PCC Effects with Expletives and Non-Associate Postverbal Subjects in Bolognese
Abstract
This paper contrasts a Bolognese postverbal subject construction and other grammars with the common Romance one (also in Bolognese) that has longdistance full agreement of the tensed verb and the Case Licensed subject, with an expletive satisfying EPP. In the new Bolognese data, full agreement is absent, a special clitic occurs, and the postverbal subject is person restricted.
Lack of subject agreement also raises questions about its licensing.
The Minimalist proposal is that grammars like Bolognese can specify a feature set on the
expletive that checks EPP in this data, and that it is thus an independent second nominal
in the domain of the sole agreement and Case Licensing probe, T. This specified expletive
is shown to explain all the properties of this data. For the person restrictions and Case Licensing of the postverbal subject, it applies Cyclic/Multiple Agree, the elaboration of
Agree underlying PCCeffects, to the two nominals. The analysis is extended to other
grammars with similar but slightly differing data by simple manipulation of the featureset
on the specified expletive and of the clitic inventory of the grammar.
Keywords
non-agreement, clitics, northern Italian, expletives, person restrictionsReferences
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