Object shift in Celtic

[Andrew Carnie]

Hi All

A collegue on this list and I have been  correspondign about Object Shift
in Irish. I thought I might bring teh topic up for discussion on the list.
Anyone have any thoughts? What about other languages? Here is my latest
message to Elizabeth, teh Heidi in the text is Heidi Harley.

                                        Best,

                                        Andrew
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Progressives in Irish don't show OS. The object is post verbal and can
take either the accusative (colloquial) or genitive case (Formal) depending
upon register and dialect:

        Ta/ me/ ag leamh an leabhair/an leabhar
                            gen         acc

OS is found in 2 places: With aspect other than progressive, in infinitives.

        Ta/ me tar eis an leabhar a leamh
               "after"
        "I have just read the book"             "after perfect"


        Ba mhaith liom an leabhar a leamh
        "I want to read teh book"               "infinitive"

The shifted object always takes accusative.

The form relevant to your question is the "after perfect". Where does the
"Ta" come from? Well thats a big problem. In B&C we assume it comes from
a Stacked VP structure:

                        VP
                        /\
                      Ta  VP
                         /\
                       Leamh leabhar       (irrelevant detail omitted)


This is problematic since it entails *2* violations of the head movement
constraint. The verb Ta is forced to skip the AGRO "a" morpheme, and is
forced to skip the Aspect "tareis" head:

                Ta me tareis an leabhar a  t   leamh
                |        *              *  |
                ----------------------------

needless to say, this is a problem. Heidi and I have just submitted a paper
based on her work and chapter 2 of my thesis which acocunts for this
problem by adopting a Travis/Kratzer/Koizumi/Guilfoyle style Split VP:

                TP
                /\
                 AgrSP
                 /\
                  VP
                 /\
                Ta AspP
                   /\
              tareis AgrOP
                     /\
                    a  VP
                       /\
                     leamh leabhar


Ta raises to the highest Func. Proj. the subject and object shift to their
respective agr positions, and Tar eis and A stay in situ. No violation of
teh HMC is incurred.

I'm fairly well convinced that Ta is a verb and not "just tense" because
Irish has a "Verbless" be already: "is" which really does seem to be
"just a realization of T".

Hope this answers your question.

Best,

Andrew


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