Clitic-verb non-adjacency and the inertial theory of grammatical change: evidence from the history of European Portuguese
PDF

Keywords

clitic-verb non-adjacency
[n]-onset insertion
European Portuguese
corpus
morphological attachment

How to Cite

Nkollo, M. (2019). Clitic-verb non-adjacency and the inertial theory of grammatical change: evidence from the history of European Portuguese. Lingua Posnaniensis, 61(1), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.2478/linpo-2019-0006

Abstract

Although clitic-verb non-adjacency is a minor linear pattern in contemporary European Portuguese (EP), it showed a significant frequency in the Classical and early Modern eras. The aims of the study are twofold. First, an attempt is made to pinpoint the contribution of the cl-X-verb model to the non-morphological attachment of proclitics to their verbal hosts in present-day EP. By means of a corpus analysis conducted in the 17th through 19th century texts, clitic-verb non-adjacency is demonstrated to have helped eliminate clitic -specific allomorphy in the preverbal domain. Its precise role consisted in preventing proclitics from being integrated into their hosts. The second aim is to see how this diagnosis fits in with the inertial model of grammatical change. In line with Longobardi’s proposal (2001), innovation in the syntactic processing of preverbal pronouns is claimed to have come about as a side-effect of the changes in more peripheral modules of grammar, i.e. in phonology and morphology.

https://doi.org/10.2478/linpo-2019-0006
PDF

References

Anderson, Stephen R. 2005. Aspects of the Theory of Clitics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Colina, Sonia. 2012. Syllable Structure. In Hualde, José Ignacio & Olarrea, Antxon & O’Rourke, Erin (eds.), The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics, 133-151. West Sussex UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Da Tos, Martina. 2013. The Italian FINIRE-type verbs: a case of morphomic attraction. In Cruschina, Silvio & Maiden, Martin & Smith, John-Charles (eds.), The Boundaries of Pure Morphology, 45-67. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dalrymple, Mary. 2001. Lexical Functional Grammar. New York: Academic Press.

Dryer, Matthew S. 1988. Universals of negative position. In Hammond, Michael & Moravcsik, Edith A. & Wirth, Jessica (eds.), Studies in Syntactic Typology, 93-124. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Duarte, Inês & Matos, Gabriela. 2000. Romance Clitics and the Minimalist Program. In Costa, João (ed.), Portuguese Syntax. New Comparative Studies, 116-142. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fiéis, Alexandra. 2001. Interpolação em Português Medieval como Adjunção a XP. In Actas do XVI Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 197-211. Lisboa: Colibri-APL.

Freitas, Maria João. 2016. A sílaba na gramática do adulto e na aquisição de língua materna. In Martins, Ana Maria & Carrilho, Ernestina (eds.), Manual de linguística portuguesa, 663-687. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.

Gerlach, Birgit. 2002. Clitics between syntax and lexicon. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature of morphology and syntax. Folia Linguistica 45(1). 31-80.

Heap, David & Oliviéri, Michèle & Palasis, Katerina. 2017. Clitic pronouns. In Dufter, Andreas & Stark, Elisabeth (eds.), Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax, 183-229. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.

Hinzelin, Marc-Olivier. 2007. Die Stellung der klitischen Objektpronomina in den romanischen Sprachen. Diachrone Perspektive und Korpusstudie zum Okzitanischen sowie zum Katalanischen und Französischen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.

Hinzelin, Marc-Olivier. 2010. L’interpolation dans les langues romanes: aspects diachroniques. In Iliescu, Maria & Siller-Runggaldier, Heidi & Danler, Paul (eds.), Actes du XXVe Congrès International de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes. Innsbruck, 3-8 septembre 2007, t. II, 331-339. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Hualde, José Ignacio. 1991. On Spanish syllabification. In Campos, Héctor & Martínez-Gil, Fernando (eds.), Current studies in Spanish linguistics, 475-493. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Kayne, Richard S. 2000. Parameters and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Labelle, Marie. 2001. Trente ans de psycholinguistique. Revue québécoise de linguistique 30(1). 155-176.

Ledgeway, Adam. 2012. Configurationality and the rise of constituent structure. In Ledgeway, Adam (ed.), From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic Typology and Change. Printed from (www.oxfordscholarship.com). Copyright Oxford University Press, 2018. Subscriber: Adam Mickiewicz University; date: 17 May 2018.

Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. Formal syntax, diachronic Minimalism, and etymology: the history of French chez. Linguistic Inquiry 32(2). 275-302.

Luís, Ana & Kaiser, Georg. 2016. Clitic Pronouns: Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax. In Wetzels, W. Leo & Menuzzi, Sergio & Costa, João (eds.), The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics, 471-486. West Sussex UK: John Wiley & Sons.

Magro, Catarina. 2010. When corpus analysis refutes common beliefs: The case of interpolation in European Portuguese dialects. Corpus 9. 115-135.

Martins, Ana Maria. 2000. A Minimalist Approach to Clitic Climbing. In Costa, João (ed.), Portuguese Syntax. New Comparative Studies, 169-190. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Martins, Ana Maria. 2011. Scrambling and Information Focus in Old and Contemporary Portuguese. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 10. 133-158.

Martins, Ana Maria. 2014. Syntactic Change in Portuguese and Spanish. Divergent and parallel patterns of linguistic splitting. In Amaral, Patrícia & Carvalho, Ana Maria (eds.), Portuguese-Spanish Interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony and contact, 35-64. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Martins, Ana Maria. 2016a. Introdução: O português numa perspetiva diacrónica e comparativa. In Martins, Ana Maria & Carrilho, Ernestina (eds.), Manual de linguística portuguesa, 1-40. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.

Martins, Ana Maria. 2016b. A colocação dos pronomes clíticos em sincronia e diacronia. In Martins, Ana Maria & Carrilho, Ernestina (eds.), Manual de linguística portuguesa, 410-430. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.

Matos, Gabriela. 1999. Negative Concord and the Scope of Negation. Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics 7. 175-190.

Miller, Philip & Monachesi, Paola. 2003. Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes. In Godard, Danièle & Abeillé, Anne (eds.), Les langues romanes, problèmes de la phrase simple, 53-106. Paris: CNRS.

Pescarini, Diego. 2016. Clitic pronominal systems: Morphophonology. In Ledgeway, Adam & Maiden, Martin (eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, 742-757. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pollock, Jean-Yves. 2006. Subject clitics and complex inversion. In Everaert, Martin & van Riemsdijk, Henk (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 601-659. Oxford: Blackwell.

Poplack, Shana. 2001. Variability, frequency, and productivity in the irrealis domain of French. In Bybee, Joan & Hopper, Paul (eds.), Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, 405-406. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Powell, J.G.F. 2010. Hyperbaton and register in Cicero. In Dickey, Eleanor & Chahoud, Anna (eds.), Colloquial and Literary Latin, 163-185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roberts, Ian. 2016. Chapter 48: Object Clitics. In Ledgeway Adam & Maiden, Martin (eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, 786-801. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sánchez Lancis, Carlos. 1992. La interpolación de complementos entre el pronombre personal átono y el verbo en español medieval. In Gerold Hilty (ed.), XXe Congrès International de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes, Zurich, 6-11 April 1992, vol. II, 324-334. Tübingen: Franke Verlag.

Sánchez López, Cristina. 2017. Coordination and correlatives. In Dufter, Andreas & Stark, Elisabeth (eds.), Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax, 647-688. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.

Vigário, Marina. 2003. The Prosodic Word in European Portuguese. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter.

Walkden, George. 2012. Against Inertia. Lingua 122(8). 891-901.

Zanuttini, Raffaella. 2001. Sentential Negation. In Baltin, Mark & Collins, Chris (eds.), The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory, 511-535. Oxford & Malden: Blackwell.

Zwicky, Arnold & Pullum, Geoffrey. 1983. Cliticization vs. Inflection. English n’t. Language 59(3). 502-513.