Enclisis/Proclisis Alternations in Romance: Allomorphies and (Re)Ordering

Romance clitic pronouns appear to the left of the verb in I and to the right of the verb in C. This alternation correlates with: (a) allomorphy, specifically lvs. zero; (b) stress shifts; and (c) reordering of the clitic string. The alternations in (a)–(c) are also observed between non-negative and negative contexts. The key points of our analysis are: (i) the lsegment is associated with definite content; (ii) interpretively, pronouns scope out of modal/non-veridical operators; (iii) syntactically, the exponent for modality/nonveridicality may have the pronoun in its domain; (iv) externalization of the lsegment is found when semantic scope (ii) and syntactic configuration (iii) are mismatched. Therefore allomorphies (including stress), far from being morphophonological quirks, contribute to the externalization of syntactico-semantic notions of non-veridicality. In dealing with clitic (re)ordering we propose a model based on the dissociation between Merge and linear order. Phrasal constituents are ordered to the right of the verb in Romance; clitics mirror them in that they are ordered to the left, while keeping the Merge relations constant. 1. BASIC EVIDENCE AND CURRENT ACCOUNTS In many Romance varieties, the preverbal and postverbal positions of clitics correlate with a number of morphophonological and order alternations. There are three main such alternations, namely: (a) segmental allomorphies; (b) stress shifts; and (c) internal reordering of the clitic string – which are illustrated in sections 1.1–1.3 below. Some segmental alternations affecting Romance clitics are phonologically conditioned. For instance, in the Corsican variety of Zonza, vocalic proclitics, as in (1a), precede only consonantal onsets; vocalic onsets are preceded by an l form, as in (1b). This condition is phonological, involving presumably the resyllabification of the l segment with the following nucleus. 1 The research reported in this article was partially supported by the PRIN 2012 project grant on Long Distance Dependencies. We thank Adam Ledgeway and Diego Pescarini for detailed comments on the first version of this work. We use a broad transcription for the dialectal data. Word stress is indicated selectively, namely when it occurs on the antepenultimate syllable or on the last syllable of polysyllabic words. For the sake of clarity we indicate stress also in instances of enclisis where stress alternations are involved. Hyphens are introduced in IPA transcriptions and in the glosses to facilitate processing of the data; following the French orthographic conventions, they are used to separate the verb and its enclitics. Transactions of the Philological Society Volume 115:1 (2017) 98–136 doi: 10.1111/1467-968X.12093 © The authors 2016. Transactions of the Philological Society © The Philological Society 2016. Published by John Wiley & Sons, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. (1) a. u/a/i 'cammani him/her/them they.call ‘They call him/her/them’ b. l ani camat-u/a/i him/her/them they.have called-msg/fsg/pl ‘They called him/her/them’ Zonza In this article, however, we argue for the conclusion that enclisis/proclisis segmental alternations, as well as stress alternations and reordering, are determined by syntacticosemantic conditions. Hauser et al. (2002) and Berwick & Chomsky (2011) conceive the human Faculty of Language (FL) as consisting of an inner core (the Narrow FL or FLN) which includes the recursive operations of syntax (the computational component) and of a number of components recruited by the FLN (the so-called Broad FL or FLB). The FLB includes both Conceptual-Intentional (CI) components (shared with general cognition, such as inferential and conceptual systems) and Sensory-Motor (SM) components, in practice articulatory and perceptual systems – which preside to the ‘externalization’ of the mental representations created by syntax and CI systems. In terms of this model, our thesis is that segmental and stress enclisis/proclisis alternations are not internal quirks of the SM system, but contribute to the externalization of syntactic computation and of the CI content entering into it. A crucial role in these alternations is played by the lexicon. Thus the lalternation in (1) must involve the existence of two lexical entries, namely l and the u/a/i series (see also section 2.1). The reason is that there is no general process of linsertion or ldeletion in Romance which could independently motivate it. This lexical fact is in itself arbitrary; for instance, in standard Italian, all 3rd person clitics involve l-. In other words, the child who learns Corsican or Italian must learn the list of clitics (and cannot infer it from Universal Grammar). This does not prevent us from looking for general SM (phonological) or syntactico-semantic principles that govern the distribution of lexical forms and of their allomorphs and that in innatist models, favour the acquisition of idiosyncrasies by the child who learns the language. We follow Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle and Marantz 1993), in assuming that the lexicon lists elementary units corresponding to morphemes and that the same Merge operation responsible for syntactic constituent structure also yields word formation from elementary morphemes. On the other hand, the conclusions on enclisis/proclisis alternations anticipated above can be read as supporting the idea that there is no morphological buffer component between the syntactico-semantic computational core and its SM externalization, of the type provided by such constructs as Morphological Structure and Late Insertion in DM. In sections 1.1–1.4 we will use only a very elementary syntactic model. The fundamental sentential tree is defined in Chomsky’s (1995) terms by the category V(erb) – or technically by the complex v-V – dominated by the category I(nflection) and by the category C(complementizer). Kayne (1991) proposes that proclisis on the finite verb in Romance, e.g. in Italian (2a), depends on the I position of the verb; enclisis on the infinitive, as in (2b), depends on the verb moving to C, while the clitic maintains the same position as in (2a). This is illustrated in structures (3a–b). Using enclisis/proclisis alternations as a diagnostics for 2 An anonymous reviewer mentions historical change as the sole source of explanation for the shape of the lexicon. This seems to us an oversimplification, insofar as the lexicon must present an internal organization suitable for being learnt by the children of each new generation. 3 The adoption of morpheme-based morphology automatically excludes paradigm-based approaches. This theoretical choice characterizes a larger spectrum of models than just generative ones. MANZINI & SAVOIA – ENCLISIS/PROCLISIS ALTERNATIONS 99