to development therefore, SLI children exhibit a

different, slower profile than monolinguals, bilinguals, and early L2 children.25

We also observed that early and adult L2 learners show typical error patterns

which are totally absent in the productions of monolinguals as well as in the

productions of children with SLI. With respect to the placement of object clitics, we

thus find that monolinguals pattern with SLI children and both differ from L2

learners, early or adult.

24

See also Henry (2006), who found that 10-15 year old adolescents with a childhood

diagnosis of SLI produced significantly less object clitics than a control group of typical 6-

year olds in an elicited production task; but see Jakubowicz (2003) who observes a rise of

clitic suppliance in children with SLI between a mean age of 7;8 and a mean age of 9;1.

25 These observations must be refined and enriched with Paradis’s (2004) findings which

indicate that, even if a delay is found for all these modes of acquisition, yet omission rates in

her L2 children pattern with those of SLI children and are significantly different (higher) from

the omission rates found in monolingual 7-year olds and in monolingual 3-year olds. Thus at a

certain stage L2 may resemble SLI with respect to clitic omission.


61

4.2. Placement errors in different modes of acquisition in more detail: analysis

and discussion

We now focus more closely on the placement errors identified above by also

providing further data from the literature and a closer analytical discussion.

4.2.1. *Cl in isolation (and separation) errors

Errors of this type are not found in monolinguals nor in SLI children.

Our early L2 child showed this error type which we repeat below as (9). Even

though le ‘him’ was clearly stressed in Elisa’s erroneous utterance, note here that

Lorenzo’s response shows his interpreting the utterance as incomplete, as a DP

starting with the article but missing the noun.

(9) Elisa: c’est à moi, LE Lorenzo: le quoi?

it’s to me, him/the the what

‘it’s mine, that one the what?’

A similar error has not been reported by other authors for early L2 children. It

did not occur in Kenny’s and Greg’s speech (White (1996, 357)). It also seems to

have been absent in the bilingual Dutch/French Anouk (Hulk (2000)).

It occurs in adult L2 learners, however, in a grammaticality judgement task, even

if their language of origin is a Romance language. Landow (2002) tested 25 adult L2

learners of French who had different source languages. She found that 5 of 8

Spanish speakers accepted examples like (9) above, and 4 of 9 speakers from a non-

clitic language did not reject it.26

We speculate that in the case of the German child

Elisa and, possibly, the Spanish speakers the misanalysis could be induced by

properties of the L1. As pointed out in 2.2. in German the paradigm of articles

coincides with that of demonstrative pronouns which in colloquial speech tend to

replace personal pronouns. Articles and third person object clitics also coincide in

form in French, so that an initial misanalysis is possible. A similar argument can be

made for the adult L2ers of Spanish origin, considering the shape of the pronominal

forms in e.g. relative constructions such as lo que (necissito saber ‘What I need to

know’) where the demonstrative-like head of the relative has the same form as an

object clitic.

A related error clearly indicating that the pronoun is not treated as cliticized to

the verb but is probably treated as a Germanic pronoun occurs in cases where the

clitic is separated from the verb. Such an error has been reported for the bilingual

Anouk (Hulk (2000)) as shown in (10a,b) and occurs in the late recordings of the

early L2er Greg with a subject clitic (White (1996)) as shown in (11a,b). This type

26

1 of these was German, 1 English, and 2 Chinese speakers were not certain.


62

of error is rare, however, for early L2ers and bilinguals, and we did not find it

reported for adult L2ers in the literature.27

(10a) Je la aussi mets dans la boite Anouk 3;10,07

I her/it also put in the box

‘I also put it in the box’

(10b) Tu peux le tres bien faire Anouk 4;06

You can him/it very good do

‘You can do it very well’

(11a) On juste veut pas Greg month 20

one just wants not

‘we just don’t want (that)’

(11b) On juste peut voir Greg month 20

one just can see

‘we just can see’

4.2.2. *Cl in object position

This error concerns the location of the clitic in a non-clitic, argument like

position. It is absent from the spontaneous production of monolinguals, and also

from the speech of SLI children.

We found it to be the predominant error in the speech of the early L2er Elisa in

her early recordings (100%) and argued in Belletti and Hamann (2004) that Elisa,

mislead by the coincidence in the form of articles and clitics described in 2.2. and

referred to in 4.2. above, is assimilating French clitics to German pronouns which

can be weak or strong. Analysing French complement clitics as weak pronouns allows

her to entertain one uniform hypothesis about pronouns in both her languages. This

error has also been discussed by White (1996) for her two early L2 learners of

French. Although White did not find a clitic as the complement of a preposition in

these children’s speech, and Kenny never produces a clitic in the position of a DP

complement, Greg does produce some such errors as shown in (2c) repeated here as

(12).

(12) moi, j’ai trouvè le Greg month 14

me, I have found him/it

‘Me, I’ve found it’

27

Landow (2002) reports of her L2ers that the sentence *Je lui aussi telephone is judged as

grammatical by about 50% of the participants, even those of Romance origin.


63

White’s (1996) table 7 shows that Greg produces more such errors in later

recordings (at 20, 25, 27 months). At month 14, Greg omits 4 complement clitics, he

produces 15 correctly placed complement clitics and one case of ‘*Cl in object

position’. At month 20 he omits 6 clitics, uses 31 correctly and has two errors of the

type discussed here; at month 25 he omits 12, places 23 correctly and has 1 error,

and at month 27 he has 15 omissions, 19 correctly placed clitics and 3 such errors.

Especially the concomitant high omission rate shows that at this stage, he has not

fully mastered complement clitics so that the occurrence of this error at this stage

seems to correspond to Elisa’s production of this error after16 months of systematic

exposure.

For bilingual children the picture is more articulated. Crysmann and Müller

(2000) do not find this error in their two French/German bilinguals. However, the

error has been reported for Anouk (Hulk (2000)), the child with a language

combination (French/Dutch) very similar to Elisa (French/German) and the children

discussed by Crysmann and Müller (2000). We find (13a,b,c) as examples, though

we cannot estimate how important this error is in percentages. Hulk (2000) mentions

that 10% of Anouk’s complement clitics are placed incorrectly but her list also

includes the separation error (10) quoted in 4.2.1 and some ‘*Aux Cl PPart’ errors to

be mentioned in 4.2.3.

(13) a. Je prends la Anouk 3;03,23

I take her/it

‘I take it’

b. Je veux la comme ça Anouk 3;03,17

I want her like that

‘I want her like that’

c. Je couper le pas Anouk 3;04,28

I cut (inf) him/it not

‘I don’t cut him/it’

This particular error has been discussed often in the literature on adult L2

acquisition, and we take examples (14a,b,c,d) from Hulk (2000) who quotes Connors

and Nuckle (1986), Zobl (1980), Gundel and Tarone (1983), Grondin and White

(1996), van der Linden (1985). Examples (15a,b) and (16a,b) are taken from

Granfeldt and Schlyter (2004). Percentages of the occurrence of this error are not

available from the references, but it is noted as being striking and frequent in a

certain period.


64

(14) a. Il veut les encore

He wants them still

‘He still wants them’

b. Le chien a mangé les

the dog has eaten them

‘the dog has eaten them’

c. Moi j’ai trouvé le

me I have found him/it

‘me, I have found it’

d. Il ne pas prend le

he (ne) not takes it

‘he does not take it’

(15) a. Elle demande la Petra, 5 months of exposure

She asks it/her

‘she asks for it’

b. Elle croit la Petra, 5 months of exposure

she believes her/it

‘she believes her/it’

(16) a. On prend le gaz et refroidir le Karl, 8 months exposure

one takes the gas and cool him/it

‘you take the gas and cool it’

b. On refroidir le dedans Karl, 8 months exposure

one cool him/it therein

we cool it in there

4.2.3. *Aux Cl PPart

As it is generally the case with clitic placement, no error of this type is found in

monolingual acquisition. See Rasetti (2003) on the monolingual children of the

Geneva corpus, and see also Zesiger et al. (2006) on elicited production. Neither has

it been observed in the speech of the 11 SLI children under investigation.

This error was observed in the early L2er Elisa as noted in 4.1.2., but is not

mentioned for the two early L2ers of English origin discussed by White (1996). It is

not observed in our bilingual child Lorenzo, but has been frequently observed for

bilingual children with Germanic/Romance language combinations.


65

In Hulk (2000) we find examples (17a,b) and also (18a,b,c,d,e,f) from Anouk’s

mother’s diary occurring at around 4;06. Comparing Anouk’s age of production of

the ‘*Cl in object position’ errors cited in (13a,b,c) and of these examples of ‘*Aux

Cl PPart’, we find that the latter occur later and persist for about a year. (Percentages

are not available for this error type in Anouk’s speech; the error in (18a,b) can be

considered of the same type).

(17) a. T’ as le mis trop chaud Anouk 3;06,25

you have it put too hot

‘you have made it too hot’

b. Il a le mis à l’ envers Anouk 3;09,01

He has it put to the wrong side

‘he put it on wrong’

(18) a. On a les tous Anouk around 4;06

one has them all

‘we have them all’

b. Quand t’ as les tous, tu peux jouer

when you have them all, you can play

‘when you have them all, you can play’

c. Pourquoi t’ as me reveillé?

why you have me woken up

‘why did you wake me up ?’

d. Pardon, j’ai pas le vu

pardon I have not it seen

‘pardon, I did not see it’

e. Toi t’ avais le bu!

you you have it drunk

‘you drank it’

f. T’ as le pas donné

you have it not given

‘you did not give it’

Crysmann and Müller (2000) describe problems in this particular area for their

bilingual French/German children, Ivar (19a,b,c) and Caroline (20a,b).


66

(19) a. Après il a se réveillé Ivar 3;02,14

afterwards he has himself woken up

‘afterwards he woke up’

b. Il a se fait mal Ivar 3;02,8

he has himself done bad

‘he has hurt himself’

c. Il il faut que t’ as te garé sur la rue Ivar 4;00,4

it it must that you have yourself parked on the street

‘it’s necessary that you have parked in the street’

(20) a. La maman elle a – elle avait se fait mal Caroline 3;08,11

the mom she has she had herself done bad

‘the mother has hurt herself’

b. Il a- il a se caché Caroline 3;09,22

he has he has himself hid

‘he has hid himself’

They point out that this kind of placement error concerning the reflexive clitic se

‘him/her/itself’ always cooccurs with the choice of the wrong auxiliary. Crysmann

and Müller (2000) show that after age 4;04,4 Ivar stopped making the placement

mistake and he also stopped using “avoir” with the reflexive clitic. Note here that

Crysmann and Müller (2000) observe the mistake only arising with reflexive clitics

and that they assume a principled reason for that. Indeed, they found the same

mistake only involving reflexives also in an experiment of elicited production run

with 6 different bilingual children (Crysmann and Müller (2000,227)). However, the

reason cannot be too principled as the same error is also found with non reflexive

object clitics as illustrated by the examples (17) and (18) above from bilingual

Anouk. We also observe that such a misplacement concerning reflexives does not

occur with monolinguals (Rasetti (2003,298) and Zesiger et al. (2006) on elicited

production). Our early L2er Elisa produced the error with a reflexive accompanied

by the wrong choice of auxiliary (3b), but also with an accusative clitic (3a),

repeated below.

(3a) ça a m’étranglé, Elisa 5;5 (repeated)

that has me strangled

‘that strangled me’


67

(3b) regarde, là j’ai m’étranglé Elisa 5;5 (repeated)

look, there I have me strangled

‘look, there I strangled myself’

The error has been discussed for adult L2 by, Granfeldt and Schlyter (2004) as

mentioned in 4.1.3, example (6). These authors also quote (21) as such an error and

point out that this type of error occurs later than the ‘*Cl in object position’ error

illustrated in (15) and (16) for the same speakers.

(21) il a lui assis (Petra, 7 months of exposure)

he has him sat down

‘he sat him down’

We also find this error in the adult L2 errors quoted from Connors and Nuckle

(1986), Zobl (1980), Gundel and Tarone (1983), Grondin and White (1996), van der

Linden (1985) by Hulk (2000), Towell and Hawkins (1994), and in Herschensohn

(2004,224) it ranges between 25% and 29% of the relevant configuration, see (22) as

an example. It also occurred in the grammaticality judgment task administered by

Landow (2002) particularly in speakers with German as their source language.

(22) Vous avez la pris Emma II, from Herschensohn (2004)

you have her taken

‘you have taken her’

In conclusion, we see that this error type does not occur with monolinguals or

SLIs neither with accusative clitics nor with reflexives. In contrast, it does occur

with both clitic types for some bilinguals, for others it only occurs with the reflexive,

and for the bilingual child in two Romance languages it has not been observed. The

error also occurs for our early L2 child (German/French), and is attested in adult L2,

particularly in learners of French with German as their source language, and it also

occurs in speakers with English as L1 (Herschensohn (2004)). This error may stem

again from a misanalysis of the pronoun allowing for a uniform treatment of

pronouns in both the learners’ languages, much as in the case of ‘*Cl in object

position’ discussed in 4.2.2.

4.2.4. Restructuring errors

Errors of the type ‘*Cl Mod Infinitive’ have not been reported for monolinguals

nor for children with SLI. We did not observe such errors in our early L2er either

(see 4a,b) and can claim that in this respect she conforms to the French pattern from

the beginning. Such errors have not been reported by White for her early L2

children, either.

As to bilinguals, the picture is somewhat mixed. Crysmann and Müller (2000)

observe the absence of this error type in Ivar and Caroline, but among the errors


68

quoted by Hulk (2000) for Anouk there are several examples of this kind, one with a

modal (23a), one with savoir ‘know’ (23b) and one in a periphrastic construction

with aller ‘go’ (23c). (23a,b) are from Anouk’s mother’s diary and occur at around

4;06, the periphrastic example occurs earlier in the same file in which some ‘*Aux

Cl PPart’ errors were found.

(23) a. Je n’ en veux jamais manger Anouk 4;06

I ne of that want never eat

‘I do not ever want to eat that’

b. Je le sais pas faire Anouk 4;06

I it know not do

‘I can’t do that’

c. Tu le va fermer Anouk 3;07,29

you it will close

‘you will close it’

We noted earlier that our bilingual child, Lorenzo, never misplaces his

complement clitics. This is also true for Restructuring contexts, where errors could

be expected through interference of his other language, Italian, which has ‘Clitic

Climbing’, i.e. Cl-Mod-Inf structures. There is only one context of a clitic with a

modal, but significantly this occurs early (first recording) and is correct (see (24)),

thus indicating the same pattern as monolinguals also found, for this child, with

other aspects of cliticization such as proclisis/enclisis, as discussed in Belletti and

Hamann (2004,166).

(24) No, c’est pas moi qui devrais l’amener Lorenzo 3;5

No, it is not me who should it bring

‘No, it’s not me who should have brought it’

The restructuring error has been found in adult L2 and we point here to the

findings of Landow (2002) obtained through grammaticality judgments who

observes that all of her speakers accepted examples (25a,b). This includes Spanish

speakers for whom this could be interpreted as transfer because Spanish, like Italian,

has Clitic Climbing: 5 out of 8 Spanish learners of French accepted (25a) and 4 out

of 8 accepted (25b). But it also includes English speakers, speakers of German

origin (who find the French order in their language) and Chinese speakers who do

not have (clitic) pronouns at all.28

28

Interestingly, even speakers with the source language Brazilian Portugues accepted (25a,b),

though Brazilian allows for the French order.


69

(25) a. *Il nous peut parler

He us can talk

‘he can talk to us’

b. *Je te veux aider

I you want help

‘I want to help you’

There are three things to be noted here. First, whereas adult L2ers systematically

show this error, it is not necessarily documented for early L2. Second, in language

combinations like Italian/French or Spanish/French we might expect interference or

transfer in all learner modes. However, our bilingual French/Italian child did not

produce this error, whereas it is systematically produced by Spanish adult L2

learners of French, highlighting the difference in these learner modes. Third, adult

L2 learners who do not have clitics nor Restructuring in their source language but

also the bilingual child Anouk accept or produce such errors. As the erroneous order

has neither been in the input nor in the other/source language, we speculate that at

this point we see UG at work. Restructuring is a valid hypothesis that might be

entertained once the learner has realized that the pronouns of the new/other language

are not quite of the same type as in her other language.29

4.2.5. Aspects of the acquisition of Italian complement clitics

In the discussion of error types we have up to now focused on French as the

target language and have looked for the origin of certain errors in the possibly

different systems of the source languages. In order to test our assumption about the

role of the L2 system, we now turn to Italian as the target language, looking at

learners with source languages considered also for French. We make reference here

to the similarities and differences discussed in 2.3. which we summarize briefly in

the following.

French and Italian have complement clitics of the same nature which share

morphosyntactic properties of various kinds the most important one being that

pronominal complement clitcs are verbal clitics which cliticize as heads onto the

(functional head containing the finite) verb. Different from French, however, Italian

does not have conspicuous instances of weak pronouns comparable to French

subject pronouns.

Interestingly, we find that, despite their similar, possibly identical, nature, the

acquisition of complement clitics appears to differ in part in Italian from what we

29

In an elicited production task administered to adult L2 speakers of Italian with English and

Spanish as the other languages, Bennati and Matteini (2006) found that the Clitic climbing

option was entertained by both groups.


70

have seen in the preceding sections on French.30

We concentrate here on the

placement errors discussed above. While monolingual and SLI acquisition of object

clitics in both languages appears to be essentially faultless (as can be deduced from

the literature; references throughout and, for Italian, Guasti (1992), Schaeffer (2000),

Bottari et al. (1998)), abstracting away from differences in the delay of acquisition

and omission rates, bilingual and early/adult L2 acquisition reveal an important

difference: no placement errors have been so far documented in these modes of

acquisition of Italian object clitics. Although the literature on the topic is not

particularly rich, from what is known, no placement errors of the ‘Clitic in isolation’,

‘Clitic in object position’ and of the ‘Aux CL Ppart’ kind are instantiated in bilingual

and L2 Italian, neither in elicited production (e.g. Leonini & Belletti (2004)), nor in

spontaneous production (Ferrari (2006)).

Leonini and Belletti (2004) investigated 26 adult L2 speakers of Italian where 16

speakers were of German origin, 3 were French, 2 were Polish, 1 was Dutch, 1

Russian, 1 Greek, 1 Albanian and 1 was Bosnian. On average, these speakers supplied

clitics at a rate of 39%, omitted clitics at a rate of 14%, and supplied lexical

complements at a rate of 40% whereas the control group supplied clitics in 91% of

the cases, used only 7.7% lexical complements and never omitted the complement.

These errors strongly resemble our findings for French monolinguals and SLI

children. They also correspond to some of the error types (omission and suppliance

of lexical complements) found in our early and adult L2ers. However, Leonini and

Belletti (2004) observe that no placement errors occurred31

.

As to early L2/bilingual speakers of Italian, Ferrari (2006) analyzed two German/

Italian bilingual children, Vincenzo (2;5-3;0) and Elisa (2;10-3;5), and found that

the overuse of lexical complements is the most frequent error. Vincenzo supplied

clitics in 57% of the cases, omitted clitics in 9% and used lexical complements in

34% of the cases, her participant Elisa (not to be confused with the early German/

French L2 child we were investigating) supplied clitics in 59% of the cases, omitted

30

See also Schmitz and Müller (in press) who point out a further distinction between the two

languages showing up in both monolingual and bilingual acquisition, i.e. the fact that Italian

object clitics seem to appear earlier in Italian than in French. See also results in Leonini

(2006) on child monolingual acquisition of complement clitics in Italian, which are coherent

with this conclusion. This is a potentially interesting asymmetry for which some of the

considerations below and in section 5 may be relevant.

31 Similar results are discussed in Leonini (2006) for adult L2 and monolingual child Italian.

The absence of placement errors is confirmed in corpora of spontaneous production put

together at the University of Siena.


71

clitics in 12% and supplied lexical complements in 29% of the cases. Placement

errors of the kind discussed for French did not occur.32

.

This difference in the typical error patterns in the acquisition of two closely

related Romance languages like French and Italian might at first glance be surprising.

We suggest, however, that it may not be due to hazard but principled once the role

of L2 is taken into account. We speculated that the origin of the placement errors in

early and adult L2 French could be the occasional misanalysis of the clitic as a

weak/strong pronoun. This analysis, however, is not favored by the target language

Italian which does not instantiate weak pronouns systematically. We will explore

this idea further also for its theoretical ramifications concerning the comparative

issue in the following, concluding, section.

5. Concluding summary and remarks

We recapitulate here the main findings of our overview, also introducing some

further element of discussion. For complement clitics we have observed a delay in

all modes of acquisition, with some variation in the omission rates across groups,

thus highlighting an area of French grammar which is particularly hard to acquire.

Adding the developmental perspective, it reveals that impairment gives rise to a

longer delay.

Focussing on placement errors, SLI patterns with L1 in not showing placement

errors in spontaneous data. Placement errors are documented for L2 acquisition,

early and adult, and for some bilinguals. We particularly discussed four error types:

‘Clitic in isolation’, ‘Clitic in object position’, ‘Aux CL PPart’ and the Restructuring

error.

We propose that the ultimate reason for the detected placement errors of the first

three kinds in bilingual and L2 French is to be recognized in an occasional

misanalysis of the object clitic as a “weak” pronoun rather than a syntactic clitic (or

possibly a “strong” pronoun for the ‘Clitic in isolation’ case).

We further assume that this misanalysis be favored by the very existence of weak

pronominal subject pronouns in French, usually referred to as subject clitics (see

discussion in 2.1.1.), whose nature is more readily compatible with properties of the

pronominal system of the other language of the learner (e.g. a Germanic language in

the typical case discussed here). We submit that our L2 Italian data from 4.2.5.

indirectly support this interpretation. Lack of an analogous misanalysis for Italian

32

A peculiar misplacement occurred in Restructuring contexts, producing the order ‘*Mod Cl

Vinf’, discussed in detail in Ferrari (2006), where it occurred at a rate of 63% for Vincenzo

and a rate of 27% for Elisa. Ferrari interprets this error as stemming from Verb syntax rather

than from a misanalysis of the Italian clitic pronouns by the two children. Especially

significant in this connection is the lack of the ‘Aux Cl Ppart’ error in both these children.


72

complement clitics may be expected as standard Italian lacks conspicuous instances

of overt weak pronouns which could mislead the learner in the treatment of real

syntactic (complement) clitics. If this proposal is on the right track, it suggests that

both, properties of the target second language and of the first/other language may

influence the analysis adopted by the learner. In such a case, the option shared by

both languages and covering more data in the target second language will be

privileged at some initial stage of acquisition. (See also the discussion along similar

lines in Granfeldt and Schlyter (2004)). The interaction of properties of the

grammatical systems of the source and the target second language thus plays a

crucial role. Hence, this leads us to the expectation that placement errors should not

be found in typical and atypical monolingual acquisition. This is precisely what the

results from different sources systematically show.

Our L2 and bilingual data from French and Italian – once taken as suitable

theoretically relevant empirical evidence - indicate that L2/bilingual results may

reveal subtle differences between closely related languages in closely related

domains (see Belletti (2007) for relevant discussion). One such domain discussed

here is the pronominal system of weak and clitic pronouns in French and Italian. The

differences between the two pronominal systems are made more visible through the

peculiar lenses of bilingual and L2 modes of acquisition which thus contribute a

special means of comparison. Seen from this perspective, the discussed contrasts

between French and Italian L2-data may supply a further indirect indication for an

analysis of French subject pronouns as weak pronouns, not as syntactic clitics.

The “Aux CL PPart” type error as well seems to identify a phase in L2

acquisition where the hypothesis is being entertained that the complement clitic is a

weak pronoun. We may further note here that the ‘Aux CL PPart’ which is found in

the German child Elisa occurs in a phase where subject clitics are clearly acquired.

Assuming that this means that their nature as weak pronouns is recognized, it could

again be suggested that the same classification is tentatively extended and tried out

for complement pronouns. As noted, this would allow Elisa to adopt the same

analysis for both the French and the German pronoun systems. Arguably, this

analysis constitutes an overall more economical UG option involving a less complex

syntactic derivation (see 2.1.) which is directly prompted by properties of both the

L1 and the L2. The fact that this error is also found in adult L2ers with English as

L1 corroborates this interpretation as English also has weak pronouns. Again, the

weak pronoun hypothesis may be entertained given the interaction of the two

grammatical systems - L1 and L2.

Clitic Climbing occurring in Restructuring contexts in French is (possibly) attested

as a transfer phenomenon in adult L2, but interestingly it also occurs in adult L2

speakers whose L1 does not have clitics, as mentioned in section 4.2.4. As there are

cases reported in (23a,b,c)) also for the bilingual Dutch/French child, we suggest

that the child and, for that matter, the adult L2 learners as well, are here trying out an


73

option which is available through UG. As we are not aware of this type of error in

L1 (a)typical monolingual acquisition of French, we further suggest that this could

be a consequence of the fact that the bilingual setting provides an input which is at

the same time richer and poorer than a monolingual one. On the one hand, there is

arguably less input data for each single language. On the other hand, more UG

options manifest themselves through the input data of the two (or more) languages.

In consequence, different UG hypotheses are likely to be tried out more readily in

these particular conditions of language acquisition. Note that this is not denying that

also monolingual acquisition can involve stages corresponding to UG options other

than the ones implemented in the target (L1) language (see Crain & Thornton

(1998), and Rizzi (2005), UdDeen (2006), for recent discussion). The suggestion

here is that the bilingual setting favors the “trying out” yet more.

We conclude by highlighting the general features of our overview which has

compared different modes of acquisition in the same empirical domain in French.

We have suggested that the higher complexity of the syntactic derivation involving

complement clitics as compared to subject pronouns is responsible for the attested

delay in the acquisition of complement clitics in all modes of acquisition. We have

also suggested that complement clitics may be analysed as weak pronouns in some

modes (early and adult L2), leading to misplacement errors. The latter case is

interpreted as motivated by two complementary economy considerations: i. the fact

that the analysis allows for a uniform treatment of pronouns in both the languages

involved; ii. the fact that the analysis implements a less complex syntactic derivation.

Furthermore, we have proposed that, although limited in absolute number of instances,

the very existence of misplacement errors can highlight the role of the different

grammatical systems involved.

Finally, the Restructuring error discussed appears to be particularly interesting in

that it ultimately suggests a direct role of UG. Overall, the study of the various error

types in the different acquisition modes of complement clitcs in French has offered a

further novel illustration of the reciprocal contribution that linguistic theory and

acquisition data can provide to each other to enhance their respective understanding.

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79

THE TWO FORMS OF THE ADJECTIVE IN KOREAN*

Soon Haeng Kang

1. Introduction

In Kang (2005) I discussed non-predicative adjectives like ceon ‘former’ in

Korean arguing against the analysis that denies the existence of adjectives in

Korean, given that they have been placed under the rubric of “attributive

determinatives or adnominal modifiers” in the traditional grammar of Korean:

limited in number, only used in attributive position (cf. Kim 2002). However I’ve

proposed that these adjectives should be considered as attributive adjectives that

have a direct modification source in the nominal phrase. In this paper, furthermore, I

will show that they have other indirect modification counterparts, assuming the two

typologies of the adjectives proposed by Cinque (2005b).

The paper is organized as follows: in section 1, I will give a short overview of

the properties of Korean attributive adjectives, which led some traditional Korean

linguists to consider them as nouns. Section 2 shows that Korean attributive adjectives

have their morphological counterparts and Section 3 discusses the distinction between

adverbial and subject-oriented interpretations, attributive and predicative adjectives,

assuming the proposal of Cinque (1994). In section 4, I will propose that some

affixes are responsible for adjectival modification in the noun phrase in Korean.

Section 5 demonstrates the contrasts between two types of adjectival modification in

the NP, based on the Cinque (2005b)’s proposal for two origins of adjectives in the

extended nominal projection.

2. Some properties of Korean attributive adjectives: the traditional criteria

Traditionally, attributive adjectives have been distinguished in two groups,

depending on their ability to take the adverbial suffix, as illustrated in (1) (cf. Sohn

1999, Mok 2002, among others).

* I would like to express my gratitude to Guglielmo Cinque for very helpful critical comments

and discussion.

Soon Haeng Kang

80

(1) a. *sun-lo

pure-ly

b. cwu-lo

principal-ly

c. chak-(u)lo

book-with

This shows that cwu ‘principal’ in (1b) can be inflected with the adverbial suffix

-lo like the noun in (1c), contrary to sun ‘pure’ in (1a). According to this criteria, the

lexical elements pertaining to the category of non-predicative adjectives as in (1a)

are say ‘new’, hen ‘old, used’, yeys ‘old, antique’, while hyen ‘present’, ceon

‘precedent’, cwucencek ‘alleged’ do not belong to this category. In fact, they are

often classified as nouns, even if both are used only attributively as in (2).1

(2) a. ku sun sakykkwun

That pure swindle

‘Lit.: that pure swindle’

b. *sakykkwun-i sun-i-ta.

Swindle-NOM pure-COP-DCL

‘Lit.: a swindle is pure’

c. ku cen taytongreyng

That former president

‘That former president’

d. *ku taytongreyng-i cen-i-ta.

That president-NOM former-COP-DCL

‘Lit.: that president is a former’

However, this criterion is not fundamental in order to distinguish the two

categories, since the adjective say ‘new’, considered as a non-predicative adjective,

can be inflected with the adverbial suffix -lo, while hyen ‘present’ is not able to bear

this suffix even if considered a noun.2

1 Abbreviations used in glosses: NOM ‘nominative’, ACC ‘accusative’, PST ‘past tense’,

PRES ‘present tense’, PASS ‘passive marker’, AFF ‘affix’, COP ‘copular’, DCL ‘declarative’,

GEN ‘genitive’, TOP ‘topic maker’. PLU ‘plural’, COM ‘complementizer’, REL ‘relative

clause marker’.

2 The adjective present in English, can appear both in prenominal position and in postnominal

position with a different meaning:

(i) a. the present editors

b. the editors present

(Cinque 2005b,11)

The two forms of the adjective in Korean

81

(3) a. say-lo ciun cip

new-ly constructed house

‘A house constructed newly’

b. *hyen-lo

present-ly

‘presently’

Present in prenominal position possesses only a temporal meaning whereas in postnominal

position it has only a locative value. The corresponding relative clause with present in

predicate position has only one meaning, that of present in postnominal position, i.e., the

locative one (see Cinque 2005b,11). The examples corresponding to (i) in Korean are realized

with two different adjectives; one has a temporal meaning and the other has a locative value,

both placed in prenominal position:

(ii) a. hyen peyncipcatul

present editors

‘the present editors’

b. *peyncipcatul-i hyen-ta.

editors -NOM present-DCL

‘Lit.: the editors are present (temporal value)’

c. chamsekhan peyncipcatul

present editors

‘the editors present’

d. peyncipcatul-i chamsekha-ta.

editors-NOM present-DCL

‘The editors are present’

This is similar to the case of ‘live and alive’ in English, since live can be used in prenominal

position as an attributive adjective, whereas alive only in postnominal position as a predicative

one:

(iii) a. The live/*alive animals

b. The animals *live/alive (cf. the animals which are *live/alive)

(Ibid.,11)

Also the Korean corresponding adjectives nal ‘live’ e salaissnun ‘alive’ show the same pattern

to the previous case:

(iv) a. nal cymsungtul

live animals

‘The live animals’

b. salaissnun cymsungtul

alive animals

‘The animals alive’

Soon Haeng Kang

82

Secondly, these adjectives have been considered to be prefixes (cf. Yu 1997, Lee

2004).3 Since they cannot be used alone, they are always in adjacent position to the

nouns that follow them. However, this analysis does not seem to be correct, because

other elements can be preceded by these attributive adjectives, for example,

individual-level adjectives:

3 In fact, Lee (2004, 3-11) inserts some lexical elements to the inside of the non-predicative

adjectives in Korean such as woy ‘only’, peyng ‘ordinary’, am ‘female’, sus ‘male’. Other

material cannot be intervened between these elements and the noun:

(i) a. nay chakhan woy ttal

my good only daughter

b. * nay woy chakhan ttal

my only good daughter

‘My good only daughter’

(ii) a. kwunmeynhan peyng koysu

diligent ordinary professor

b. *peyng kwunmeynhan koysu

ordinary diligent professor

‘A/the diligent ordinary professor’

(iii) a. sanawun sus saca

ferocious male lion

b. *sus sanawun saca

male ferocious lion

‘A/the ferocious male lion’

Kang (2005,7 fn.9) suggests that the attributive adjectives cannot be followed by the non-

intersective adjectives, considering them like a prefix, and for this reason the phrase (iv)b is

considered ungrammatical:

(iv) a. wytayhan cen tatongryung

great former president

b. *cen wytayhan tatongryung

former great president

‘??A/the great former president’

However I think that this analysis is not correct. Indeed, (iv)b is not ungrammatical. Therefore

the hierarchy (v) for Korean adjectives proposed by Kang (2005) is not correct:

(v) intersective adjectives > non-intersective adjectives > non-predicative adjectives > N

One may claim that the basic order is (iv)b and the adjective wytayhan ‘great’ in (iv)a is in

higher position in the SpecFocus. This would mean that the adjective wytayhan ‘great’ in

(iv)a is not more non-intersective adjective. Indeed, in (iv)a, wytayhan ‘great’ can be arranged

with the past morpheme - ess, contrary to that in (iv)b:

(vi) a. wytayha-ess-ten cen tatongryung

great-PST-REL former president

b. cen wytayhan/(*-ess-ten) tatongryung

former great /(-PST-REL) president

‘Lit.: A/the former president that has been a great’


83

(4) a. ?say ppalgan cha (cf. ppalgan say cha)

new red car

‘A/the new red car’

b. ?say kun cha (cf. kun say cha)

new big car

‘A/the new big car’

Therefore, it would seem to be more coherent to consider all adjectives mentioned

above as attributive ones like in other languages such as Italian and English.

3. Introductory observations: another form of some attributive adjectives

Another property of Korean non-predicative adjectives is that some of them have

another form, depending on their typology of modification. For instance, there are

two forms of the adjective corresponding to new in English: say and sayroun. These

two forms can appear prenominally, but the only one, which can be found in

predicative position, is a say-ro-un, in certain contexts. See the following example

(the semantic difference between these two forms is shown in the English glosses):

(5) a. say cha

new car

‘A new car; that has just been produced’

b. say-rou-n cha

new car

‘A new car; that it is a newer model with respect to the previous one’

c. i cha-ka design-eyse cen kes pota *say/say-rop-ta

this car-NOM design-in former one more new-DCL

‘This car is new with respect to the previous one in the design’

In (5b) and (5c), say-ro-u-n and say-rop are identical. It is only for phonetic

reasons that the consonant -p is transformed into the vowel -u and then -n is added in

attributive position. The example (5c) shows that only sayroun can appear in

predicative position. Because of this, sayroun in (5b) could be considered as an

indirect modification adjective deriving from a relative clause, contrary to say which

has a direct modification source, since this form cannot appear in predicative

position.4

4 A similar example for the adjective new can be found in Serbian/ Croatian/ Bosnian. These

languages have two types of adjectives: short-form and long-form adjectives. Long-form

adjectives have a direct modification origin, but short-form adjectives have a relative clause

origin (indirect modification) since syntactically both types can appear prenominally as in (i),

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However, it is more complicated to determine the origin of an adjective from its

form, for example, in the case of adjectives like chwucengcek ‘alleged’, sun ‘pure’,

cwu ‘principal’ which have another form: chwucengcek-i-n,5 sun-cen-ha-n ‘mere,

lit.; pure and complete’,6 dansun-ha-n ‘simple’, lit.: ‘only and pure’, cwuyo-ha-n

‘principal’, lit.: ‘principal and important’ respectively.7

Consider two forms of these adjectives:

(6) a. chwucengcek/chwucengcek-i-n cangkowan

alleged/alleged-COP-N minister

‘A/the alleged minister’

b. *ku cangkowan-un chwucengcek/chwcengcek-i—ta

that minister-TOP alleged/alleged-COP-DCL

‘Lit.: that minister is alleged’

(7) a. sun/dansun-ha-n wuyen

pure/simple-AFF-N coincidence

‘A pure coincidence’

b. *wuyen-un sun/dansun-ha-ta

coincidence-TOP pure/simple-AFF-DCL

‘Lit.: A/the coincidence is pure’

but in predicate position, only the short-form adjectives can appear, as in (ii). (in Cinque

2005b,18):

(i) a. nov/ novi kaput

new (short)/new (long) coat

‘A/the new coat’

(ii) a. Njegov kaput je nov/*novi

his coat is new (short)/*new (long)

5 This form is formulated by adding the Korean copular –i and the attributive adjective marker

-n to the basic form.

6 -ha is an affix and -n is an attributive maker.

7 According to Alexiadou (2005,5), if a language has two adjectival patterns, such adjectives

are banned from one of these patterns, as illustrated in (i):

(i) a. *o ipurgos o proin (Greek)

the former the minister

b. *z bylyn rozmawialan slawnyn aktorem (Polish)

with former talked famous actor

c. *qian-de zongtong (Chinese)

former-DE president

Across languages adjectives such as alleged, former, mere cannot appear in predicative

position (also see Cinque (2005b)).


85

Even if these adjectives have different forms, their typologies of modification do

not vary, since both forms only appear in attributive position. How could the

differences between the forms of these adjectives be defined? In the next section I

will continue to characterize their syntactic and semantic properties, introducing the

distinction between attributive adjectives and predicative adjectives formulated by

Cinque (1994), and between two sources of adjectival modifications in the extended

nominal phrase proposed by Cinque (2005b).

4. Distinction between two types of adjectives

4.1. Attributive: adverbial vs. subject-oriented

First of all, let me consider the adjective chwucengcek and chwcengcek-i-n, both

corresponding to alleged in English8. In the same way, also the adjective yamancek

‘brutal’ can have another form: yamancek-i-n. Both can appear in prenominal position:

(8) yamancek/yamancek-i-n kongkeyk

brutal/brutal-COP-N aggression

‘A/the brutal aggression’

In order to explain this phenomenon, we can introduce the adjective brutale

‘brutal’ in Italian, which can appear before as well as after the noun, but not after the

complement as in (9).

8 In fact, Kim (2002, 35 fn.10) notes that modal adjectives (e.g., alleged) in Korean are absent

and illustrates this with the following example:

(i) [salinca-lo hyemuy(-lul) pat]-nun salam

murder-as suspicion (-ACC) received-REL person

‘A person alleged to be a murder’ (Lit.: ‘A murderer who received suspicion’)

According to Kim, the adjective corresponding to alleged in (i) is a relative clause with a

clausal predicate inside. However, we can also say as in (ii).

(ii) chwucengcek salinca

alleged murder

‘A/the alleged murder’

The difference between (i) and (ii) can be detected if we compare them with the two uses of

alleged in (iii).

(iii) a. The alleged murderer was deported.

b. The murderer alleged to have killed his own parents was deported.

(Cinque 2005b,45)

Alleged in prenominal position in (iii)a has a non-intersective value, but in postnominal

position with a phrasal complement, it becomes intersective (see Cinque 2005b,45 for the

further discussion). The same is true for Korean.

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86

(9) a. La loro brutale aggressione all’Albania (subject-oriented)

b. La loro aggressione brutale all’Albania (manner)

c. *La loro aggressione all’Albania brutale

‘Their brutal aggression against Albania’

(Cinque 1994, 88-89)

According to Cinque, the prenominal and postnominal positions of attributive

adjectives receive two different interpretations: the postnominal position receives a

strict “manner” interpretation like (9b), whereas the prenominal one has a “subject

oriented” interpretation as in (9a). Cinque proposes the partial structure containing a

speaker-oriented adjective as in (10).

(10) a. La probabile(sp-or) goffa(subj-or) reazione immediata (manner)

alla tua lettera

‘The probable clumsy reaction immediate to your letter’

b. [XP APsp-or _ [YP APsubj-or_[ZP APmanner/themat_ [NP N …]]]]

(Ibid.,92)

Assuming the distinction between manner adjectives and subject-oriented

adjectives let me consider yamancek and yamancek-i-n ‘brutal’ in Korean. Both

forms can appear between the subjective genitive and the noun as in (11). But their

interpretations are different, in that the one in (11a) receive the manner value,

whereas the one in (11b) receive subject-oriented value.

(11) a. kutul-uy yamancek kongkeyk

they-GEN brutal aggression

b. kutul-uy yamancek-i-n kongkeyk

they -GEN brutal-COP-N aggression

‘Their brutal aggression’

In addition, they do not appear in the left peripheral position of NP, since they

cannot modify the nominal head:9

(12) a. *yamancek kutul-uy kongkeyk

brutal they -GEN aggression

b. *yamancek-i-n kutul-uy kongkeyk

brutal-COP-N they -GEN aggression

‘Their brutal aggression’

9 In (11), it is not important that yamancek and yamancek-i-n ‘brutal’ modify kutuluy ‘loro’.


87

This distinction between subject-oriented and manner interpretation for the two

forms of the adjective brutal in Korean is supported by the fact that the mutual order

between these two types of adjectives follows that of Italian. That is, the manner

adjective yamancek ‘brutal’ can only follow the subject-oriented adjective such as

erisekun ‘stupid’. The examples (14) are parallel to (13) in Italian:

(13) a. *L’aggressione stupida brutale/italiana all’Albania

the aggression stupid brutal/Italian against Albania

b. La stupida aggressione brutale/italiana all’Albania

the stupid aggression brutal/Italian against Albania

‘The stupid brutal Italian aggression against Albania’

(Ibid., 91)

(14) a. Albania-eytayhan kuyul-uy erisekun yamancek kongkeyk

Albania-against they-GEN stupid brutal aggression


b. *Albania-eytayhan kutul-uy yamancek erisekun kongkeyk

Albania-against they-GEN brutal stupid aggression


This evidence suggests that in Korean, the manner adjectives and the subject-

oriented adjectives are distinguished morphologically. Moreover the speaker-oriented

adjectives cannot be preceded by subject-oriented adjectives in the way illustrated in

example (15). Therefore, the hierarchy between these adjectives would be that of

Cinque in (10b):

(15) a. yesangkanunghan eykeyun panwung

probable clumsy reaction

‘The probable clumsy reaction’

b. * eykeyun yesangkanunghan panwung

clumsy probable reaction

‘The probable clumsy reaction’

c. ne-uy peynci-ey yesangkanunghan erisekun cwkkakcek-(*-n) pangung

you-GEN letter-to probable clumsy immediate-(COP-N) reaction

‘The probable clumsy immediate reaction to your letter’

(16) [XP APsp-or _ [YP APsubj-or_[ZP APmanner/themat_ [NP N …]]]]

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88

4.2. Predicative

According to Cinque (1994,92), the attributive adjectives in the Romance

languages precede a noun or appear between the noun and its complement, not after

the complement (cf. 9c). However, they become grammatical if there is a sharp

intonational break between the complement and the AP, with the AP bearing stress

(17a), or coordinated (17b), or modified by a specifier (17c) or a complement (17d):

(17) a. La loro aggressione all’Albania, BRUTALE

loro aggressione all’Albania, improvvisa e brutale

La loro aggressione all’Albania, assai poco brutale

La loro aggressione all’Albania, brutale nei suoi effetti

(Ibid.,92)

Assuming this analysis, let me consider the adjective yamancek, yamancek-in

which both correspond to brutal in English. The construction (18) is parallel to (17).

(18) a. AMANCEK-*(I-N), kutul-uy Albania-eytayhan kongkeyk

brutal-COP-N they-GEN Albania-against aggression

‘Lit.: Their aggression against Albania, BRUTAL’

b. yamncek-*(i)-ko kapcaksure-n kutul-uy Albania-eytayhan kongkeyk

brutal-COP-and unexpected-N they-GEN Albania-against aggression

‘Lit.: Their aggression against Albania, brutal and unexpected’

c. maywu yamancek-*(i-n) kutul-uy Albania-eytayhan kongkeyk

very brutal-COP-N they-GEN Albania-against aggression

‘Lit.: Their aggression against Albania, very little brutal’

d. hwoykwoa-eyse yamancek-*(i-n) kutul-uy Albania-eytayhan kongkeyk

effects -in brutal-COP-N they-GEN Albania-against aggression

‘Lit.: Their aggression against Albania, brutal in its effects’

This demonstrates the contrast between the two forms of the adjective brutal in

Korean. When it is preceded by a pause and emphasized in the left peripheral

position (18a), coordinated (18b), or modified by a specifier (18c) or a complement

(18d), it only becomes grammatical with the adjective containing the copula -i. For

the attributive adjectives, not only the distinction between adverbial and subject-

oriented value, but also the distinction between attributive and predicative is of a

morphological nature.10

10

This is limited to the adjectives that have the suffix –cek. Adjectives that do not have the

suffix -cek, for example yengakhan ‘clever’ and suncynhan ‘naïve’, are subject to interpretations

determined by their structural positions (ii), as in the Italian phrase (i):


89

Therefore we would say that yamancek ‘brutal’ can be adverbial or attributive,

and that yamancek-i-n, which contains the copula -i, can be subject-oriented or

predicative.

And this analysis could be applied to other adjectives such as sun ‘pure’ and cwu

‘principal’ that both have another form added –ha: sun-cen-ha-n, dansun-ha-n, and

cwuyo-ha-n respectedly.

In Cinque (2005b,43), some adjectives that are found exclusively in prenominal

position can appear after a complement in predicative position if they are coordinated

with other adjectives:

(19) a. *una coincidenza pura (cf. una pura coincidenza)

a coincidence pure

‘a pure coincidence’

b. una coincidenza pura e semplice

a coincidence pure and simple

‘a coincidence pure and simple’

According to Cinque, when coordinated, the adjectives count as “heavy” and can

thus Access the Spec of a higher FocP, ending up in postnominal position.

Assuming this analysis of Cinque’s, we can apply it to the adjectives in Korean.

The adjectives sun ‘pure’ and cwu ‘principal’ for themselves cannot be coordinated

with other adjectives, similar to the fact that only the form containing the copula -i,

yamancek-i-n, can be coordinated with other adjectives such as yamancek-i-ko

kapcakswuren ‘brutal and unexpected’ (cf. 18b). Similarly, the forms of compounds

dan-sun ‘only and pure’ and cwu-yo ‘principal and important’ can bear a affix as

–ha, that has the same function of the copula -i, contrary to sun ‘pure’ and cwu

‘principal’.

(i) a. L’astuta risposta ingenua di Gianni

the clever answer naïve of John

‘John’s clever naive answer’

L’ingenua risposta astuta di Gianni

The naïve answer clever of John

‘John’s naive clever answer’

(Crisma 1996, 65)

(ii) a. John-uy yengakhan suncynhan taytap

John-GEN clever naïve answer

‘John’s clever naive answer’

b. John-uy suncynhan yengakhan taytap

John-GEN naive clever answer

‘John’s naive clever answer’

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90

However, if there is an intonational break and an emphasis in left peripheral

position (20), or a modification by a specifier (21), only the forms with –ha can

appear:

(20) a. *SUN/DAN-SUN-HA-N, ku wuyen

pure/only e pure-HA-N that coincidence

‘Lit.: That coincidence, only and pure’

b. *CWU/CWU-YO-HA-N, ku dongki

principal/principal e important-HA-N that motive

‘Lit.: That motive, principal and important’

(21) a. nemwu *sun/dan-sun-ha-n wuyen

very much pure/ only e pure-HA-N coincidence

‘Lit.: A/the coincidence, very much only and pure’

b. nemwu *cwu/cwuyo-ha-n dongki

very much principal e important-HA-N motive

‘Lit.: A/the motive, very much principal and important’

5. Implication: two types of affix

5.1. Direct modification: -CEK

In the previous section, I have shown the presence of the adverbial adjectives in

Korean: chwucengcek ‘alleged’, yamancek ‘brutal’. These adjectives have the

morphological similarity, that is, they have the suffix -cek, which is obligatorily

added to the elements that precede the nouns:

(22) a. chwuceng-cek/*chwuceng cangkwon

alleged/allegation minister

‘A/the alleged minister’

b. yaman-cek/*yaman kongkeyk

brutal/brutality aggression

‘A/the brutal aggression’

In effects, there are some adjectives that share this suffix -cek, as shown in (23):

(23) a. kwahak-*(cek) selmyung11

science-CEK explanation

11

Without -cek, the noun kwahak ‘science’ would be a internal argument of a head noun

selmyung ‘explanation’.


91

‘A/the scientific explanation’

b. cwusang-* (cek) sayngkak

abstraction-CEK idea

‘A/the abstract idea’

c. kensel-*(cek) mannam

construction-CEK encounter

‘A/the constructive encounter’

The adjectives of the example (23) cannot appear in predicative position, as seen

in the example (24).

(24) a. * selmyung-I kwahak-cek-i-ta.

explanation-NOM science-CEK-COP-DCL

‘A/the explanation is scientific’

b. *sayngkak-i chwsang-cek-i-ta

idea-NOM abstraction-CEK-COP-DCL

‘A/the idea is abstract’

c. *mannam-i kensel-cek-i-ta

encounter-NOM construction-CEK-COP-DCL

‘A/the encounter is constructive’

As I have suggested before with respect to the adjective yaman-cek ‘brutal’, the

adjectives in (24) are adverbial or non-predicative, since they cannot appear in a

predicative position. Furthermore, they cannot have a FOCUS feature (25a), nor can

they be found in a left peripheral position with the pause emphasized (25b).

Moreover they cannot be coordinated with other adjectives (25c), and in case they

are followed by a specifier (25d) or a complement (25e), they also become

ungrammatical:

(25) a. *ku-uy kwahák-cek selmyung

he-GEN science-CEK explanation

‘His scientific explanation’

b. *KWAHAK-CEK ku-uy selmyung

science-CEK he-GEN explanation

‘Lit.: his explanation, SCIENTIFIC’

c. *ku-uy kwahakcek-ko sylcaycek selmyung

he-Gen science-CEK-and logical explanation

‘Lit.: the explanation, scientific and logical’

d. *maywu chwsang-cek sayngkak

very abstraction-CEK idea

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92

‘Lit.: the idea, very abstract’

e. * keylkwoa-meyneyse kenselcek mannam

effects-in construction-CEK encounter

‘Lit.: the encounter, constructive in its effects’

Therefore, summarising the properties of the adjectives with the suffix -cek:

1. They have an adverbial interpretation.

2. They are not able to bear the focus feature.

3. They cannot appear in the left peripheral position, even if there is an

intonational break and they bear stress.

4. They cannot be modified by a specifier or a complement.

5. They can only be attributive.

They have a direct modification source.

5.2. Indirect modification: -I and -HA

5.2.1. -I

All the adjectives with -cek can have other forms containing the copula -i in

attributive position, such as the adjective chwucengcek, chwucengcek-i-n ‘alleged’.

Therefore also the adjectives in (23) such as kwahakcek ‘scientific’, cwusancek

‘abstract’ and kenselcek ‘constructive’, have another form with the copula -i in

attributive position (26). Despite the presence of the copular –i, they do not appear

predicatively as shown in (27):

(26) a. kwahakcek-(i-n) selmyung

scientific-COP-N explanation

‘A/the scientific explanation’

b. cwusangcek-(i-n) sayngkak

abstract-COP-N idea

‘A/the abstract idea’

c. kenselcek-(i-n) mannam

construction-COP-N encounter


(27) a. * selmyung-i kwahakcek-i-ta.

explanation-NOM scientific-COP-DCL

‘A/the explanation is scientific’

b. *sayngkak-i chwsangcek-i-ta

idea-NOM abstract-COP-DCL


93

‘A/the idea is abstract’

c. *mannam-i kenselcek-i-ta

encounter-NOM constructive-COP-DCL


This would suggest that the adjectives with the copula -i are not derived from

relative clauses, since their predicative use turns out to be ungrammatical. However,

they can have a subject-oriented interpretation, contrary to the forms without the

copular –i as apparent from the semantic contrast of the adjective yamancek,

yamancek-i-n ‘brutal’ seen in 3.1. In other words, the distinction between adverbial

adjectives and subject-oriented ones in Korean is morphological. For this reason, the

adjectives in (27) can appear in predicative position, having a subject-oriented value:

(28) a. ku-uy selmyung-un kwahakcek-i-ess-ta.

he-GEN explanation-TOP scientific-COP-PST-DCL

‘Lit.: His explanation has been scientific’

b. Ku-uy sayngkak-un chwsangcek-i-ess-ta.

he-Gen idea-TOP abstact-COP-PST-DCL

‘His idea has been abstract’

c. Kutul-uy mannam-un kensel-cek-i-ess-ta.

they-GEN encounter-TOP constructive-COP-PST-DCL

‘Their encounter has been constructive’

Moreover, this type of adjective would be predicative, given their possibility of

bearing elements that render them heavy: focus (29a), coordination (29b), pause and

emphasis (29c), and finally modification by a specifier (29d) or a complement (29e):

(29) a. ku-uy kwahakcek-í-n selmyung

he-GEN scientific-COP-N explanation

‘His scientific explanation’

b. kwahakcek-i-ko nonrycek-i-n ku-uy selmyung

scientific-COP-and logical-COP-N he-GEN explanation

‘Lit.: His explanation, scientific and logical’

c. *KWAHAKCEK-I-N ku-uy selmyung

scientific-COP-N he-GEN explanation

‘Lit.: His explanation, SCIENTIFIC’

d. ku-uy maywu chwsangcek-i-n sayngkak

he-GEN very abstract-COP-N idea

‘Lit.: His idea, very abstract’

e. keylkwoa-meyneyse kenselcek-i-n mannam

Soon Haeng Kang

94

effects-in constructive-COP-N encounter

‘Lit.: the constructive encounter in effects’

This shows the contrast between the adjectives which share the suffix -cek with

or without the copular –i. In the next section, I would like to characterize the

properties of the affix –ha.

5.2.2. -HA

Let us consider the status of –ha, which is present in adjectives such as dansun-

ha-n/suncen-ha-n and cwuyo-ha-n (derived from the adjectives sun ‘pure’ and cwu

‘principal’ respectively). First of all, the affix -ha is in complementary distribution

with the copular -i:

(30) a. dansun-ha/*i-ta

simple (only and pure)-HA-DCL

‘Lit.: is simple’

b. yamancek-i/*ha-ta

brutal-COP-DCL

‘Lit.: is brutal’

This suggests that –ha has the same function as the copular affix –i. Indeed, there

are some adjectives such as kinkup/kinkup-ha-n ‘urgent’, yumyeng/yumyeng-ha-n

‘famous’.12

In attributive position, the presence of –ha is optional, as in (31). In

predicative position, on the other hand, –ha is obligatory, as shown in (32).13

(31) a. kinkwup-(ha-n) sanghwang

urgent-HA-N situation

‘A/the urgent situation’

b. yumyeng-(ha-n) paywu

famous-HA-N actor

‘A/the famous actor’

(32) a. ku sanghwang-un kinkwup-*(ha)-ta.

that situation-TOP urgent-HA-DCL

‘That urgent situation’

b. ku paywu-nun yumyeng-*(ha)-ta.

12

Originally, this idea has been proposed by Mok (2002,15).

13This type of adjectives are cwungyo/cwungyo-ha-n ‘important’, ketay/ketatay-ha-n

‘enormous’, kangryek/kangrye-ha-n ‘strong’… etc.


95

that actor-TOP famous-HA-DCL

‘That actor is famous’

One characteristic of the affix –ha is that it makes the adjective predicative. This

means that the coordination, focus, the modification by a specifier and emphasis are

admitted with adjectives containing –ha:

(33) a. ku kinkwup-há-n sanghwang

that urgent-HA-N situation

‘A/the urgent situation’

b. KINKWUP-*(HA-N) ku sanghwang

urgent-HA-N that situation

‘Lit.: a/the situation, URGENT’

c. ku maywu yumyeng-*(ha-n) paywu

that very famous-HA-N actor

‘That very famous actor’

This contrast between the adjectives with or without –ha could be supported by

the fact that the positions of generation of the two forms of the adjective famous in

Korean could be revealed through their relative ordering with respect to another

adjective (for example, celmun ‘young’):

(34) a. ku-nun maywu celmun yumyung-(*ha-n) cakka-i-ta.

he-TOP very young famous-HA-N writer-COP-DCL

‘He is a very young famous writer’

b. ku-nun maywu yumyung-*(ha-n) celmun cakka-i-ta.

he-TOP very famous-HA-N young riter-COP-DCL

‘He is a very famous young writer’

This example demonstrates that the adjective with –ha, yumyeng-ha-n ‘famous’

can only appear in the higher position relative to the adjective celmun ‘young’,

contrary to its counterpart without –ha, as in (34a). On the other hand, in the lower

position relative to the adjective celmun ‘young’, only the form without –ha can

appear.

To summarize, in section 4.2, I have argued that the adjectives which occur with

the copular –i or the affix –ha can be predicative and also have an indirect

modification origin.

6. Contrasts between two types of modification

In the present section, I would like to discuss some evidence supporting the

conclusion that Korean adjectives are of two types giving rise to two types of

Soon Haeng Kang

96

interpretations. I will illustrate the contrasts between stage-level and individual-

level, between absolute and relative, between specificity-inducing and non-

specificity-inducing with reference to the theory of the two origins of adjectival

modification proposed in Cinque (2005b).

6.1. Individual-level vs. stage-level

In Larson (2000b) and Cinque (2005b), adjectives that have a direct modification

origin are taken to possess a characteristic or enduring (individual-level) property,

whereas those that have an indirect modification origin are taken to manifest a

temporary (stage-level) property. According to Cinque, this difference between the

two origins of the adjectives is systematic in the Germanic and Romance languages:

that is, it depends on their pre- and postnominal position, as illustrated in (35) and

(36).

(35) a. The visible stars include Aldebaran and Sirius. (ambiguous)

b. The stars visible include Aldebaran and Sirius. (S-level)

(36) a. Le invisibili stelle di Andromeda sono molto distanti. (I-level)

‘A’s stars, which are generally invisible, are very far’

b. Le stelle invisibili di Andromeda sono molto distanti. (ambiguous)

‘A’s stars, which are generally invisible, are very far’ (I-level)

‘or A’s stars, which are generally visible, but which happen to be

invisible now…’ (S-level)

(Cinque 2005b,4-5)

This shows that in the prenominal position English adjectives introduce

ambiguity between individual-level and stage-level as in (35a), while in the

postnominal position they are not ambiguous, they denote only stage-level property

as in (35b). And in Italian, contrary to English, adjectives in prenominal position can

have only an individual-level interpretation (36a), while in the postnominal position

both readings are available (36b). In the case of Korean, the corresponding adjective

kasicek ‘visible’, which contains –cek, is a direct modification marker for adjectives.

Therefore, an individual-level reading is available in (37a), while the temporal

property or the stage-level value can be expressed by another form; kasicek-i-n

‘visible’ containing the copula -i, as shown in (37).14

14

There is a another possibility to express both individual-level and stage-level reading with

the adjective poinun ‘visible’, containing the present tense marker -nun. This adjective poinun

‘visible’ would be identical to the reduced relative clause with the temporary property as in

(ib), while the enduring property expressed with a support of an adverbial hangsang ‘always’

as in (ic).


97

(37) a. Andromeda-nun kasicek pyel-i-ta. (I-evel)

Aldebaran-TOP visible stras-COP-DCL

‘The Aldebaran is a visible star’

b. Andromeda-nun kasicek-i-n pyel-i-ta. (S-level)

Aldebaran-TOP visible-COP-N star-COP-DCL

‘The Aldebaran is a star, which is visible’

In addition, these two types of adjective visible in Korean respect the order “S-

level > I-level > N” or “indirect modification > direct modification > N” as in (38b).

And pikasycek-i-n ‘invisibile’, the type of S-level adjective, can only be followed by

modun ‘every’ through a focus (or emphasis) movement as in (38c):15

(38) a. *modun kasicek pikasycek-i-n peyl-tul

every visible invisible-COP-N stars-PUL

‘Every visible star invisible’

b. modun pikasicek-i-n kasicek peyl-tul

every invisible-COP-N visibile stars-PLU

‘every visible stars invisible’

c. pikasicek-*(i-n) modun peyl-tul

invisible-COP-N every stars-PLU

‘Every visible stars, INVISIBLE’

(i) a. Tosekwoan-eyse kongpuha-nun haksayng

library-in student-PRES student

‘A/the student who is studying in the library’

b. (hanwl-ey) po-i-nun peyl-tul

sky-in see-PASS-PRES star-PLU

‘The stars which are seen in the sky now’

c. hangsang po-i-nun peyl-tul

always see-PASS-PRES star-PLU.

‘The stars which are always seen’

15 It is also possible to see the order “S-level > I-level > N” with the adjective poinun

‘visible’, derived from the reduced relative clauses:

(i) a. (cikum) an-po-i-nun hangsang po-i-nun peyl-tul

now not-see-PASS-PRES always see-PASS-PRES star-PLU

‘The stars that are visible always, invisible’

b. * hangsang poinun an-po-i-nun peyl-tul

always see-PASS-PRES not-see-PASS-PRES star-PLU

‘Lit.: The stars that are invisible, always invisible’

With regard to the order between the relative clauses, see Larson and Takahashi (2004), also

Cinque (2005b).

Soon Haeng Kang

98

6.2. Absolute vs. relative

In Cinque (Ibid., 16), an adjective like enormous in English is ambiguous between

relative absolute as in (39): ‘an elephant which was an enormous hing, in absolute

terms’ (in absolute terms) or ‘an elephant which was enormous with respect to other

individuals of the same class’:

(39) (She saw) an elephant which was enormous

The adjective that corresponds to enormous in Korean is ketay-ha-n and it can

also introduce ambiguity between these two types of interpretations, as in the

example (40a), however its counterpart without –ha: ketay ‘enormous’, can have

only absolute value as in (40b), similarly to the analysis of Cinque. That is, the

adjectives that have a direct modification source, can have only one absolute value:

(40) a. kuney-nun ketay-ha-n kokkyri-lul po-ass-ta. (ambiguous)

She-Top enormous-HA-N elephant-ACC see-PST-DCL

‘She saw an elephant which was enormous’

b. kuney-nun ketay kokkyri-lul po-ass-ta. (absolute)

She-Top enormous elephant-ACC see-PST-DCL

‘She saw an elephant which was enormous thing’

6.3. Specificity-inducing vs. non-specificity–inducing

Also in Cinque (Ibid., 8-9), the adjectives with origin of indirect modification

possess ambiguous interpretations between specific and not-specific, as in the

example (41), on the other hand, those with origin of direct modification can have

only a specific interpretation, as in (41b):16

(41) a. Mi hanno detto che alla festa interverrà un attore famoso (ambiguous)

‘They told me that a certain famous actor will come to the party’

‘They told me that some famous actor or other will come to the party’

b. Mi hanno detto che alla festa interverrà un famoso attore (specific)

‘They told me that a certain famous actor will come to the party’

This property that distinguishes between the origins of the adjectival modifications

can also be found in Korean in the contrast between the types of adjectives with or

without –ha, for an adjective yumyeng/yumyeng-ha-n ‘famous’:17

16

According to Cinque, the prenominal position of the adjective renders an indefinite DP

specific, which implies the existence of a particular actor that will come to the party, whether

or not the speaker knows his identity.

17 This property can be found also with the adjectives ius/ius-ha-n ‘nearby’:


99

(42) a. etten yumeng-ha-n paywu-ka party-ey on-ta-ko tul-ess-ta. (ambiguous)

certain famous-HA-Nactor-Nom party-to come-DCL-Com hear-

PST-DCL

‘I heard that a certain famous actor will come to the party’

‘I heard that some famous actor or other will come to the party’

b. etten yumeng paywu-ka party-ey on-ta-ko tul-ess-ta. (specific)

certain famoso attore-Nom party-to come-DCL-COM hear-PST-DCL

‘I heard that a certain famous actor will come to the party’

7. Concluding remarks

Differently from other types adjectives (i.e., the qualitative adjectives), these

non-predicative adjectives have not been considered to be a part of the adjectives

that are present in the traditional grammar of Korean.

In this paper, however, in reviewing the Korean non-predicative adjectives and

their counterparts containing the copular –i and the affix -ha, I’ve argued that they

can be distinguished between adverbial and subject-oriented, attributive and

predicative, origin of direct modification and that of indirect modification with

regard to the possibility to supply explanations more deepened on the category of

the adjectives and the adjectival modifications in the nouns phrase in Korean, based

on the proposals of Cinque (1994) and Cinque (2005b).

References

Alexiadou, A. (2005), “Patterns of adjectival modification”, Handout of a paper presented at the

Second Workshop on Balkan Linguistics, Venice, Italy, 20-21 May 2005.

Cinque, G. (1994), “On the evidence for partial N movement in the Romance DP”, in Cinque, G,

J. Koster, J.-Y. Pollock, L. Rizzi & R. Zanuttini (eds.) Paths Towards Universal

Grammar, Georgetown University Press, Georgetwon. pp. 85-110.

Cinque, G. (2005a), “Deriving Greenberg’s Universal 20 and Its Exceptions”, Linguistic Inquiry,

36. 315-332.

(i) John-un ius-ha-n cyp-ul panghwaha-ko sypehan-ta (ambiguous)

J. –Top neaby-HA-N house-ACC burn-to want-DCL

a. ‘John wants to burn some specific house which is near his’ (specific)

b. ‘John wants to burn some house or other among those which are near his’

(non-specific)

(ii) John-un ius cyp-ul panghwaha-ko sypeha-n-ta (specific)

J. –Top neaby-HA-N house-ACC burn-to want-DCL

‘John wants to burn some specific house which is near his’

Soon Haeng Kang

100

Cinque, G. (2005b), “The Dual Source of Adjectives and XP-vs. N-Raising in The Romance DP”,

ms., University of Venice.

Crisma, P. (1996), “On the Configurational Nature of Adjectival Modification”, in K. Zagona

(ed.) Grammatical Theory and Romance Languages (Selected Papers from the 25th

LSRL), pp. 59-71.

Kang, S.H. (2005), “On the adjectives in Korean”, University of Venice Working Papers in

Linguistics, 15. 153-169.

Kayne, Richard S. (1994), The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kim, M-J. (2002), “Does Korean have adjectives?”, MIT Working Papers, 43. 71-89.

Kim, Y-K. (1997), “Agreement phrases in DP”. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 9. 1-24.

Larson, Richard K. (2000b), “Temporal Modification in Nominals” Handout of a paper presented

at the International Round Table ‘The Syntax of Tense and Aspect’, Paris, 15-18

November 2000.

Larson, Richard K. and Franc Marušić (2004), “On the indefinite Pronoun Structure with APs:

Reply to Kishimoto”, Linguistic Inquiry, 35. 268-287.

Larson, Richard K. and N. Takahashi (in press), “Order and interpretation in pronominal relative

clauses”, to appear in PROCEEDINGS of WAFL-2, Boğazici University, Istanbul,

Turkey, 12 October, 2004.

Lee, Y. H. (2004), “λ-Categorial Grammar for Korean Restrictive Adjectives”, ms., Chosun

University, Kwangju, Korea.

Mok, J-S. (2002), “A Study of the Category Kwanhyeongsa [Adnominals] and Hyeongyongsa

[Adjectives] in Korean Grammar”, Ennehak [Linguistics], 31. 71-99.

Sohn, H.M (1999), The Korean Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sproat, R. and C. Shih (1991), “The Cross-Linguistics Distribution of Adjectival Ordering

Restrictions”, in C. Georgopoulos and R. Ishihara (eds.) Interdisciplinary Approaches to

Language: Essays in Honor of S-Y. Kuroda, Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp.

565-593.

Yamakido, Hiroko (2000), “Japanese Attributive Adjectives are Not (All) Relative Clauses”, in

Billerey and Lillehaugen (eds.) Proceedings of WCCFL 19, pp. 588-602.

Yu, H.K. (1997), A study on Korean Adjectives. Ph.D. Dissertation, Yensei University, Seoul,

Korea.


101

ON THE ORDER OF THE PRENOMINAL

PARTICIPLES IN BULGARIAN

Vesselina Laskova

Abstract

This paper examines the distribution of Bulgarian participles in prenominal

position. The discussion centers around two main arguments. First, it is argued that

participial expressions postmodified by adverbs are real verbal participles. We

provide data that, in Bulgarian, these participles can occur in prenominal position.

The second goal is to show that when co-occurring in prenominal position, participles

exhibit certain ordering restrictions, namely, stage-level participles precede individual-

level participles. These ordering restrictions conform to what is argued in Larson

and Takahashi (in press) and Cinque (2005), who suggest that the adnominal

modification area contains two layers – an individual-level layer, closer to the noun,

including not only all attributive-only adjectives but also part of the indirect

modification adjectives, and a stage-level layer, situated higher up and including the

rest of the indirect modification area.

Introduction

In languages like English, participial expressions1 can occur in prenominal

position either unmodified or premodified by an adverbial. It has been claimed that

the English prenominal participial expressions are not verbal participles but

adjectives. Languages like Bulgarian, however, which do not exclude postmodified

participial expressions in prenominal position, seem to show, first, that the prenominal

position is not reserved only for adjectives and, second, that verbal participles

occurring in prenominal position display certain ordering restrictions, as predicted

by Larson and Takahashi (in press) and Cinque’s (2005) theory of adnominal

modification.

1 We use the term participial expression to refer to all kinds of participle-looking words. We

reserve the term participle for the real verbal participles.

Vesselina Laskova

102

Unlike the premodified participial expressions, the postmodified ones seem to

display verbal and not adjectival properties. In English, postmodified participial

expressions cannot be found in front of the noun but appear only in postnominal

position. We will provide evidence that postmodified participial expressions, both in

English and in Bulgarian, exhibit verbal and not adjectival properties. Occurring in

prenominal position in Bulgarian, postmodified participles can combine with

transitive participles followed by an object (of which we are sure that they are real

verbal participles2). We will show that prenominal participial expressions obey

certain ordering restrictions in front of the noun, namely, the stage-level participle

must precede the individual-level participle. Neither two stage-level, nor two

individual-level participles can form a grammatical noun phrase in Bulgarian.

The paper is organized as follows. In section 1 we introduce the type of participial

expressions used in prenominal position in Bulgarian. In section 2 we provide

evidence from Bulgarian and English that the postmodified participial expressions

are verbal participles and do not have adjectival properties. In section 3 we provide

examples in support of Cinque’s and Larson and Takahashi’s prediction that if two

participles occur in prenominal position, it is necessarily the case that the stage-level

participle precedes the individual-level participle.

1. Bulgarian prenominal participial expressions

It has been suggested in the literature (Bresnan 1982, 1995) that all prenominal

participle-looking words should be considered adjectives. Laczko (2001), however,

also working within the Lexical-Functional Grammar, as Bresnan, provides data

from Hungarian showing that verbal participles do occur in front of the noun. We

are also going to advocate this claim. As far as the English prenominal participial

expressions are concerned, since only unmodified and premodified participial

expressions can occur in front of the noun, we will assume that they are not

adjectival but simply ambiguous between the adjectival and the verbal reading and

for this reason it is impossible to isolate their verbal characteristics. In Bulgarian,

however, we can find transitive3 and postmodified participial expressions

prenominally. We are going to argue that the last two types of participial expressions

are real verbal participles and not adjectives, thus showing that the prenominal

position is not reserved only for adjectival expressions. We will then present data

from English which show that postmodified participial expressions behave as verbal

participles also in this language the only difference being that, in English,

postmodified participles can be found only in postnominal position (for independent

2 It has been claimed by Wasow (1977) that participles taking a direct object are real verbal

participles.

3 We refer to participles taking a direct object as transitive participles.

On the Order of the Prenominal Participles in Bulgarian

103

reasons). After having shown that Bulgarian makes use of two syntactic types of

verbal participles in prenominal position – participles taking a direct object

complement and postmodified participles – we will concentrate on the order these

participles exhibit when co-occurring in front of the noun.

Bulgarian has the following three types of participial expressions occurring in

prenominal position – passive participles (traditionally called past passive participles),

past perfect participles (traditionally called past active participles) and what can be

called progressive participles or present participles (traditionally named present

active participles).

(1) otvoreniat vchera magazin (Passive participle)

opened-the yesterday shop

“the shop that opened yesterday”

(2) pristignaliat vchera turgovets (Past perfect participle)

arrived-the yesterday merchant

“the merchant who arrived yesterday”

(3) izuchavashtiat fizika student (Present participle)

studying-the physics student

“the student who is studying physics”

The passive participle form is quite common across languages and is widely

discussed in the literature. As to the perfect participle, in many languages it has the

same form as the passive participle (English, Italian, German, etc.). Bulgarian and

Slovenian, for example, have a separate form for this participle, distinct from the

form for the passive participle, as reported by Marvin (2002). The progressive

participle is not uncommon across languages.

An important peculiarity of the Bulgarian perfect and progressive participles is

that they can take a direct object also in prenominal position, as shown below.

(4) zashtitiloto sestra si momche (Perfect)

defended-the sister his boy

“the boy who defended his sister”

(5) chetiashtiat doklada professor (Progressive)

reading-the report-the professor

“the professor who is reading the report”

There is a group of verbs in Bulgarian which obligatorily require a direct object

complement.

Vesselina Laskova

104

(6) skrivam *(tsennite predmeti)

hide precious-the objects

“hide the precious objects”

(7) nabezhdavam *(priatelkata si)

accuse (falsely) friend-the my

“accuse (falsely) my friend”

The participles deriving from such verbs also require a direct object complement

(of course we exclude the group of passive participles, which cannot have a direct

object complement).

(8) izprazniliat * (kasata) sluzhitel (Perfect)

emptied-the cash-box-the man

“the man who emptied the cash box”

(9) vlacheshtata *(chergata) zhena (Progressive)

hauling-the rug-the woman

“the woman hauling the rug”

There are verbs which, apart from being obligatorily transitive, could also be

used as intransitive (unaccusative or unergative) verbs:

(10) a. izkliuchiliat naprezhenieto mehanizum (Perfect - Transitive)

switched off the tension-the mechanism

“the mechanism that switched off the tension”

b. izkliuchiliat mehanizum (Perfect - Unaccusative)

swiched off the mechanis

“the mechanism that switched off”

(11) a. izpulniavashtiat ariata tenor (Progressive - Transitive)

performing-the area-the tenor

“the tenor singing this area”

b. izpulniavashtiat tenor (Progressive - Unergative)

performing-the tenor

“the performing tenor”

We would like to keep apart the cases in which a verb is realized as transitive

and those in which it is intransitive. We will attribute this phenomenon to the lexical

ambiguity of the verb.

Another group of participles are those deriving from verbs which are unambiguously

intransitive.


105

(12) padnaliat snoshti sniag (Perfect - Unaccusative)

fallen-the yesterday night snow

“the snow that fell down yesterday”

As was mentioned above, those participial expressions that preserve the direct

object of the verb will be considered verbal participles. The “bare” or unmodified

participial forms, we will consider ambiguous between the participial and the

adjectival reading. We will suggest the same about the premodified participial forms.

As to the postmodified participial expressions, we will try to show that they exhibit

verbal and not adjectival properties.

2. Tests showing the verbal character of the postmodified participial

expressions

In this section, we use a number of very well-known tests for distinguishing

between participles and adjectives, in order to show that the postmodified participial

expressions share common properties with verbs and not with adjectives. We present

data from Bulgarian and from English.

2.1. Bulgarian

As was stated in the introduction, we will focus mainly on the prenominal use of

the participial expressions in Bulgarian. Many authors (among them Wasow 1977

and Bresnan 1982, 1995), analyzing mainly data from English, claim that the

participle-looking words found in front of the noun are nothing else but adjectives.

There are also opponents to this idea. Laczkó (2000, 2001) provides data from

Hungarian showing that verbal participial forms are allowed in prenominal position.

In this subsection, we are going to provide further evidence in support of this claim.

Particularly, we will argue in favour of the verbal status of those Bulgarian participial

expressions which are postmodified by adverbs4.

2.1.1. The degree quantifier

One of the tests for adjectivality is the compatibility of an expression with the

degree quantifier. Since the latter combines only with adjectives and never with

verbs, whatever participle-looking expression is compatible with it, it must be

considered an adjective (of course, this test applies only to expressions which are

gradable).

4 We consider relevant only those adverbs which can never be used with adjectives. Therefore,

we will restrict ourselves to using only manner adverbs like carefully and politely and their

Bulgarian analogues.

Vesselina Laskova

106

The example below shows that some unmodified participial expressions are

compatible with the degree quantifier.

(13) Nai-nadrastkanata tetradka e tazi na Petia. (Unmodified participial expression)

most scribbled-the notebook is that of Petia.

“Petia has the most scribbled notebook.”

Bulgarian transitive participles (which are verbal participles) are never compatible

with the degree modifier.

(14) *Nai-nadraskaloto tetradkata si momche.

most scribbled-the notebook-the his boy

As we see below, the same holds true for the post-modified participial expressions.

Examples (15) – (17) show that unmodified participial expressions can be

compatible either with the degree quantifier or with a post-modifying adverb, but

never with both of them at the same time.

(15) Po-natocheniat nozh rezhe po-dobre.

more grinded-the knife cuts better.

“the more grinded knife cuts better”

(16) Natocheniat vnimatelno nozh se postavia varhu…

grinded-the carefully knife should be placed upon the…

“the carefully grinded knife should be placed upon the…”

(17) *Po-natocheniat vnimatelno nozh se postavia varhu…

more grinded-the carefully knife should be placed upon the…

If an expression is compatible both with the degree quantifier and with a

postmodifying adverb but never with both of them at the same time, there must be a

difference in the grammatical status of these two combinations. The tests applied

below seem to further support this conclusion.

2.1.2. Complements of some verbs

Another test used in the literature is the possibility of an English adjective to

appear as a complement of verbs like seem, remain, look, sound, act and become.

The examples are taken from Wasow (1977).

(18) John looked eager to win.

(19) John remained happy.

It seems that the Bulgarian analogue of the verb remain – ostavam – requires an

adjectival complement as well.


107

The examples from Bulgarian show that premodified and unmodified participial

expressions can occur in this position but participles taking a direct object complement

and postmodified participial expressions cannot. We see here that, as we suggested

above, the premodified participial expressions behave like adjectives.

Unmodified participial expression

(20) trite ostanali nepochisteni sled partito pomeshtenia

three-the remained uncleaned after party-the rooms

“the three rooms that remained uncleaned after the party”

Premodified participial expression

(21) Ostanalite vnimatelno podredeni vurhu biuroto dokumenti5.

remained-the carefully ordered on bureau-the documents.

“the documents that remained carefully ordered on the bureau”

(22) Ostanaloto vnimatelno razpechatano sled proverkata pismo6

remained-the carefully unsealed after examination-the letter

“the letter that remained carefully unsealed after the examination”

Transitive participles

(23) *Ostanaliat podrezhdasht dokumentite sluzhitel.

remained-the ordering documents-the attendant

“the attendant that remained ordering the documents”

Postmodified participial expression

(24) ?*ostanalite podredeni vnimatelno varhu biuroto dokumenti

remained-the ordered carefully on bureau-the documents

“the documents that remained carefully ordered on the bureau”

(The relevant meaning of the participle ostanalite has to be distinguished from

the meanings: “remained at that place” and “the rest”)

5 Exampels (21) and (22) sound a bit odd because of the slight semantic incompatibility of the

adverb “carefully”, which we use in order to be consistent, and the verb ostavam/remain. We

aim at showing that, in this environment, an adverb in postposition with respect to the

participle sounds worse than an adverb in preposition with respect to the participle. We see in

(27) that, in a predicative use, the same premodified participle sounds better (since it is easier

to insert the context).

6 See footnote 5.

Vesselina Laskova

108

(25) *Ostanaloto razpechatano vnimatelno sled proverkata pismo

remained-the unsealed carefully after examination-the letter

“The letter that remained carefully unsealed after the examination”

Predicative use:


(26) Knigata ostana neprochetena.

book-the remained unread

“The book remained unread.”


(27) Dori sled obiska dokumentite na biuroto i ostanaha vnimatelno podredeni.

Even after perquisition-the documents-the on bureau-the her remained

carefully ordered.

“Even after the perquisition, the documents on her bureau remained carefully

ordered.”

Transitive participle

(28) *Sluzhiteliat ostana podrezhdasht dokumentite.

Attendant-the remained ordering documents-the

“The attendant remained ordering the documents.”

Post-modified participle

(29) *Dokumentite na biuroto i ostanaha podredeni vnimatelno

Documents-the on bureau-the her remained ordered carefully.

“The documents on her bureau remained carefully ordered.”

2.1.3. Concessional relative phrases with “however”

Bresnan (1995), claims that only adjectives, and not verbs, can head

concessional relative phrases beginning with “however”.

however AP vs. *however VP: however supportive of her daughter she may have

been vs. however supporting her daughter she may have been…

(Bresnan, 1995)

Indeed, neither the Bulgarian analogues of the English concessional phrases with

however can be headed by a verb. Thus, we can make the prediction that only

unmodified and premodified participial expressions but not postmodified ones can

head concessional phrases like kolkoto i…da …/however… The examples below

show that this expectation seems to be correct.


109

Unmodified participial expressions

(30) Kolkoto i nadraskana da e tetradkata, pak shte mi svurshi rabota.

however and scribbled DA is notebook-the still will to me serve

“However scribbled the notebook is, it could serve me.”

Premodified participial expressions

(31) Kolkoto i vnimatelno podbrani da sa sustavkite …

however and carefully selected DA are ingredients…

“however carefully selected the ingredients”

Post-modified participial expression

(32) *Kolkoto i nadraskana nevnimatelno da e tetradkata, pak shte mi svurshi

rabota.

however and scribbled carelessly DA is notebook-the still will to me serve

“However carelessly scribbled the notebook is, it could serve me.”

Transitive participle

(33) *Kolkoto i podbral sustavkite da e…

however and selected (masc.) ingredients DA is …

In prenominal position:


(34) Kolkoto i nadraskana tetradka da ima Ivan…

however and scribbled notebook DA has Ivan

“However scribbled Ivan’s notebook…”


(35) Kolkoto i vnimatelno podbrani sustavki da izpolzvat…

however and carefully selected ingredients they use

“No matter how carefully selected ingredients they use…”

Postmodified participle

(36) *Kolkoto i podbrani vnimatelno sustavki da izpolzvat…

however and selected carefully ingredients they use

“No matter how carefully selected ingredients they use…”

The examples above clearly show that the postmodified participial expressions

cannot fill the slot of the adjectives. The premodified and the unmodified ones, on

the other hand, qualify as adjectives.

Vesselina Laskova

110

In the next subsection, we will see that Bulgarian is not the only language in

which the postmodified participles display verbal participles. English seems to pattern

with Bulgarian in this respect. We present below some tests in support of this view.

2.2. English7

According to the literature, the negative un- prefix can only attach to adjectives.

It never attaches to verbs. (The negative prefix under consideration here is not to be

confused with the verbal reversative prefix attaching to verbs as in undo).

(37) unaccepted * to unaccept

(38) unquestioned * to unquestion

Since there are no verbal forms corresponding to the negative participial forms in

(38) and (39), these forms are considered adjectival. What is of interest for us here is

that passives like these can be pre-modified but not post-modified by adverbs. (The

examples were pointed out to me by Megan Linke8, p. c.)

(39) The invitations, politely unaccepted, lay strewn upon the table.

(40) * The invitations, unaccepted politely, lay strewn upon the table.

(41) The king’s argument, respectfully unquestioned, rang throughout the room.

(42) * The king’s argument, unquestioned respectfully, rang throughout the room.

The fact that adjectival passives cannot be postmodified by adverbs points to the

conclusion that, also in English, the postmodification of participial expressions is

characteristic only of the verbal participles and not of the adjectival forms.

Our claim is further confirmed by the following observation. Only pre-modified

and not post-modified participial expressions can appear after the verb seem. A

widespread assumption is that seem can be followed only by adjectives and never by

verbal expressions. It has not been noticed, however, at least as far as I know, that

postmodified and premodified participial expressions differ in this respect. We

present the data below. (The data were pointed out to me by Megan Linke, p. c.)

(43) The floor has not been waxed and the curtains are still dirty, but the silver, at

least, seems carefully polished.

(44) * The floor has not been waxed and the curtains are still dirty, but the silver,

at least, seems polished carefully.

7 I thank Steven Franks for the very helpful observations, opinions and suggestions concerning

the subsection on English participles.

8 I would like to thank Megan Linke for the various examples she pointed out to me, for the

pleasant discussions and for her helpful comments on my data.


111

(45) The red lentils still have pieces of dirt and stone in them, but the green ones

seem carefully sorted.

(46) * The red lentils still have pieces of dirt and stone in them, but the green ones

seem sorted carefully.

(47) The present seems carefully wrapped up.

(48) * The present seems wrapped up carefully.

(49) The room seems carefully cleaned.

(50) *The room seems cleaned carefully.

(51) The issue seems carefully explained (in a suitable context it sounds fine)

(52) * The issue seems explained carefully.

Another way to test the verbal character of the postmodified participial expressions

is to see whether they can head concessional phrases with however. Unmodified

participial expressions clearly can head such a phrase, as we show below.

(53) However polished the floor was, it didn’t seem completely clean.

The same holds true for the premodified participial expressions:

(54) However carefully polished the floor was, it didn’t seem completely clean.

It is, however, completely impossible to place a postmodified participial

expression in this environment.

(55) *However polished carefully the floor was, it didn’t seem completely clean.

However seems to be compatible with other adjectival participial forms like the

unmodified ones. This is shown below. (The examples below were pointed out to

me by Megan Linke p. c.)

(56) A very promising extension, however untouched, is that of defining

strategies that decide which presentation forms of the selectors to use, or

even defining strategies that define such a strategy depending of e. g. the

speed of the underlying hardware, the size of targeted display, etc., as

indicated on p. 58.

http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/publicaties/doctoraten/cw/CW2001_1.pdf

(57) People have a psychological sense that a used object is worth much less,

however untouched it is.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=4323

So far, we have provided evidence that postmodified participial expressions

display verbal properties in behaving differently with respect to the premodified and

Vesselina Laskova

112

the unmodified participial expressions. As to the last two types, we assume that they

are rather ambiguous between the participial and the adjectival reading. The adverb

in preposition, unlike the adverb in postposition, is not a signal of the verbal

character of the participle.

We have already seen above that premodified participial expressions do not

pattern with verbal participles. We present below some more examples from Bulgarian

in support of this claim.

(58) a. dobre slozhen chovek.

well-built person (= has a fine physique)

b. * slozhen dobre chovek.

built-well person

(59) a. silno zamursena dreha

strongly daubed piece of clothing

b. *zamursena silno dreha

daubed strongly piece of clothing

“the strongly daubed piece of clothing”

What the examples above show is that, with premodified participles, it is

possible to form fixed expressions. The meaning which emerges in these examples

is not a real combination of the meaning of the verb and that of the participle-

looking word. In examples like (59), the participial expression does not convey the

real meaning of the verb it derives from. What has happened is that the verb has

been adjectivalized. As we can see, once we place the adverb in postposition, the

original meaning of the verb reemerges and the example no longer sounds acceptable.

This observation comes in support of the claim that the premodified participial

expressions can be adjectival while the postmodified ones are only verbal. We

mentioned, however, that the premodified participial expressions are actually

ambiguous, which means that they can also be verbal. In other words, the premodifying

adverb does not necessarily signal the verbal status of the expression it modifies but

it does not necessarily signal its adjectival status either. This can be seen in the

following example, in which the real verbal participles can also be premodified by

an adverb.

(60) vnimatelno obrabotiliat dannite sluzhitel

carefully processed-the data-the attendant

“the attendant who carefully processed the data”


113

3. The order of the prenominal participles

We have seen so far that, apart from the transitive participles, there is another

group of participial expressions which behave as verbal elements. In this section, we

will take it for granted that the postmodified participial expressions are verbal

participles and will try to see how two verbal participles combine in prenominal

position in Bulgarian9. What we will notice is that not all orders between the

prenominal participles are allowed. We will try to explain this phenomenon in terms

of Cinque’s (2005) theory of adnominal modification.

We provide below some examples of two participles occurring in prenominal

position.

(61) Vkliucheniat vnimatelno izmervasht naprezhenieto ured pokaza, che …

swiched on-the carefully measuring voltage-the device showed that…

“The carefully switched on voltage measuring device showed that…”

(62) Nanesenoto vnimatelno raztvariashto maznini veshtestvo, ne dopuska

pronikvaneto na …

impasted-the carefully solving fat substance not allows penetration-the of…

“The carefully impasted, fat solving substance does not allow the penetration

of…”

Notice that once we change the places of the participles, the examples become

ungrammatical.

(63) * Izmervashtiat naprezhenieto vkliuchen vnimatelno ured.

measuring-the voltage-the swiched on carefully device

“the device that measures the voltage that has been carefully switched on”

(64) *Raztvatiashtoto maznini naneseno vnimatelno veshtestvo…

solving-the fat impasted carefully substance

“the carefully impasted substance that solves fat”

Examples like (63) and (64) suggest that not all orders between the participles in

prenominal position are allowed. How to account for this phenomenon?

One component of the semantic meaning of these participles is particularly

relevant to our discussion. Notice that the participles which come first in each of the

examples express a telic event, an action which has been performed once. The

participles coming in second position, instead, express either a quality of the entity

9 It seems impossible to place two transitive participles in prenominal position in Bulgarian.

The examples sound too heavy and a long pause between the two participles is required. One

transitive and one postmodified participle, however, can co-occur in front of the noun.

Vesselina Laskova

114

or an activity habitually performed by that entity. We would like to express this

difference in terms of the stage-level/individual-level distinction. We could assume

that the participles expressing a telic event are stage-level participles and the ones

expressing an activity are individual-level participles. With this distinction in mind

we could turn to the theory developed by Cinque (2005) and Larson and Takahashi

(in press), about the order of the prenominal reduced relative clauses.

Discussing data from Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Turkish, Larson and

Takahashi (in press) suggest that the adnominal modification area is divided into

two large layers – an individual-level layer, closer to the noun, governed by a

generic operator and a stage-level layer, higher than the previous one and governed

by an existential operator. Cinque (2005) develops a theory of adnominal modification,

adopting this analysis and predicting that if the noun phrase contains more than one

participles in prenominal position, there would be one participle belonging to the

stage-level layer and one to the individual-level layer. This is, actually, what the

Bulgarian data seem to show. Apart from the impossibility to obtain the inverted

order: individual-level > stage-level, we can notice also the impossibility to place

two individual-level or two stage-level participles in the same phrase. This is shown

in the following examples.

Compare the correct (62) with the not so well-sounding (65).

(65) ??Izkliucheniat vnimatelno izmeril naprezhenieto ured…

switched off-the carefully measured (perfect participle) voltage-the device

“the device that has measured the voltage, that has been switched off”

In example (65), two telic event participles are used. Therefore the phrase no

longer sounds good. One could try to save the example by leaving a very long pause

between the two participles but, still, it does not sound better.

Equally bad are examples containing two individual-level participles.

(66) *Izsledvashtiat Jupiter izuchavasht astronomia uchen…

examinig-the Jupiter studying astronomy scientist…

“the scientist studying chemistry who studies Jupiter”

The examples above suggest that participles seem to follow a certain order in

prenominal position10

. Higher in the hierarchy are the stage-level participles and the

individual-level participles follow them.

10

It is generally not so easy to place two verbal participles in prenominal position in

Bulgarian. What we claim is that it is possible and easier in the cases in which the higher

participle displays stage-level properties and the participles following it displays individual-

level properties.


115

4. Conclusion

In this paper, we have provided data suggesting that verbal participles can really

appear in prenominal position. We argued against the assumption that all prenominal

participle-looking words are adjectives and suggested, instead, that the prenominal

participial expressions in English are rather ambiguous between the participial and

the adjectival reading. It is not that real participles cannot occur in prenominal

position in English, as has been argued in the literature. What we suggest is that,

English, for independent reasons, does not allow for right modification of prenominal

elements. Since the unmodified and the premodified participial expressions are

ambiguous the verbal character of these elements is not so visible. Bulgarian, however,

as well as Hungarian, as shown by Laczkó (2001), do not display any ban on verbal

participial elements in prenominal position. These languages clearly show that

verbal participles can occur in front of the noun.

Another interesting observation was that postmodified participial expressions

actually do not pattern with the premodified and the unmodified ones. Both in

Bulgarian and in English, these elements display verbal properties. The two

languages differ only in terms of the position these participles occupy with respect

to the noun – in Bulgarian they can be prenominal while in English they can only be

postnominal.

The conclusions concerning the verbal status of the postmodified participial

expressions served as a possibility to explore the co-occurrence of two participles in

prenominal position. We have seen that it is possible to combine one transitive

participle and one postmodified participle in front of the noun in Bulgarian. We have

also observed that two participles can co-occur in prenominal position only if they

obey the following semantic restriction: the higher participle has to display stage-

level properties and the lower participle has to display individual-level properties, a

restriction discussed in the works of Larson and Takahashi (in press) and Cinque

(2005).

References

Bresnan, J. 1982. “The Passive in Lexical Theory”. In Bresnan, J. (ed.), The Mental Representation

of Grammatical Relations. The MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass., 3-86.

Bresnan, J. 1995. “Lexicality and Argument Structure”. In Proceedings of the Paris Syntax and

Semantics Conference, 1995.

Cinque, G. 2003a. “The Prenominal Origin of Relative Clauses”. Workshop on Antisymmetry and

Remnant Movement, New York University.

Cinque, G. 2005. “The Dual Source of Adjectives and Phrasal Movement in the Romance DP”.

Ms, University of Venice.

Embick, David. 2004. “On the Structure of Resultative Participles in English”. Linguistic Inquiry.

35, 355-392.

Vesselina Laskova

116

Haspelmath, Martin. 1994. “Passive Participles across Languages”. In Fox, Barbara – Paul J.

Hopper (eds.) Voice: Form and Function. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 151-177.

Kayne, Richard. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Kratzer, Angelika. 2000. “Building Statives”. In Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual Meeting

of the Berkley Linguistic Society, ed. by Lisa J. Conathan, Jeff Good, Darya Kavitskaya,

Alyssa B. Wulf, and Alan C. L. Yu, pp. 385-399. University of California, Berkley

Linguistics Society.

Laczkó, Tibor. 2001. “Another Look at Participles and Adjectives in the English DP”. In Butt, M.

and T. H. King (eds.), Proceedings of the LFG01 Conference. CSLI Publications.

Stanford.

Larson, R. and N. Takahashi (in press) “Order and Interpretation in Prenominal Relative Clauses”.

To appear in PROCEEDINGS OF WAFL-2. Boğazici University, Istanbul, (October 12,

2004).

Marvin, Tatjana. 2002. “Past Participles in Reduced Relatives”. ms. University of Lund.

Wasow, Thomas. 1977. “Transformations and the Lexicon”. In P. W. Culicover, T. Wasow and

A. Akmajian (eds.), Formal Syntax, pp. 327-360.

Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, 31 – 2006, 119 - 122

119

ARE ALL LANGUAGES

‘NUMERAL CLASSIFIER LANGUAGES’?*

Guglielmo Cinque

Greenberg (1975) observes that, “it is generally the case that numeral classifier

languages will apparently lack a classifier in nouns indicating periods of time, units

of distance and the word ‘time’ in such phrases as ‘five times’. [In Greenberg 1972]

it was hypothesized that in these cases the correct interpretation was not that the

classifier is omitted but that words like ‘day’, ‘mile’ and ‘time’ are themselves

measures of verbal action so that we have to do with a subtype of the overall

classifier or measure phrases. In other words, such phrases as ‘five days’ are rather

to be identified with (Q ↔ Cl) than (Q ↔ N).” (p. 30).1

Certain numeral classifier languages provide direct evidence for this conclusion

as the apparently classifier-less N does not occupy the normal position of the noun

but that of the “absent” classifier. This is especially evident in Thai, where the noun

and the numeral classifier are on opposite sides with respect to the numeral: N Num

CL.

As Allan (1977, 306f) notes, nouns like ‘year’, in adverbial constructions,

unexpectedly appear with a numeral without an accompanying numeral classifier:

(1) nỳŋ pi

one year

Num N

What is even more striking, Allan says, is that they do not appear in the ordinary

position occupied by the noun (i.e., before the numeral – see mă si tua ‘dog four

body’ = ‘four dogs’), but after the noun, in the position normally occupied by the

classifier (see sì tua ‘four body’ = ‘four (of them)’ [animals, coats, etc.]).

* This squib was originally prepared for a private birthday book in honour of Bernard Comrie.

I thank Richard Kayne for helpful comments.

1 This is true of many Tai-Kadai, Sino-Tibetan, Mon-Khmer, and Austronesian languages (see,

e.g., Thomas 1971, 137; Manley 1972, 126; Goral 1978, 10, 28, 29-30; Kruspe 2004, 209).

Guglielmo Cinque

120

Very insightfully he concludes, citing Haas (1942, 204), that in order to

accommodate these facts pi ‘year’ in (1) “must be interpreted as a classifier, and

[(1)] must be given a new structural description, [(2)]” (p. 307), adding that “the

alternative, that the labels [Num] and N […] be swapped, is absurd.” (p. 307).2

(2) nỳŋ pi

Num CL

It is at this point interesting to note that time units like ‘year’, when used

adverbially, display properties of numeral classifiers of ‘numeral classifier languages’

(rather than those of ordinary nouns) even in ‘non numeral classifier languages’ like

Italian or English.3

For example, it is generally the case that adjectives can modify nouns, and

mensural “classifiers” (like ‘box’, ‘cup’, ‘kilo’, etc.), but not (sortal) numeral

classifiers. See the contrast between (3) and (4), observed for Chinese in Cheng and

Sybesma (1999, 516):

(3) na yi xiao xiang shu

that one small CL-box book

‘that (one) small box of books’

(4) a *yi da zhi gou

one big CL dog

b *yi da wei laoshi

one big CL teacher

Now exactly the same thing is found with the ‘nouns’ anno ‘year’ in Italian, year

in English, and godina ‘year’ in Bulgarian, when they are used adverbially to

express a time measure. See (5), (6), and (7):4

(5) a Sono rimasto a Londra per tre (*?bellissimi) anni

I stayed in London for three (beautiful) years

b Tre (*bellissimi) anni fa ero a Londra

three (beautiful) years ago I was in London

2 Also see Simpson (2005, section 7), who suggests that cases like (2) involve raising of the N

to CL.

3 The same is true of Bulgarian, which apart from the existence of three (or four) genuine

numeral classifiers (Greenberg 1972, fn5; Cinque and Krapova 2007) is essentially a ‘non

numeral classifier’ language.

4 Although (6)a and b are felt as awkward by some speakers, Richard Kayne tells me that for

him they are not completely impossible. The Bulgarian examples in (7) are from Cinque and

Krapova (2007).

Are all languages ‘Numeral Classifier Languages’?

121

(6) a I lived in London (for) three (*beautiful) years

b Three (*beautiful) years ago I was in London

(7) a Živjax tri (*prekrasni) godini v London

I lived three (beautiful) years in London

b Predi tri (*prekrasni) godini bjax v London

before three (beautiful) years I was in London

‘Three (beautiful) years ago I was in London’

These facts suggest that in this usage Italian anno, English year, and Bulgarian

godina, are really numeral classifiers in (5), (6), and (7), like Thai pi·is in (2).

The fact that when they are used as arguments (say as objects of a transitive

verb), they can be modified by adjectives (see (8), (9), and (10)), further suggests

that they can also be ordinary nouns; which recalls the case of so-called ‘self-

classifiers’ or ‘repeaters’ in many ‘numeral classifier languages’ (see (11), from

Simpson 2005, 832), except that in Italian, English, or Bulgarian, either the noun or

the classifier, but not both, can be pronounced:5

(8) Ho passato/trascorso tre bellissimi anni a Londra

I spent three beautiful years in London

(9) I spent three beautiful years in London

(10) Prekarax tri prekrasni godini v London

I spent three beautiful years in London

(11) a hoong saam hoong (Thai)

room three CL-room

‘three rooms’

b cun ta cun (Burmese)

island one CL-island

‘one island’

If this interpretation of the facts is plausible, then the conclusion is that even

traditional ‘non numeral classifier’ languages are numeral classifier languages, with

mostly abstract, or non pronounced, classifiers.6

5 Perhaps, in the adverbial classifier usage of these nouns, the noun itself raises to the classifier

head, as Simpson (2005) suggested for Thai.

6 See Kayne (2003), who argues for the existence of a non pronounced numeral classifier

‘year’ in English (in expressions like I am seven, at the age of seven, etc.), and Kayne (2005),

more generally, on the role of non pronounced functional elements in the languages of the

world.

Guglielmo Cinque

122

References

Allan, Keith (1977) “Classifiers” Language 53. 285-311.

Cheng, Lisa Lai-Sheng and Rint Sybesma (1999) “Bare and Not-So-Bare Nouns and the Structure

of NP” Linguistic Inquiry 30. 509-542.

Cinque, Guglielmo and Iliyana Krapova (2007) “A Note on Bulgarian Numeral Classifiers”, in G.

Alboiu, A.A. Avram, L. Avram, D. Isac (eds.) Pitar Moş: A Building With a View.

Papers in Honour of Alexandra Cornilescu. Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din

Bucureşti, pp. 45-51.

Goral, Donald N. (1978) “Numerical Classifier Systems: A Southeast Asian Cross-Linguistic

Analysis” Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 4 (1) 1-72.

Greenberg, Joseph H. (1972) “Numeral Classifiers and Substantival Number: Problems in the

Genesis of a Linguistic Type” Working Papers on Language Universals 9. 1-39.

Greenberg, Joseph H. (1975) “Dynamic Aspects of Word Order in Numeral Classifier”, in C. Li

(ed.) Word Order and Word Order Change. Austin, University of Texas Press, pp. 27-46.

Haas, Mary (1942) “The Use of Numeral Classifiers in Thai” Language 18. 201-205.

Kayne, Richard S. (2003) “Silent Years, Silent Hours”, in L.-O. Delsing, C. Falk, G. Josefsson, H.

Sigurdsson (eds.) Grammar in Focus. Festschrift for Christer Platzack 18 November

2003. Vol. II. Lund, Wallin and Dalholm, pp. 209-226.

Kayne, Richard S. (2005) “Some Notes on Comparative Syntax, with Special Reference to

English and French”, in G. Cinque and R.S. Kayne (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of

Comparative Syntax. New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 3-69.

Kruspe, Nicole (2004) A Grammar of Semelai. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Manley, Timothy M. (1972) Outline of Sre Structure. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press.

Simpson, Andrew (2005) “Classifiers and DP Structure in Southeast Asia”, in G. Cinque and R.S.

Kayne (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax. New York, Oxford

University Press, pp. 806-838.

Thomas, David D. (1971) Chrau Grammar. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press.

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Subjectless language: syntactic aspects of Samuel Beckett’s “Rockaby” Focus in the IP: the Particle ma in Florentine Developmental patterns in the acquisition of complement clitic pronouns The two forms of the adjective in Korean On the Order of the Prenominal Participles in Bulgarian Squib e Discussioni Are all languages ‘Numeral Classifier Languages’?

Valentina BIANCHI Jacopo GARZONIO Cornelia HAMANN Adriana BELLETTI Soon Haeng KANG Vesselina LASKOVA Guglielmo CINQUE

RIVISTA DI GRAMMATICA GENERATIVA Volume 31, anno 2006

Cod. RGG031 ISSN 1122-4428

Cate

rina S

antinello

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