frequency and agreement

[Andrew J. Koontz-Garboden]

Wolfgang Schulze wrote:
> In such cases, the clitic does not have an overt (textual) antecedent
> but serves to identify a given actant on the verb. But I do not think
> that this assumption is adequate in the opposite sense.
>     A language has (pronoun based) agrement if the clitic in question
> can appear without its antecedent (but not necessarily does).
>     A language has a system of pronominal doubling, if the antecedent
> can appear without the clitic (but not necessarily does).
>     [Note that I superficially use 'antecedent' for any kind of
> pronominal trigger ('ante-cedent' (anaphoric) as well as 'post-cedent'
> (cataphoric)]

And if a language has both, then it is possibly on the way from one type
to another?  All three types occurs in Spanish (I have been looking at
the Madrid and Buenos Aires dialects as represented in journalism).
They following are constructed, but possible, examples.

Juan le envio           el libro a su madre.
JUAN CLITIC-SEND-PAST   DET BOOK BEN POSS MOTHER.
'Juan sent the book to his mother.'

Juan envio el libro a su madre.
'Juan sent the book to his bother.'

Juan le envio el libro.
'Juan sent her/him the book.'

Andrew


>
> Wolfgang
> --
> *****************************
> Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
> Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet München
> Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
> D-80539 München
> Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
> Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
> http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
> *****************************
>

--

Andrew J. Koontz-Garboden
Department of Linguistics and
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Indiana University
Ballantine Hall 848
Bloomington, IN 47405
U.S.A.