Object Clitics, Agreement and Dialectal Variation* Javier Ormazabal 1 2 & Juan Romero 2 3. Abstract

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1 Probus. International Journal of Latin and Romance Linguistics 25 (2013), DOI: /probus , [The final publication is available at Abstract Object Clitics, Agreement and Dialectal Variation* Javier Ormazabal 1 2 & Juan Romero 2 3 This article presents an analysis of object clitics in Spanish and some of its consequences for the theory of agreement and Case. On the empirical side, we present syntactic, morphological and semantic arguments supporting a mixed approach to object clitics where 3 rd person Direct Object (DO) cliticization constitutes a genuine case of Determiner movement, but other DO and Indirect Object (IO) clitics are agreement elements. Once third person object clitics are set aside, the emerging picture is a single agreement that does not discriminate between DOs and IOs in the syntax. This idea finds striking support in Basque Leísta Dialect, where there is a 3rd person DO agreement clitic that behaves in all relevant respects like all other agreement clitics. Moreover, the consequences of this analysis extend to other properties of the object relation in Spanish, such as Differential Object Marking (DOM), and dialectal variation in the clitic field. An interesting observation that arises from this study is that the agreement nature of 1 st and 2 nd person clitics and the whole series of IOs is extremely robust in Spanish and remains invariable across all the dialects analyzed. Variation is thus restricted to 3 rd person DO objects, where in contrast the changes are diverse and take very different directions, a fact that raises interesting questions related both to the historical evolution of the clitic system and to the theoretical analysis of Case and agreement. KEYWORDS: clitics, agreement, animacy, Case, Differential Object Marking (DOM), dialectal variation. 1. Introduction In the syntactic analysis of Romance clitics two have been the main hypotheses within the generative tradition since Kayne s (1975) original discussion of the topic. The movement hypothesis (Kayne 1975, 1991, Rizzi 1986, among others) analyzes clitics as pronominal elements generated in their argumental position within VP and moved to the verbal or inflectional projection. The base-generated hypothesis (among others, Strozer 1976, Aoun 1981, Jaeggli 1982) in its modern version argues that Romance clitics are agreement markers attached to inflectional heads (Borer 1984, Saltarelli 1987, Suñer 1988, Fernández Soriano 1989, Franco 1993, Sportiche 1993, Fontana 1993, Landa 1995, Barbosa 2000, Anderson 2005, among others). 1 University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) 2 Basque Group of Theoretical Linguistics (HiTT) 3 University of Extremadura (UNEX)

2 Both hypotheses share the underlying assumption that object clitics form a uniform class with respect to the issues at stake. More recently, an alternative, mixed, analysis has arisen that postulates a different division of work among clitics and suggests that Romance clitics are not as uniform a class as we would expect even within the same language (Uriagereka 1988, 1995; Roca 1992, 1996; Torrego 1998, Bleam 2000, Ormazabal and Romero 2002, Schroten 2010, among others). In particular, the idea is that 3 rd person Direct Object (DO) cliticization in Standard Spanish constitutes a genuine case of Determiner movement, but other DO clitics and Indirect Object (IO) clitics are of a very different nature, most probably agreement-like elements. The immediate descriptive goal of this paper is to present syntactic, morphological and semantic arguments supporting a specific version of this view, where all the agreement-type clitics constitute a single system, which does not discriminate between DOs and IOs in the syntax. Once this system is well established, we explore in more detail the properties of object clitics from that mixed perspective, and analyze its effects on microdialectal variation. An interesting observation that arises from this study is that the agreement nature of 1 st and 2 nd person clitics and the whole series of IOs is extremely robust in Spanish and remains invariable across all the dialects analyzed. Variation is thus restricted to 3 rd person DO objects, where in contrast the changes are diverse and take very different directions, a fact that raises interesting questions related both to the historical evolution of the clitic system and to the theoretical analysis of Case and agreement. The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, heavily based on work by Roca (1996), we argue that syntactic, morphological and semantic differences between 3 rd person DO clitics, lo(s)/la(s), and IO clitic le(s) support the mixed analysis. We also extend the analysis to the entire paradigm, including 1 st and 2 nd person object clitics; we conclude that, except for 3 rd person DO clitics, all the other clitics in the DO and IO series are agreement markers. 4 In section 3 we analyze the properties of a Spanish dialect spoken in the Basque Country, which differs from Standard Spanish in one crucial respect: it 4 We leave aside the clitic se in all its uses. However, it has to be noted that there are two cases where se clearly satisfies an object role. First, when it works as a DO/IO reflexive. In this function, it behaves as a base generated clitic. The other case involves spurious se, for which there is no single reason that we know of to suppose that its use is syntactically relevant. 2

3 splits 3 rd person DO clitics into two groups, the inanimate series lo(s)/la(s) and the animate one le(s). We show that the animate clitics in this dialect behave in all relevant respects like all other agreement clitics. This dialect fills up the gap observed in the paradigm in Standard Spanish corresponding to 3 rd person DO agreement, paving the path for a unification of the DO and IO agreement paradigm. Section 4 analyzes the distribution of the Differential Object Marker (DOM) a in Spanish. We present a novel paradigm concerning the interaction of this mechanism and se-constructions that supports the hypothesis that there is a single Case/agreement system for the internal arguments of the verb. Our analysis extends naturally to account for unexpected cases of A-marking into inanimate arguments previously observed in the literature but never before accounted for, and cases of clitic doubling in the same inanimate contexts in the Basque leísta dialect. As we argue, they all involve Raising-to-Object, which makes our analysis in terms of Case and Agreement better suited to account for these constructions than morphological analyses based on the animacy specifications of DOM and object clitic le(s). In section 5 we incorporate the properties of two dialects of Spanish that followed different paths in the diachronic evolution and, as a result, show mixed properties in very different ways. On the one hand, we analyze a different leísta dialect of Spanish, which we call Central Peninsular leísta dialect; we extensively show that this dialect has developed a determiner-type clitic that is specified for animacy. Secondly, we discuss the main properties of the clitic system in Rioplatense Spanish, as described by Zdrojewski (2008). We conclude minimally modifying his proposal that third person DO clitics in this dialect are ambiguous between a determiner-like and an agreement-like clitic. Section 6 sketches the Case/Agreement system that comes out from our proposal, and briefly links the result to our previous work on agreement. 2. The Spanish Clitic System Revisited The goal of this section is to present evidence supporting the idea that object clitics in Spanish involve two different systems. In particular, we show that 3 rd person DO clitics lo(s)/la(s) contrast with IO clitics, as well as with the rest of DO ones in a number of morphosyntactic and semantic properties: the availability of clitic doubling, the encoding of morphological features, their interpretive restrictions, and their behavior in clitic clusters. Reformulating various proposals in the literature, we argue that these 3

4 differences support the view according to which 3 rd person DO clitics are incorporated determiners, while the rest of the clitics are better understood as agreement markers Clitic Doubling : differences between 3rd person Direct and Indirect Objects One of the main properties that have centered the discussion on the nature of clitics is clitic doubling. Defenders of the movement approach have highlighted the general absence of clitic doubling in languages like Italian or French. In contrast, those who argue for the base-generation view tend to focus on its existence in many contexts in other Romance languages. Both views seem to be partially right concerning a subset of the data. The case of Standard Spanish is particularly interesting in that respect, given that it shows a different behavior depending on the type of clitic involved and the syntactic context where it appears. Consider the example in (1). 5 (1) Les recomendé un libro a los estudiantes 3pIO recommended.i a book A the students I recommended the students a book The presence of the full DP los estudiantes ( the students ) in the argument position makes that position in principle unavailable as the source of the 3 rd person IO clitic, a fact that seems to suggest that the clitic is base-generated somewhere in the inflectional head to which it appears attached, triggering an agreement relation with the NP in the argument position. Yet, if that is correct, the agreement analysis does not extend to 3 rd person DO clitics in Standard Spanish, where the object clitic and the DP do not coappear in general: (2) (*La) vimos la casa 3fsDO saw.we the house 5 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses: 1, 2, 3 = first, second, third person respectively; s = singular; p = plural, f = feminine, m = masculine, a = animate, df = default, IO = Indirect Object, DO = Direct Object, RFL = reflexive, SUBJ=subjunctive, arb = arbitrary. Subject agreement in the verb is glossed by the corresponding English pronoun preceded with a dot, except in the case of the examples with the impersonal construction where a more detailed information is important for our argument. We also use BLD for Basque leísta dialect and CPLD for Central Peninsular leísta dialect. The animacy/case marker a that appears with animate specific direct objects in Spanish has been left untranslated and is represented by the small capital A. For reasons that will become clear in the discussion in section 4, the same notation has been extended to clitic doubled IOs, as in (1) in the text. Whenever possible, we also translated these constructions with the corresponding DOC in English. For the same reasons, our analysis does not distinguish between DO and IO agreement clitics, as will become clear from our argumentation,. However, we keep the distinction in the glosses to facilitate the comprehension to the reader. 4

5 We saw the house The same contrast extends to a large variety of syntactic and semantic configurations, as widely observed in the literature (see especially Roca 1996 for discussion). It is not our intention to discuss the nature of Spanish clitic lo(s)/la(s) in detail here. Various authors have argued that they belong to the category Determiner (see specially Uriagereka 1988, 1995; Roca 1992, 1996; Torrego 1998, Bleam 2000 and references therein). The same authors extensively argue that the few contexts where DO clitic doubling is obligatory (Clitic Left Dislocation [3a], and strong pronouns [3b]) or possible (universal quantifier todo [3c]), do not constitute counterexamples to this analysis: (3) a. La casa todavía no *(la) he visto The house still not 3fsDO have.i seen The house, I haven t seen it yet b. *(La) vimos a ella 3fsDO saw.we A her We saw HER c. Ayer (los) vimos todos yesterday 3mpDO saw.we all We saw them all yesterday These authors, as well as many others (see especially Rigau 1988; Suñer 1988; Luján 1984; Fernández Soriano 1993) present different analyses to clitic doubling in (3a-b) wholly compatible with the determiner hypothesis. 6 Furthermore, as we show next, the distributional properties of the quantifier todo(s) ( every ) strongly support the determiner nature of 3 rd person DO clitics, minimally contrasting with their IO counterparts. First note that as observed by Roca (1992, 1996), the universal quantifier in Spanish is the only one that selects a complement headed by the definite determiner, i.e. that heads a construction of the type in (4), a contrast illustrated in (5): (4) [ Quantifier [Det NP]] 6 Concerning (3a), there is general agreement in that the DP la casa ( the house ) is in a left-dislocated position, and that the clitic is the argumental element. With respect to (3b), Rigau (1988) and Roca (1992, 1996) argue that strong pronouns are not in argument position, in which case the real argument would be, once again, the clitic. On the other hand, Uriagereka (1995, 1997) and Bleam (2000) propose a more complex structure of DP including an internal small clause, associated to the integral relation, where the pronoun occupies the specifier position of IntP. See references for details and discussion. 5

6 (5) a. Vimos todos *(los) libros Saw.we all the books We saw all the books b. Vimos algunos/bastantes/suficientes/muchos (*los) libros saw.we some /quite /enough /a lot the books We saw some/quite a lot/enough/a lot of books As he notes, this difference correlates with the fact that the universal quantifier is the only one that doubles. 7 (6) a. Los vimos todos 3mpDO saw.we all We saw them all b. * Los vimos algunos/bastantes/suficientes/muchos 3mpDO saw.we some /quite /enough /a lot We saw them some/quite a lot/enough/a lot In this context, there is an interesting contrast between DOs and IOs when the universal quantifier appears restricted by a strong pronoun. Consider the following minimal pair: (7) a. (Los) he comprado todos (los= los libros) 3mpDO have.i bought all (3mpDO= the books) I have bought them all b. (*Los) he comprado todos ellos 3mpDO have.i bought all them I have bought them all As shown in (7b), the presence of the strong pronoun is not compatible with the presence of the accusative clitic (see Bosque 2010, p. 320). 8 If we turn now to the dative paradigm we find that the non-doubled version is ungrammatical, but the doubled version is now perfectly grammatical: (8) *(Les) he pegado pegatinas a todos ellos (les= a los libros) 3pIO have-i stuck stickers A all-mp them-mp (3mpIO= A the books) I stuck stickers in all of them 7 As observed by an anonymous reviewer, clitic doubling is not obligatory in this context. As Olga Fernández Soriano observes to us, the quantifier may appear nondoubled when it refers to an unspecified set of objects: 8 (i) Tengo el primero, el segundo, el tercero,... tengo todos Have.I the first, the second, the third,... Have.I all I have the first one, the second one, the third one,... I have (them) all As far as we know, the properties of todos ellos ( them all ) have not been discussed in the literature; they are rather peculiar. In particular, this is the only case we are aware of where a strong pronoun in object position may refer to an inanimate argument. We leave this issue for further research. 6

7 The contrast between (7b) and (8) shows that 3 rd person DO and IO clitics are different types of morphosyntactic elements, and suggests a determiner-like distribution of lo(s)/la(s) and an agreement like analysis of le(s), a proposal supported by other differences between the two clitic systems, as we argue next The Morphology of 3 rd person DO clitics and determiners: gender marking An important respect in which Spanish DO clitics pair together with determiners is their morphological feature specification. Both DO clitics lo(s)/la(s) and determiners are marked for number and gender. (9) a. La vimos (e.g. the girl) 3fsDO saw.we We saw her b. Lo vimos (e.g. the boy) 3msDO saw.we We saw him In contrast neither IO clitics nor the subject agreement paradigm specify gender as part of their formal feature cluster. This parallelism is even stronger when we consider the definite neuter determiner lo. Since in Spanish there are no neuter nouns, this determiner is only used in combination with an adjectival or, in some restricted contexts, with a clausal complement: (10) Lo más hermoso de la primavera eres tú The-neuter most beautiful of the spring are you The most beautiful thing in the spring is you The same form appears in both determiner (10) and clitic position (11). 9 (11) a. No creo que vaya a venir Not believe-i that is-subjunctive to come I do not believe that he/she is coming b. No lo creo Not 3msDO believe I do not believe it In fact, abstracting away from the difference in the masculine singular (a historical accident related to stress), the forms are exactly the same for both the clitic and the determiner paradigms Picallo (2002) gives additional arguments showing the determiner nature of this neuter clitic; she also argues that this clitic lacks person features. 7

8 10 Spanish is by no means special in the Romance clitic system. In the entire family determiners and 3 rd person object clitics share their origin and, with some differences, their morphological shape and general properties. See, among many others, Lapesa (1968) and Bleam (2000) for Spanish, Uriagereka (1995) for Galician, and Renzi (1997), Giusti (2001) and references cited there for formal analyses that take into consideration some relevant diachronic and comparative details. See also footnote 25 for details. 8

9 Table 1. Determiners and Object Clitics Masculine Feminine Neuter Singular Plural Singular Plural Determiner el los la las lo Clitic lo los la las lo From a historical point of view, the fact that the two paradigms overlap is not at all surprising, since they share the same demonstrative origin. However, the IO forms also shares the same diachronic origin (see footnote 10 below and references there), and nevertheless they have dissociated and pattern together with first and second person clitics. In particular, as examples in (12) show, IO clitics are indifferent to the distinction between feminine and masculine and are marked morphologically only for number: (12) a. Le di el libro a María/a Juan 3sIO gave the book A María/ A Juan I gave Mary/John the book b. Les di el libro a mis hermanas/ hermanos 3pIO gave the book A my.pl sisters / brothers I gave my sisters/brothers the book This suggests that they passed the cliticization stage and became agreement morphemes, a rather common process in many languages of the world Restrictions on the range of DPs The behavior of 3rd person DO and IO clitics not only differs syntactically and morphologically, but also semantically, and the range of DPs allowed to corefer with the DO clitic is narrower than the ones allowed by the IO clitic. There is a structural complication that makes a straightforward comparison of these structures difficult, 11 The diachronic change strong pronoun > clitic > agreement marker a particular case of the so-called cline of grammaticality (Hooper & Trauggot 2003) is a very common process in the languages of the world, and has been documented in a variety of unrelated language families including, among many others, Bantu (e.g. Bresnan & Mchombo 1987), Semitic (e.g. Fashi Fehri 1981, 1988), Celtic (e.g. McCoone 2006), Romance (e.g. Lapesa 1968, Renzi 1997), Haitian Creole (DeGraff 1994) and Basque (e.g. Gómez & Sáinz 1995). See Hooper & Trauggot (2003) for a recent typological approach to the phenomenon. 9

10 because lo(s)/la(s) do not allow doubling of the argument, but an argument may be constructed that shows the contrast also in this respect. First, note that definite DPs are allowed in Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) constructions in Spanish with both DO and IO clitic doubling: (13) a. El libro lo han vendido The book 3msDO have-they sold The book, they sold it b. A la hija del rector le han dado el título A the daughter of.the rector 3sIO have-they given the degree To the rector s daughter they gave the degree What is interesting is that, when the dislocated element is a negative quantified DP, there is a clear contrast in that 3 rd person IO clitics can double dislocated negative DPs but DO clitics cannot: (14) a. * Ningún libro lo han vendido None book 3msDO have-they sold b. A ninguna estudiante le han dado el título A none student 3sIO have-they given the degree No student they gave the degree The ungrammaticality of (14a) cannot be attributed to an absolute ban against CLLD with 3rd person DO clitics, because (13a), with the definite description, is grammatical. It cannot be due to an impossibility for the negative DP to appear in the left-dislocated position, because ninguna estudiante ( no student ) is perfectly ok in that position in (14b). The natural conclusion to draw from the paradigm is that what fails in this case is the connection between the dislocated DP and the clitic. This conclusion is totally coherent with Roca s (1996) results that the semantic range of the clitic lo(s)/la(s) coincides with those found with the definite determiner. In any case, the important observation to draw from the paradigm in (13)-(14) is that 3 rd person IO clitics allow a wider range of DPs as potential antecedents than DO ones do. 12 In sum, there are reasons to assume that third person DO and IO clitics in Standard Spanish differ radically in a set of properties, the former belonging to the Determiner system. In the next subsections we will show that all first and second person clitics in both the IO and the DO paradigms-- pattern together with IO clitics. 12 See next section and, especially, Roca 1996 for a more complete paradigm concerning the range of DPs. In contrast, the behavior of IO clitics mirrors that of subject agreement. 10

11 2.4. The other persons: first and second vs. third person DO 1 st and 2 nd person DO clitics clearly differ from 3 rd person DO clitics and converge with IO clitics in all respects analyzed in the previous subsections: doubling, morphological features and interpretive restrictions. In particular, they do not show any restriction on the type of argument they can double. They clearly double definite DPs and quantified expressions headed by quantifiers other than todos ( all ): (15) a. Os han visto a los niños (cfr. (2)) 2pDO have- they seen A the children They saw you the children b. Os vimos a algunos/muchos niños (cfr. (5b)) 2pDO saw.we A some / many children We saw some/many of you children They also double Wh-phrases, minimally contrasting with 3 rd person DO clitics: (16) a. A quiénes/ cuántos os han elegido para el puesto? A who.pl/how many 2pDO have.they selected for the position Who/how many (of you) did they chose for the position? b. * A quiénes/cuántos los han elegido para el puesto? A who.pl/how many 3pDO have selected for the position Who/how many did they chose for the position? Contextually, it is more difficult to find nondefinite interpretations for 1 st and 2 nd person argument than for 3 rd person ones; yet, when this difficulty is controlled for 1 st and 2 nd DO clitic doubling shows the same lack of restrictions as IO ones and may appear in contexts where DO clitics would never appear: (17) a. No os encontraron a nadie /ninguno (cfr. (14a)) Not 2pDO found.they A nobody/none They found none of you b. Me han dicho que os han pillado a unos fumando 1sIO have-they told that 2pDO have-they catch A a-pl smoking I was told that some people (you included) have been caught smoking Following the same logic proposed for 3 rd person DO and IO clitics, 1 st and 2 nd person DO clitics should be treated together with all IO clitics as belonging to the same paradigm. This conclusion is reinforced by the facts concerning the combination of the universal quantifier and strong pronouns mentioned in sec As expected, first and second DO pronouns, contrary to third person ones, demand the presence of the clitic: 11

12 (18) a. * (Nos) han pillado a todos nosotros (cfr. (7b)) 1pDO have.they caught A all us They have caught us all out b. *(Os) han visto a todos vosotros 2pDO have.they seen A all you They have seen you all Next, we show that this distinction between 3 rd person DO clitics, on the one hand, and the rest of the object clitics, on the other, is also supported by the way these clitics interact in clitic clusters The Object Agreement Constraint The Object Agreement Constraint (OAC) is an extension of the me-lui constraint, a restriction originally observed by Perlmutter (1971) in Spanish and French but attested in the grammar of numerous languages consisting in a general gap in the combination of possible clitic and agreement clusters. In a nutshell, this constraint distinguishes between 3 rd person and 1 st /2 nd person DO clitics in ditransitive structures. While 3 rd person DO clitics are compatible with the presence of an IO clitic in the same cluster (19), 1 st and 2 nd DO clitics can never co-occur with an argumental dative clitic (20). 13 (19) a. Pedro te lo envía [Spanish] Pedro 2sIO 3msDO send.he Pedro sends it to you b. Pedro me lo envía Pedro 1sIO 3msDO send.he Pedro sends it/him to me (20) a. * Pedro te me envía Pedro 2sIO 1sDO send.he Pedro sends me to you b. * Pedro te le envía Pedro 2sDO 3sIO send.he Peter sends you to him Bonet (1991) links this constraint to a similar restriction systematically applying in rich agreement languages, and in the last years there is a considerable number of works that extensively argue that it is a syntactic restriction related to the structural properties of ditransitive constructions when both DO and IO arguments enter 13 In languages that make a distinction between animate and inanimate 3 rd person objects, animates pattern together with 1 st and 2 nd person (Ormazabal & Romero 2007), an issue to which we will come back in the next sections. 12

13 into agreement/structural Case relations. 14 In Ormazabal and Romero (2007) we also extend the empirical scope of the phenomenon considerably. The relevant observation here is that once again all DO-IO clitic combinations are banned except when the DO clitic is 3 rd person lo(s)/la(s), which indicates that the last ones are external to the clitic agreement system altogether Concluding remarks From the discussion in this section we can conclude that 3 rd person DO clitics in Spanish show properties and licensing conditions that set them apart from their IO counterparts, as well as from 1 st and 2 nd person clitics in both series. Table 2. Properties of Standard Spanish clitics IO clitics DO clitics 1 st, 2 nd 3 rd 1 st, 2 nd 3 rd pers. lo (m.), la sg: me, te, le me, te, (fem.) pl.: nos, os les nos, os los, las Doubling yes yes yes no Gender no no no yes Range of DPs FULL FULL FULL NARROW OAC violations effects yes yes yes no In the following sections we explore in more detail the properties of the clitic system from this mixed perspective, and analyze its effect on microdialectal variation. An interesting observation that arises from this study is that the agreement nature of 1 st and 2 nd person clitics and the whole series of IOs is extremely robust in Spanish and remains almost invariable across all the dialects analyzed. Variation is thus restricted to 3 rd person DO objects, where in contrast the changes are diverse and take very different directions. At the same time, although from a diachronic and dialectal perspective the 14 Since Bonet s (1991) formulation of the generalization as the Person Case Constraint, which unifies quite a lot of phenomena in clitic clusters and rich agreement environments, in the last years an extensive literature has been produced that argues for its syntactic nature related to Case/agreement. See, among many others, Ormazabal & Romero 1998, 2007, Anagnastopoulou 2002, Béjar & Rezac 2003, 2009, Karimi 2010, Rezac 2010, Preminger 2011, Walkow 2012, as well as the collection of papers in D Alessandro et al and references therein. Also see section 6 below. Albizu 1997, although framed in a morphological analysis, already anticipates many of the syntactic features developed in more recent proposals. 13

14 system could be perceived as being very unstable in this particular area, internally each dialect shows a high degree of coherence and systematic behavior. 3. Multiple Agreement in Spanish and 3 rd Person DO Agreement In section 2 we have extensively argued that all object clitics in Spanish except 3 rd person DO clitics are agreement markers base-generated in the verbal or inflectional head; that includes 1 st and 2 nd DO clitics and the entire IO series. In this section we concentrate on two aspects of the system as considered so far: the apparent gap left in the paradigm by 3 rd person DO, on the one hand, and the similarities between the DO and IO agreement. Our main goal is not only to establish that we are dealing with a genuine, well-behaved, agreement system; but this state of affairs also allows us to go one step further and propose a single agreement paradigm and, consequently, a single agreement relation/position for DO and IO arguments, a conclusion that has important theoretical consequences both concerning linguistic change and the theory of agreement. If our results so far are correct, it can be argued that languages like Spanish show a multiple agreement pattern, quite close to the system of well established multiple agreement languages such as Quechua, Georgian or Basque, as extensively argued in some previous works (see Franco 1993 and Ormazabal and Romero 1998, and references there). Table 3 reflects the three-way agreement system we postulate for Standard Spanish as a starting point. 15 Table 3: Spanish Agreement System DO Agreement clitics IO Agreement clitics Subject Agreement Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural 1 st person me nos me nos -o -mos 2 nd person te os te os -s -is 3 rd person le les -- -n 15 The subject agreement paradigm is more complex than suggested in the text. The paradigm in the table corresponds to the present tense of the first conjugation, and what often appears as the 3rd person agreement marker corresponds to the thematic vowel. 14

15 From a purely morphological point of view, table 3 reveals an almost complete similarity between the DO and the IO agreement system, while the subject agreement seems to go in a different direction. This is confirmed by other properties of the two groups such as the position each occupies with respect to the verbal root. But the table also reveals an interesting division in the 3 rd person of DO and IO agreements: there is a gap in the paradigm in that 3 rd person DOs are the only arguments that are excluded from the agreement relation with the verbal system. The lack of agreement with 3 rd person DOs is not in any way an oddity of the Spanish clitic-system; it pairs together in that respect with many well-established agreement systems where third person, both in subject and object agreement also lacks a specific marker, a fact known since the seminal work of Benveniste (1966) that is often represented by coding a -morpheme. But the situation is a bit more complex; in fact, that conclusion clearly holds in Standard Spanish, but not in the leísta dialect spoken in the North of Spain, which, for the sake of the exposition, we will dub Basque Leísta Dialect (BLD). 16 The characteristic property of this dialect is that a distinction is systematically made in the 3 rd person DO system between animate and inanimate objects. When the object is not marked for animacy, these dialects follow the standard lo(s)/la(s) clitic system; when it is animate, they make use of the clitic le(s): 17 (21) a. Lo vi (*el libro) 3msDO saw.i (the book) I saw it b. Le vi (al niño/a la niña) 16 The term leísmo covers a wide range of phenomena in the crossroad of Case, animacy, person and number of internal argument representation. In some leísta dialects, the clitic forms le (singular) and les (plural) are used for all masculine 3 rd person forms of direct and for indirect objects, and therefore they do not make any distinction between animate/inanimate, or accusative/dative objects. In other areas the use of clitics lo and le clearly makes a distinction between inanimate and animate objects. These areas can furthermore be split between those that allow clitic doubling, and those that do not, and in some other intricate ways. For the ease of exposition, we first deal with BLD, which allows doubling, and leave the details and the discussion of Central Peninsular leísta dialects until section 5, where we deal with some of these intricacies. See also Landa (1995), Fernández-Ordóñez (1999), Bleam (2000) and references there for an extensive description of these dialectal differences and their theoretical consequences. 17 In section 4 we show that there are very specific syntactic configurations where the clitic le may stand for (and double) an inanimate DO argument in BLD, a fact that will turn out to be crucial evidence in support of our general approach. However, until we present the relevant evidence, we maintain the standard description on the animacy feature associated to le. 15

16 3saDO saw.i (the boy/the girl) I saw him/her/the boy/the girl Clearly, this cannot be considered just a morphological choice, since its consequences expand through the entire system. [+animate] DO clitics behave exactly like other agreement clitics, radically contrasting with the other 3 rd person DO clitic lo(s)/la(s), which keep the same general properties they have in Standard Spanish. First, regarding its morphological shape, 3 rd person animate object le(s) in these dialects are the same as the 3 rd person IO ones, which belong to the agreement paradigm together with the other agreement clitics me and te. Second, in contrast to Standard Spanish, these dialects do not discriminate between masculine and feminine DO forms in the animate series. Third, as (21b) illustrates, DO 3 rd person animate le-clitics can be doubled (Franco 1993, Franco and Mejías-Bikandi 1995, Landa 1995), contrasting in that respect with non-animate ones. Finally contrary to what has been said in the literature (see especially Bleam 2000), DO [+animate] clitics in BLD do not show the same interpretive restrictions 3 rd person DO clitics lo(s)/la(s) do. Remember from our discussion in section 2.3 that 3 rd person DO clitics co-occur with a narrower range of DPs than the rest of the clitics in Standard Spanish. In particular, example (14a), repeated in (22), shows that lo(s)/la(s) cannot refer to a negative quantifier in a CLLD configuration. As (23) illustrates, 3 rd person animate DO clitic le in BLD is not restricted. (23a) shows a case completely parallel to (22), where the quantified phrase is left dislocated, but the clitic le(s) is grammatical; in (23b), also grammatical, the clitic doubles the negative quantifier: (22) * Ningún libro lo han visto en la universidad None book 3msDO have-they seen in the university (23) a. A ningún estudiante le han visto en la universidad A none student 3sIO have-they seen in the university None of the students they saw at the university b. No le han visto a ningún estudiante en la universidad Not 3sIO have-they seen A no student in the university They saw no student at the university In other words, lo(s)/la(s) clitics in these dialects have the same set of properties as in Standard Spanish, but le(s) behaves together with IO le(s) and 1 st /2 nd clitics in general. There is another interesting respect in which DO clitics le(s) and lo(s)/la(s) differ in leísta dialects: when combined with other agreement clitics, animate 3 rd person 16

17 DO clitic le(s) shows me-lui (OAC) effects, as illustrated in (24) from Ormazabal and Romero (1998; 2007): (24) a. Le llevé a tu hijo a casa 3saDO brought.i A your son to home I brought your son home b. Te (*le) llevé (a) tu hijo a casa 2sIO 3saDO brought.i A your son to home I brought you your son home Interestingly, to avoid me-lui effects, BLD makes use of an alternative strategy: the use of the Determiner-like clitic lo referring to the animate object. It is important to note that this is possibly the only context where the use of the non-agreement clitic to refer to animates sounds completely natural for many BLD speakers, not having any normative connotation. (25) Te lo llevé a casa 2sIO 3msDO brought.i to home I brought you it/him (home) But the choice of the clitic lo is more than just a morphological strategy to avoid the melui combinations; it comes together with the syntactic consequences associated to this choice: clitic doubling is again impossible, as illustrated in (26). (26) * Te lo llevé al /el niño a casa 2sIO 3msDO brought.i A.the/the child to home I brought you the child home Moreover, following our discussion in section 2, the construction gets restricted once again to contexts where the interpretation is compatible with the determiner-like clitic lo. Thus, in a me-lui Repair environment the sentence is ungrammatical when the clitic corefers with a dislocated indefinite NP (27a), but grammatical if the corefering element is a dislocated or an implicit definite DP (27b): (27) a. * A unos estudiantes nos los han enviado desde la universidad A some students 1pIO 3pmDO have.they sent from the university Some students were sent to us from the university b. A tus estudiantes nos los han enviado desde la universidad A your students 1pIO 3pmDO have.they sent from the university Your students, they were sent to us from the university Finally, animate clitic le(s) contrasts with lo(s)/la(s) in that it is necessary with the strong pronoun headed by a universal quantifier: (28) a. * Los he comprado todos ellos [= Standard Spanish (7b)]] 3mpDO have.i bought all them 17

18 I have bought them all b. Les han pillado a todos ellos [see (18a-b)] 3pDO have.they caught A all them They have caught them all In sum, as table 4 illustrates, the properties of the two clitics strongly support our claim that while le in BLD is an agreement marker lo(s)/la(s) are uniformly determiner-like clitics in this dialect, even in those restricted contexts where they refer to animate objects. 18

19 Table 4. Properties of Basque Spanish clitics IO clitics DO clitics 1 st, 2 nd 3 rd 1 st, 2 nd 3 rd animate 3 rd inanimate sg: me, te, pl.: nos, os le les me, te, nos, os le les lo (m.), la (fem.) los, las Doubling yes yes yes yes no Gender no no no no yes Range of DPs FULL FULL FULL FULL NARROW OAC violations effects yes yes yes yes no In addition to filling up the gap we originally had in the paradigm (cfr. table 3), this dialect presents an additional point of interest: in BLD the distribution of agreement clitics comes close to that of the Differential Object Marker (DOM) a in all dialects of Spanish. This opens a way to treat DOM in a formal and unified analysis together with agreement clitics. In the next section we explore the interrelation between Case, as manifested by the marker a, and agreement, as manifested in the clitic paradigm. The analysis of DOM uncovers new interesting relations between the two systems and, at the same time, it allows us to set the basis for the analysis of microdialectal differences we develop in section 5, where we deal with a different leísta dialect and a different agreement clitic system. 4. Differential Object Marking and Clitics A property of Spanish distinguishing it from other Romance languages is the presence of a marker a introducing animate specific DOs. The nature of this element has been the center of much debate in the Romance literature, and it has often been assimilated to other cases of Differential Object Marking (DOM). 18 What interests us is the interaction 18 The description in the text is a simplification of the properties that govern the introduction of the marker a in Spanish. The literature on the topic is huge, and many are the factors that have been adduced to determine its distribution (see the collection of articles in Pensado 1995 and in Probus 20.1 and references there, as well as Torrego 1998, Leonetti 2003, 2008, Rodriguez-Mondoñedo 2007 and Zdrojewski 2008, among many others). In this paper we are only concerned with some syntactic effects resulting from the interaction of a with the clitic system, and do not have anything particularly insightful to say concerning the relevant features that govern its presence/absence with DOs. 19

20 of this animacy marker with dative clitics. On the basis of (i) their agreement behavior in contexts where se-constructions and datives are combined, and (ii) their presence with inanimates in raising-to-o contexts, we argue that A-marked DOs maintain a Case relation with the verbal complex that regular inanimate DOs do not maintain The Marker A and agreement A clear context where the Differential Object Marker a is possible for all, and obligatory for most speakers of Spanish is with animate specific objects, as in (29a), which clearly contrasts with the impossibility of regular inanimate DOs headed by a. (29) a. He encontrado *(a) la niña Have.I found A-the child-fem I found the girl b. He encontrado (*a) el libro Have.I found A the book I found the book The presence of the animacy marker in these configurations is independent of whether that object may be doubled by an agreement clitic or not. This is shown by the fact that a must appear in contexts where no clitic doubling appears (29a), as well as when the animate specific object is doubled by an agreement clitic: (30a) corresponds to BLD where animate object clitic doubling is in most cases obligatory (see section 3), and (30b) is a context of 2 nd person DO agreement in all dialects, as discussed in section 2.4: (30) a. Le he encontrado *(a) la niña (BLD) 3saDO have.i found A the child.fem I found the girl b. Os veré *(a) los que vengáis a la reunión (all dialects) 2pDO willsee.i A the-mpl that come.you to the meeting I will see those of you that come to the meeting Interestingly, the only context where a cannot precede animate specific DOs is when combined with a doubled IO, as in (31b): (31) a. Enviaron *(a) los enfermos a la doctora sent.they A the sick.people to the doctor They sent the sick people to the doctor b. Le enviaron (*a) los enfermos a la doctora 3sIO sent.they A the sick.people A the doctor They sent the doctor the sick people 20

21 The contrast in (31a-b) shows that the relation between the verb and the DO changes completely in the presence of the dative clitic. 19 Although in this case the animate DO does not show an overt agreement marker in the verb, the situation is very similar to the OAC discussed above in that the ban on the presence of the marker a in the DO argument is triggered by the agreement relation of the dative argument with the verb. This suggests that some Case relation holds also between the verb and the animate specific DO, the animacy marker being a morphological manifestation of that relation, as already proposed by some authors in the literature (see, for instance, López 2008). When there is no dative clitic, specific animate objects receive accusative Case, morphologically marked by means of the DOM a. As in the case of OAC contexts, this relation is blocked when an agreeing dative is present. In that case, the animate object does not receive accusative Case from the verb, and the DOM marker disappears accordingly (compare (31) with the OAC paradigm in BLD in (24)). Support for this conclusion comes from the behaviour of animate objects in socalled se-constructions. First note that these constructions share with regular passives the property that the external argument is dropped and the internal argument raises to subject position triggering agreement with the verb (see Mendikoetxea 1999 and references there): (32) a. Se llevaron (los) regalos a la doctora SE arb took.3pl the presents to the doctor (The) presents were sent to the doctor b. * Se llevó (los) regalos a la doctora SE arb took.df the presents to the doctor Complements headed by the animacy marker are frozen in this construction and unable to raise to subject position (33a). The only option available in this case is marking the verb with a default 3 rd person singular agreement (33b). (33) a. * Se llevaron (a) los enfermos a la doctora SE arb took.3pl A the sick.people to the doctor 19 Many authors have described the restriction illustrated in (31) as the impossibility of a in the presence of an IO headed by a (see Laca 1995, Zdrojewski 2008, Saab & Zdrojewski 2011, and references there), yielding a violation of some kind of filter against double a, comparable to the double-o of Japanese. However, it is the presence of the IO agreement clitic le that makes the difference. As (31a) shows, nothing goes wrong when the dative shows up as a non-agreeing PP. In more general terms, the discussion in the text strongly suggests that the animacy marker a in Spanish is not a prepositional element and that the so-called Kayne s generalization on clitic doubling (Jaeggli 1982, Roberts 2010, among others) may be in fact a spurious generalization. 21

22 b. Se llevó a los enfermos a la doctora SE arb took.df A the sick.people to the doctor The sick people were sent to the doctor This suggests that, as we propose, the animate DO is already Case-marked and is inert for further movement to subject position. Assuming that, let us come back to the impossibility of a-marking on the animate specific DO in the presence of a dative clitic in (31). If the presence of the animacy marker a is in fact the overt indication that a Case relation has been established between the verbal complex and the argument, the impossibility of DOM with the animate specific DO in (31b) may be considered to indicate that such a relation is not possible in the context of an agreeing IO. We expect then that it will be free to raise to the subject position and agree with Tense (34a), and default agreement should not be available (34b), a prediction that is borne out: (34) a. Se le llevaron los enfermos a la doctora SE arb 3sIO took.3pl the sick.people A the doctora b. * Se le llevó los enfermos al doctor SE arb 3sIO took.df the sick-people to.the doctor The sick people were taken to the doctor We thus conclude that Case-marking in Spanish tears apart specific animate direct objects as well as indirect objects from inanimate direct objects. The analysis of DOM in the presence of dative clitics in Spanish shows that there is a tight relation between object agreement and DOM, and that a dative agreement-clitic blocks DOM on the object. This receives a straightforward explanation if in these contexts object agreement and, consequently, DOM is established with the IO, which must also be a-marked Inanimates headed by a and doubled by le Laca (1995), based on Roegiest (1979), and Zdrojewski (2008) discuss quite a few syntactic configurations where a appears with inanimate DOs virtually in all dialects of Spanish (also see Campos 1999:1543). Some of Laca s examples are repeated below: 20 Note that the prepositional variant may represent different prepositions (en in, de from, a to, etc.), but the DP in the clitic doubling construction can only appear preceded by A. See section 6 and references there for discussion. 22

23 (35) a. Emergiendo sobre una ola, veo al avión caer envuelto en llamas Emerging over a wave, see.i A.the plane fall down enveloped in flames Emerging over a wave, I see the plane fall down ablaze [Laca 1995, ex. (8b); translation and glosses ours] b. Por eso, sólo por eso, prefiero llamar historia y no novela a esta obra mía. For that, only for that, prefer.i call story and not novel A this work mine For that reason, and only for that reason, I prefer calling that work of mine story, and not novel [Roegiest 1980:145, from Laca 1995; idem] c. La tormenta dejó sin hojas a los árboles The storm left.it without leaves A the trees The storm left the trees leafless As Zdrojewski (2008) notes for Rioplatense Spanish, to which we come back in the next section, Basque Leísta Dialects (BLD) also shows clitic doubling in these contexts. Consider the following paradigm: (36) a. * Le trajeron (al avión) a través de las montañas 3saDO brought (A.the plane) across of the mountains b. El avión, lo trajeron a través de las montañas The plane, 3msDO brought.they across of the mountains The plane, they brought it across the mountains (37) Le vimos al avión caer envuelto en llamas 3saDO saw.we A.the plane fall down enveloped in flames We saw the plane fall down ablaze As we expect, in regular DO contexts, the clitic le cannot double or corefer with the inanimate el avión ( the plane ) ((36a)); instead this argument can appear in a clitic right-dislocated configuration where the clitic is the determiner-like lo (36b). In contrast, in the context of a perception verb with an infinitival complement, the inanimate DO shows up marked with DOM and doubled by the agreement-clitic le (37). As far as we can see, what all the contexts in (35)-(37) as well as the rest of the cases discussed by Laca have in common is that they all suit the conditions to be analyzed as cases of raising-to-object of the A-marked argument from an embedded position. Thus, not only do they show that the marker A, in general, and the clitic le, in BLD, are something more than a morphological manifestation of animacy, etc., but they provide direct evidence that a Case relation is established between the verbal complex and the embedded argument that is not maintained with regular DOs. In a series of articles Lasnik (see especially Lasnik and Saito 1991, Lasnik 1995, 1999) argues that 23

24 ECM-subjects undergo overt object shift in English. Based on Lasnik's arguments, Bošković (1997, 2002) shows that ECM accusative subjects and regular transitive objects behave differently in that respect: ECM-arguments are subject to obligatory object shift while regular objects do not overtly A-move to the object-agreement position except as an intermediate step of some additional movement to a higher position (Wh-movement, passive, etc.). Ormazabal and Romero (2002, 2010) and Boeckx and Hornstein (2003) have independently argued in support of this distinction, showing that the impossibility of combining ECM and DOCs illustrated in (38) derives from this difference, as a particular case of the me-lui/oac effects (see Ormazabal and Romero 2010 for discussion). (38) a. I showed you the proof b. I showed you that the defendants were guilty c. I showed the defendants to be guilty d. * I showed you the defendants to be guilty Example (38a) shows that the verb show is a Double Object-type verb; as (38b) illustrates, a clausal complement in DO position is compatible with an accusative indirect object; and example (38c) shows that the verb belongs to the ECM group as well. However, as illustrated in (38d), the combination of ECM and DOC is impossible but, given standard assumptions about the Case of ECM subjects, nothing seems to prevent it. Instead, as argued in the references above, the ungrammaticality of (38d) follows without any additional assumption if the obligatory movement of the embedded subject to the object agreement position is blocked by the presence of the dative argument in that position. Given all the above, the discussion of the Spanish cases in (35)-(37) shows that, as we would expect, the reported asymmetry between regular objects and raising-to-o is not particular to English, but reflects some deeper property that also comes up in Spanish in a different shape. The order of the constituents in these constructions suggests the same conclusion: unlike in regular sentences, the embedded subject of the small clause appears most naturally in a position between the perception verb and the embedded infinitive, postverbal subjects being somehow very marginal. (39) a. Le vimos al avión estrellarse contra la montaña 3saDO saw.we A-the plane crass against the mountain We saw the plane crash into the mountain 24