33.1117, Review: Romance; Syntax: Pescarini (2021)

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Subject: 33.1117, Review: Romance; Syntax: Pescarini (2021)

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Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2022 21:43:08
From: Anna Chiara Bassan [annachiarabassan at gmail.com]
Subject: Romance Object Clitics

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-2558.html

AUTHOR: Diego  Pescarini
TITLE: Romance Object Clitics
SUBTITLE: Microvariation and Linguistic Change
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Anna Chiara Bassan

SUMMARY
 
The phenomenon of cliticization is a field of investigation widely covered by
linguistics in general, and Romance linguistics specifically. 
 
Among the languages that possess this series of normally unstressed pronouns,
the Romance data represent such a significant sample that, if subjected to a
new look, they ''may prompt research in other languages and, hopefully, this
might lead to a closer and more fruitful comparison between linguistic
families.'' (Pescarini 2021, 1). 
 
Given these assumptions, Pescarini reviews a brief selection of the
macro-properties that allow one, at least preliminarily, to distinguish the
clitic object from the other functional words (at this level of investigation,
these are properties widely attested by scholars of Romance linguistics and of
Indo-European studies). First of all, clitics frequently have a pronominal
function or lead to changes in valency; secondly, they tend to occupy
characteristic syntactic positions, in most scenarios adjacent to the verb;
they have a ''Topic-like interpretation'' (Pescarini 2021, 1); and, as
anticipated, they usually do not carry stress. 
 
However, once these properties appear as a list, the author casts a critical
eye on them, wondering whether or not they can be considered epiphenomenal. In
other words, it seems as if the properties are broad typological
generalizations that obscure the articulated complexity of a problematic
linguistic phenomenon.
 
Accordingly, the volume's objectives are to return to an examination (both
systematic and reasoned) of the main phenomena concerning clitic objects and
the theoretical approaches that have been applied to them.
 
The arguments that arise from this general premise present themselves in the
five parts of the book, each focused on a fundamental operational question,
specifically: to investigate the main properties of Romance clitics, taking as
a starting point the typological generalizations discussed above (Part I,
“Setting the Scene”); to address the possibility of considering clitics in
Romance as a deficient element (Part II, “Deficiency”); to decode the reasons
underlying the syntactic movement of the clitic object (Part III, “The
Emergence of Clitics”); to explore what affects clitic placement in Romance
languages (Part IV, “Early Romance”); and finally, to plumb the reasons why
the Romance varieties differ so much in their clitic syntax (Part V, “Towards
Microvariation”). A part-by-part summary of the book follows. 
 
Part I deals with the core properties of Romance object clitics and sets the
scene (as in the title of the section) for the discussion, exploring the
theoretical preliminaries and providing an accurate historical overview.
 
>From the phonological point of view, clitics are monosyllabic particles
characterized by a ''deficient prosodic status'' (Pescarini 2021, 14).
Specifically, the clitic cannot represent the prominent syllable and bear word
stress, but must rely on an adjacent word.
 
>From the morphological point of view (morpho-syntactic and morpho-semantic),
clitics are characterized by a more opaque shape than strong pronouns
(Pescarini 2021, 34); consequently, they are subjected to phenomena that can
influence the attempt to code them uniformly.
 
Nevertheless, the author emphasizes how the object clitic conflicts with the
idea of a simple internal structure, yielding the possibility of producing
compound exponents through combination. 
 
Furthermore, there are many syntactic differences between clitics and strong
pronouns. The clitic occurs in a fixed and language-specific position, in most
cases close to (or attached to) a verbal form. When the clitic moves (almost
always a local head-to-head movement in the Romance languages), it enlists
necessary interactions with other elements of the sentence, especially with
the verb. 
 
As an example, in Italian, where the clitic incorporates onto the verb,
partially different situations can be observed: in the case of compound
tenses, following its movement in V0, the clitic incorporates onto the verb,
but subsequently, an operation of separation takes place, through which the
clitic separates from the verbal head and moves to I0, finally incorporating
onto the auxiliary.
 
These reasons (briefly summarized here) lead Pescarini to affirm that the most
distinctive feature of the object clitic does not lie in its phonological or
morphological nature but rather in its syntactic properties of placement and
movement.
 
Having reached this conclusion, the author reviews introductory notions for
representing the placement and movement properties of the clitics within the
sentence, thus introducing the terminology necessary to develop what will
characterize the following parts.
 
The debate has as its focus Pescarini’s proposal of a cartographic model of
the sentence, in which ''dependencies are represented by means of topological
relations'' (Pescarini 2021, 61).
 
The author indicates four main aspects: the dependency (with the related
concept of “peeling”); “nesting”, which is the mechanism by which the clitics
attach to morpho-syntactic structures (there are two possible nesting
configurations: either the clitics incorporate into their host or the clitics
move to a dedicated position); the domains, which in the case of the object
clitic correspond to the canonical major phrasal domains C, I, and V; finally,
the criteria.
 
Considering these four aspects from a comparative point of view, and applying
them to the Romance language group, Pescarini elaborates an initial
classification of the clitic by placing it in a finite sentence. This
classification simultaneously returns both the absence/presence of
incorporation and the final domain of the clitic area.

The analysis of the syntax/speech interface relationship occupies the final
part of the syntactic characterization of the object clitic. In fact,
according to the author, the diachronic evolution of clitic systems, their
appearance in the Latin to Romance transition, and the syntax of clitics in
the earliest Romance cannot be explained without a solid model of the
syntax/speech interface. 
 
The final section of Part I concerns a historical linguistics issue: the
evolution that transformed some Latin pronouns into clitics.
 
In his overview, Pescarini considers the observed phenomenon in the languages
under observation, the time periods involved in the phenomenon, and the
primary bibliographic references (refer to the author's table in Pescarini
2021, 103). 
 
The chronological range goes from Old and Classical Latin to the Modern period
(most modern Romance languages in general, and Piedmontese, Dolomitic Ladin,
and Eastern Piedmontese (e.g., Borgomanerese), in particular).
 
The thematic core of Part II is the concept of deficiency, starting from the
critical review proposition of the two major hypotheses concerning the nature
of the clitic element. The first hypothesis is that different languages show
weak elements that differ in syntactic and semantic aspects from both the
clitics and the strong forms. It seems possible to place those elements in an
intermediate position between the two.
 
The second hypothesis is that the classes of functional elements are defined
based on the internal morphological structure of the elements belonging to
each class. It follows that the clitics and weak elements have a deficient
structure, while the strong forms have a richer structure. This second
hypothesis seems already weakened by the previous description of clitics'
morphological complexity.
 
However, when compared with a large dataset, neither of the above criteria
would seem to maintain its consistency, leading to a solid and uniform
classification.
 
Subsequently, Pescarini's discussion proceeds by focusing on the internal
structure of clitics. The author demonstrates how the comparative data clearly
show that the structure of clitics is not an elementary one, even when
compared to the structure of strong pronouns. 
 
As for the relationship between the internal structure of the clitic elements
and phenomena such as stress shift and allomorphy, here is the author's
conclusion: ''pronominal clitics, just like other function words, could have
various allomorphs that are syntactically and semantically equivalent but
occur in complementary distribution'' (Pescarini 2021, 147).
 
Part III examines forms from Latin and the embryonic mechanism of
cliticization advocated by the author in the previous chapters. The mechanism
under discussion is one in which pronouns, together with other function words,
were systematically placed into a post-focal position whenever they referred
to non-contrastive information. 

Pescarini argues that the position hosting the pronouns, commonly referred to
as the Wackernagel (W) position, is a ''Criterial Position in the sense of
Rizzi'' (Pescarini 2021, 151, Rizzi 2006, 2007, 2010) since, in principle,
several different types of XPs could move to W. 
 
However, the Latin pronouns in the Wackernagel position exhibited different
phonological behavior than clitics do. 
 
They did not undergo the processes involving unstressed vowels, but at the
same time could not carry the stress of the phrase (Wanner 1987, Plank 2005,
Pescarini 2021, 178). Accordingly (as the author points out), the Wackernagel
pronouns undergo a reanalysis process that brings them to the exact status of
unstressing like other ''prosodically deficient elements.'' (Pescarini 2021,
165).
 
Nevertheless, later on, the W head would be analyzed as a Criterial Probe
(Rizzi 2007, 149, Pescarini 2021, 156), attracting only a specific set of
pronominal elements endowed with a series of Criterial Goals. Those Goals,
which were peculiar to the Wackernagel position, yielded to a set of clitics
(''C-oriented'' using the author’s terminology) that were not (originally)
subject to any form of incorporation. 
 
To explain the emergence of this incorporation in medieval Romance languages,
Pescarini claims that it derives from a morphological mechanism (e.g., Marantz
1988, Matushansky 2006), which occurred as an outcome of a previous loss of
interpolation. Taking those deductions as accurate and combining them with the
evidence of residual interpolation could bring support to a new, more
contemporary theory that explains the positioning of the clitic in the
cartographic representation as a two-step mechanism. In other words, the
clitic climbs from its former position to reach the Lower Adverb Space, where
the incorporation process takes place (Ledgeway 2005, Lombardi 2004, Pescarini
2021, 178-179).
 
Part IV investigates the status of the clitics in medieval Romance languages,
which, due to the effect of the well-known Tobler-Mussafia Law, could be both
proclitics and enclitics. Furthermore, the finite verb sporadically moves to
the left periphery, producing inversion instances where the auxiliary moves
over the subject. The author defines these inversions as “Germanic inversions”
(from Poletto 2002). The distinction between Germanic inversion and other
types of inversion (free, stylistic) is not easy to define for ancient
languages. 
 
Indeed, mainly pragmatic factors can assist us in distinguishing authentic
cases of inversion, even if the pragmatic conditions underlying a medieval
clause do not always clearly follow from linear word order (Pescarini 2021,
188).
 
Pescarini shows that the Germanic inversions in main clauses provide evidence
of movement from V to C. The number of examples showing Germanic inversion is
limited because the same environment activates pro-drop, obscuring the
inversion.
 
However, in ancient Romance languages, null subjects were customarily licensed
only in main clauses, where the verb moved above the position of the subject,
while subordinate clauses often exhibited prominent subjects (Renzi-Vanelli
1983, Benincà 1983/4).
 
Having established that Germanic inversion results from V-to-C movement, the
author examines the relationship between this type of inversion, verbal
movement, and the positioning of the clitics.
 
Following Benincà (1995), Pescarini adopts a model in which the verb moves in
two steps. Under this view, the Germanic inversions arise when the verb moves
to Fin (the lower position of Rizzi's divided C domain), crossing the position
of the subject (Cardinaletti and Roberts 2002; Ledgeway 2008; Benincà and
Poletto 2010; Meklenborg Salvesen 2011).
 
Enclisis ensues when the verb moves to a higher position (probably Focus), and
the clitics are locked into the Wackernagel position, located between Focus
and Fin. 
 
The author divides the medieval Romance languages into two groups to describe
the situation. He calls “Archaic Early Romance” those languages that ''exhibit
a pattern of clitic positioning quite similar to the Wackernagel-style
mechanism of (late) Latin'' (Pescarini, 2021: 79). On the other hand, he calls
“Innovative Early Romance” those languages that ''exhibited an innovative
pattern in which interpolation was no longer allowed, either in main or in
embedded clauses'' (Pescarini, 2021: 102).
 
In Innovative Early Romance languages, the inflected verb incorporates
proclitics; on the other hand, procliticization never derives from
incorporation in the Archaic Early Romance languages. So, the above
explanation fits the Archaic Early Romance system, but not the Innovative
Early Romance one.
 
To explain the mechanism of incorporation of the clitic in Innovative Early
Romance languages, Pescarini proposes that, in certain circumstances, the
process described above underlies an alternative syntactic mechanism triggered
by the Focus Criterion, which is a constraint that requires the filling of the
Focus position.
 
Occasionally, the Focus Criterion can be satisfied by moving the inflected
verb itself into Focus through so-called Long Head Movement (Lema and Rivero
1991, Vicente 2007).
 
Nevertheless, the inflected verb bypasses the clitics' position by undergoing
Long Head Movement, thus interrupting the mechanism that produces the
incorporation (Pescarini 2021, 213ff.) Regardless, the possibility of an
alternative linearization mechanism for clitics was still present for medieval
speakers. This mechanism resulted in the clitics appearing in the Wackernagel
position, which is between Foc and Fin.
 
Finally, Pescarini demonstrates that this incorporation did not happen in
negative clauses because the Focus criterion cannot be satisfied if Long Head
Movement is not allowed.

Part V completes the volume by shifting the focus to microvariation.
 
The starting point is the climbing of the object clitic in periphrastic
constructions (for example, in compound tenses), where the clitic, selected by
a lexical verb, is born in a lower position and then raises until it reaches
the superordinate finite functional verb. Naturally, previous researchers
tried to produce an explanation for this upward movement. The best-known
theories were based on the following: the investigation of the nature of the
elements that contribute, together with the clitic, to the periphrastic
formation (for example, the functional or lexical nature of the auxiliary
verb); the periphrasis as a whole (biclausal vs. monoclausal); the nature of
the pronoun itself, whether it should be considered a head (as it undergoes
head-to-head movements) or a phrase (as it merges in positions reserved for
maximal projections). 
 
Pescarini argues in the wake of Cinque (Cinque 2004) that ''all restructuring
verbs are functional, that all periphrases correspond to monoclausal
structures'' (Pescarini 2021, 265) and that the distinction must rely on a
binary process based on the fact that some languages merge the auxiliary in V,
while others generate it directly in I. When this happens, the auxiliaries are
created in a projection cartographically superior to the head position (which
can be the Wackernagel position, as in Archaic Early Romance), where the
clitics are incorporated. Conversely, the raising of the auxiliary merged in V
involves movement to the head position where the clitics are incorporated.
 
The discussion in Part V continues with a detailed account of clitic placement
in the dialect of San Valentino in the Abruzzo region. According to the
author, this is one of the Romance varieties in which a more diverse set of
solutions can appear in correspondence with clitic climbing.
 
In the concluding chapter of Part V, Pescarini, following the hypotheses of
Kayne (1994) and Cardinaletti (2008), returns to the evolution of clitic
sequences. He develops the hypothesis of two types of configuration: on the
one hand, there is a specific type of sequence with what the author calls
''innovative mirror order'' that are complex heads with a distinctive
syntactic position, and, on the other hand, the remaining combinations
correspond to a split configuration where the clitics occupy different
syntactic positions. 
 
On this basis, the Italian clitic combinations could be divided into two large
classes, namely, cluster (a type of configuration in which clitics form a
complex head) and split (a configuration in which clitics occupy different,
though adjacent positions).

EVALUATION
 
The volume is configured in a very orderly fashion. The different chapters of
the book hang well together. Their ordering provides the overall schema, but
there are many cross-references between chapters resulting from systematic
methodologies and critical themes. The whole framework accounts for the
accurate visualization of the object clitic phenomenon in Romance languages.
 
The accuracy of the picture outlined depends on at least three factors: first
of all, a complete description of the object clitics beyond their (albeit
important) phonological nature, which takes particular account of morphology
and syntax and the interface systems, for which the morpho-semantic,
morpho-syntactic, and syntactic-pragmatic characteristics of clitics emerge
simultaneously. Secondly, no theoretical statement disregards the analysis of
the corresponding phenomenon. And thirdly, four of the five parts of the book
analyze some (syntactic) phenomena that yield variation in diachrony and
diatopy. 
 
Lastly, the parts dedicated to syntactic movement are more markedly
characterized by cross-linguistic comparison and lead to specific conclusions
relating to generative theorizing.
 
Generative theorizing is a question of method. The generative approach is to
search for structural principles that determine linguistic constants and
cross-linguistic variation by considering the syntax of particular languages.
The typological perspective is instead primarily interested in observing
homologies and differences within a sample that is as broad as possible, in
order to describe them adequately and formulate generalizations. In other
words, it tends towards descriptive adequacy.
 
Pescarini maintains both a typological and generative perspective within the
framework of each language taken to describe the norm and how much it appears
isolated or deviant from that norm. 
 
Several chapters encourage further research. Here I limit myself, in
particular, to pointing out two topics: syntactic readings linked to the Focus
Criterion (and therefore to Long Head Movement), with consequent reflection on
the phenomenon of incorporation, and the proposal for Italian of two large
classes, namely, cluster (a type of configuration in which clitics form a
complex head) and split (a configuration in which clitics occupy different,
though adjacent positions). The last one is indeed a complex issue: either the
clitic area constitutes a huge syntactic head or the clitics are strictly
linked for phonological reasons. The book makes the point that a syntactic
approach gives ground to the existence of both types of clustering, connecting
within the morphological theories where the structure of clitic is
investigated. 
 
Finally, the target audience of the volume must certainly be mentioned. The
present work is accessible to university-level students and is extremely
valuable for future research. It provides a detailed source of bibliographic
materials while evoking the historiographical process a theory or hypothesis
is based on.
 
REFERENCES
 
Benincà, Paola. 1983/4. Un’ipotesi sulla sintassi delle lingue romanze
medievali. Quaderni patavini di linguistica 4: 3–19 [reprinted in Benincà
1994].
 
Benincà, Paola. 1995. Complement Clitics in Medieval Romance: The
Tobler-Mussafia Law. In Adrian Battye and Ian Roberts (eds), Clause Structure
and Language Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 325–44.
 
Benincà, Paola, and Poletto, Cecilia. 2010. L’ordine delle parole e la
struttura della frase. In Giampaolo Salvi and Lorenzo Renzi (eds), Grammatica
dell’italiano antico. Bologna: Il Mulino. 27–75.
 
Cardinaletti, Anna, and Roberts, Ian. 2002. Clause Structure and X-Second. In
Guglielmo Cinque (ed.), Functional Structure in DP and IP. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 123–66.
 
Cardinaletti, Anna. 2008. On Different Types of Clitic Clusters. In C. De Cat
and K. Demuth (eds), The Bantu–Romance Connection. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
41–82.
 
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2004). ‘Restructuring’ and Functional Structure. In Adriana
Belletti (ed.), Structures and Beyond: The Cartography of Syntactic
Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 132–91.
 
Kayne, Richard. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 
Ledgeway, Adam. 2005. Moving through the Left Periphery: The Dual
Complementiser System in the Dialects of Southern Italy. Transactions of the
Philological Society 103: 336–96.
 
Lema, José, and Rivero, Maria Luisa. 1991. Types of Verbal Movement in Old
Spanish: Modals, Futures and Perfects. Probus 3(3). 237–78.
 
Lombardi, Alessandra, and Middleton, Roberta. 2004. Alcune osservazioni
sull’ordine delle parole negli antichi volgari italiani. In Maurizio Dardano
and Gianluca Frenguelli (eds), SintAnt: La sintassi dell’italiano antico.
Rome: Aracne. 553–82.
 
Marantz, Alec. 1988. Clitics, Morphological Merger, and the Mapping to
Phonological Structure. In Michael Hammond, and Michael Noonan (eds),
Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics. San Diego, CA:
Academic Press. 253–70.
 
Matushansky, Ora. 2006. Head Movement in Linguistic Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
 
Meklenborg Salvesen, Christine. 2011. Stylistic Fronting and Remnant Movement
in Old French. In Janine Berns, Haike Jacobs, and Tobias Scheer (eds), Romance
Languages and Linguistic Theory 2009: Selected Papers from ‘Going Romance’
Nice 2009. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 323–42.
 
Plank, Frans. 2005. The Prosodic Contribution of Clitis: Focus on Latin.
Lingue e Linguaggio 2. 281–92.
 
Poletto, Cecilia. 2002. On V2 and V3 Sequences in Rhaetoromance. In S.
Barbiers, L. Cornips, and S. van der Kleij (eds), Syntactic Microvariation.
Amsterdam: Meertens Institute. 214–52.
 
Renzi, Lorenzo, and Vanelli, Laura (1983). I pronomi soggetto in alcune
varietà romanze. In Paola Benincà (ed.), Scritti linguistici in onore di
Giovan Battista Pellegrini. Pisa: Pacini. 120–45
 
Rizzi, Luigi. 2006. On the Form of Chains: Criterial Positions and ECP
Effects. In Lisa Cheng and Norbert Corver (eds), Wh-Movement: Moving on.
Cambridge. MA: MIT Press. 97–133.
 
Rizzi, Luigi. 2007. On Some Properties of Criterial Freezing. CISCL Working
Papers on Language and Cognition 1. 145–58.
 
Rizzi, Luigi. 2010. On Some Properties of Criterial Freezing. In E. Phoevos
Panagiotidis (ed.), The Complementizer Phase: Subjects and Operators, vol. 1.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.17–32.
 
Vicente, Luis. 2007. The Syntax ofHeads and Phrases: A Study ofVerb (Phrase)
Fronting. Leiden University: Doctoral dissertation.
 
Wanner, Dieter. 1987. The Development of Romance Clitic Pronouns. From Latin
to Old Romance. Berlin: De Gruyter.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Anna Chiara Bassan is a Ph.D. in Linguistics, a title obtained at the<br
/>University of Rome ''La Sapienza'' with a thesis on pre-Latin verbal<br
/>morpho-syntax. She mainly dealt with the Sabellic group (Osco-<br />Samnite,
Umbrian, South Picene), combining internal and external<br />linguistic
reconstruction with the deepening of (con) textual and<br />socio-cultural
dynamics.





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