16.3131, Review: Morphology/S yntax: Heggie & Ord óñez (2005)

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Subject: 16.3131, Review: Morphology/Syntax: Heggie & Ordóñez (2005)

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1)
Date: 27-Oct-2005
From: Hana Skoumalova < Hana.Skoumalova at ff.cuni.cz >
Subject: Clitic and Affix Combinations: Theoretical perspectives 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 20:28:35
From: Hana Skoumalova < Hana.Skoumalova at ff.cuni.cz >
Subject: Clitic and Affix Combinations: Theoretical perspectives 
 

EDITORS: Heggie, Lorie; Ordóñez, Francisco
TITLE: Clitic and Affix Combinations
SUBTITLE: Theoretical perspectives
SERIES: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 74
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1144.html 

Hana Skoumalová, Institute of Theoretical and Computational Linguistics, 
Charles University

INTRODUCTION

This volume is a collection of papers which describe treatment of clitics 
and affixes in various theoretical frameworks. The book consists of two 
parts - "Clitic sequences" and "Clitics vs. Affixation", each of them 
contains five articles.  The book opens with an overview by the editors. 
There are endnotes and references after each paper. The book also contains 
table of contents, names and addresses of contributors, and three indexes.

SUMMARY

In the introduction "Clitic ordering phenomena: The path to 
generalization", the editors Lorie Heggie and Francisco Ordóñez list some 
of the problems connected to clitics and affixes. First, they mention the 
hypothesis that affixes are the endpoint of a grammaticalization process 
(called 'cline') involving the reduction of words to clitics and then to 
affixes. This hypothesis is interesting for the diachronic perspective but 
in the synchronic view we need criteria for distinguishing clitics from 
affixes. The authors list some counterexamples to criteria stated by 
Zwicky and Pullum (1983). In the further text, the authors concentrate on 
some problems with the ordering of clitic and affixes: second position 
clitic phenomena, ACC-DAT vs. DAT-ACC order in Romance, prohibition of 
certain combinations of clitics, which is shown on 'me-lui' constraint, 
ordering dependent on the grammatical functions of the clitics, extra 
clitics (ethical dative, clitic doubling), and change of the clitic form 
under certain conditions (spurious 'se' in Spanish). The next part of the 
paper deals with representative approaches to clitic combinations, where 
two main directions occur: templatic approach and representational 
approach such as Optimality Theory. Finally, the authors list several 
problems for future research, as the combination of first and second 
person dative object with a third person accusative object, correlation 
between non-syncretic clitics for third person and the ordering of dative 
and accusative forms, and replacement of dative clitic with a locative 
clitic.

In "Romance clitic clusters: The case connection", Louis H. Desouvrey 
investigates ordering of object clitics in preverbal position in French 
and spurious 'se' in Spanish.

Features of French clitics are presented in a table, where Case ([A] 
and/or [O]) of every clitic and the animacy are shown. The author supposes 
that every clitic is specified for Case, unlike the strong forms of 
pronouns, which lack Case feature. The behavior of verbs and pronouns is 
governed by the interaction of their features. The author also formulates 
five constraints on the features and well-formedness conditions on the 
representation. The placement of pronominal clitics is a result of clitic 
climbing. The clitics are generated in the same position as the nominals 
and then they are moved to the left, because they are specified for Case 
and their original position violates Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP). 
If there are two pronouns in the sentence, the question arises which of 
the two clitics moves first (and occupies the first position in the clitic 
cluster). The order depends on the original order of both arguments, on 
animacy hierarchy, and number of Cases for which single clitics are 
specified. Eliminating violations of OCP and other constraints we get the 
right order for various clitic clusters.

In Spanish, the situation differs in that first and second person are 
assumed to exist in two different but homophonic morphemes: accusative and 
oblique. This is very important for the further explanations but 
unfortunately, the author does not elucidate why it is so. The clitic 
movement from the position where they are generated is motivated by the 
same principles as in French: they move so that the violation of OCP was 
eliminated. The spurious 'se' replaces third person clitic 'le' in 
sentences where third person accusative clitic 'la' or 'lo' also occurs. 
The explanation is as flows: clitic with two Cases ('le') is in pole 
position (closer to the verb), hence it absorbs both Cases of the verb and 
thus the second clitic is not licensed. The remedy of this situation is to 
remove the Accusative feature from 'le', which yields the 'se' as the 
closest element. The same mechanism is suggested for Italian, where the 
strong form pronoun replaces the indirect object clitic in a clitic 
cluster.

The rest of the paper is devoted to co-occurrence restrictions on clitics 
(me-lui constraint, Person Case Constraint). These restrictions are 
explained as violations of OCP or other constraints which cannot be 
eliminated. The author's conclusion is that only Case and animacy are 
relevant to the syntax of clitics.

"Constraining Optimality: Clitic sequences and Feature Geometry" by David 
Heap is a discussion with Grimshaw's (1997, 2001) OT accounts of clitic 
selection and ordering. The material used in the paper are Romance 
clitics, and especially their variations in Spanish.

Grimshaw gives the following Universal Markedness Hierarchies (UMHs) for 
Person and Case in Italian and Spanish: 
*2 >> *1 >> *3 
*DAT >> *ACC 
These constraints are stipulated without being motivated and they treat 
all persons regardless of the number. In Spanish dialect, however, we can 
observe asymmetry between SG and PL: in singular, both variants 'me se' 
and 'se me', or 'te se' and 'se te' are allowed while in plural only the 
variants 'se nos' and 'se os' are possible.

For Spanish clitics the author proposes a structure which is a hybrid of 
Bonet's Feature Geometry for clitics and Harley and Ritter's Feature 
Geometry for number and gender paradigms. In this proposal, 'se' has the 
simplest structure with the node CL only, the third person clitics are the 
most complex. This reflects the assumption that more complex structures 
are are more marked and vice versa.

For the linear ordering of clitics in standard Spanish, the author 
proposes a constraint called Least Leafy to the Left (LLL): Arrange 
clitics from the morphologically least specified to most specified. If we 
allow variably underspecified clitics we can get variations found in 
Spanish dialect. The structure of 'se' can be enhanced by features which 
are not required but which are compatible with it. Thus it can have the 
same amount of specification as 'me' or 'te' but not the same as 'nos' 
or 'os'.

In "The syntax of clitic climbing in Czech" by Milan Rezac, the author 
tries to formulate syntactic analysis of clitic climbing in Czech, within 
the Principles and Parameters framework.

In Czech, clitic cluster occupies the second position in a sentence. The 
cluster itself consists of several disjoint sets of clitics. The author 
claims that there are ten such sets, but Franks and King (2000) never said 
the exact number. The author also oversimplified the discussion on 
conditionals and thus he created non-existent combination 'by jsem' 
(cond+perf.aux). As the paper deals with climbing of dative and accusative 
clitics, this mistake is not too important. There are more serious errors, 
in the Czech examples, which suggests that Czech is not author's first 
language and that he should consult his examples with native speakers.

The author presents Czech verbs with finite and non-finite clausal 
complements and the division of verbs taking non-finite complements to 
raising and control type. Clitic climbing is only allowed from non-finite 
complements, no matter whether the matrix verb is of raising type, object-
control or subject-control type. Climbing is, however, limited to 
complement infinitives. The next claim, that climbing is all-or-nothing 
phenomenon should not be declared so categorically: the sentences (11c) 
and (11d) sound awkward but they are not worse than (11a), where both 
clitics stay at the embedded infinitive. Finally, clitics cannot climb 
from wh-infinitives.

In the next part, impersonal constructions with reflexive 'se' are 
examined. The author claims that in Czech, there is the option for the 
internal argument to stay in accusative, but this is wrong. Such a 
sentence can be said in a language play but not in a "normal" speech. The 
matrix verb assigns nominative to the infinitival object and agrees with 
it. The sentences in (14) and (15) are thus wrongly marked.

The next issue is binding domain. A clitic that has climbed cannot be 
coreferential with the matrix subject, while one that has not can. Clitic 
climbing should block a subject-oriented anaphor within the infinitive 
from being bound by a matrix object, even though it is interpreted as the 
subject of the infinitive. This is exemplified by sentence (18), which is 
unfortunately again wrongly asterisked. All these observations were to 
serve to the conclusion that there are two kinds of infinitival 
complements. One is non-restructuring infinitive (NRI), which is CP and 
blocks clitic climbing. The other is restructuring infinitive (RI), which 
is a bare VP and requires clitic climbing. 

There is also interaction between Case and climbing. If the matrix verbs 
has no object or dative object, the climbing is allowed. However, if it 
has accusative object, no climbing is allowed. There is an additional 
restriction, which is double dative ban. If the matrix verb has a dative 
object, a dative clitic cannot climb from the infinitival complement. And 
the last issue is the Person-Case Constraint. This constraint is believed 
to be universal and the author brings theoretical arguments why it is so. 
Unfortunately, his examples in (43) are again wrongly marked. The sentence 
glossed 'I will show him.dat you.acc tomorrow' is correct, as well as the 
other examples. The prohibited combination of clitics can result from 
clitic climbing as well, as in (44).

In "Romance clitic clusters: On diachronic changes and cross-linguistic 
contrasts", Fabrice Nicol investigates Romance pronominal clitic cluster 
and especially the diachronic changes in French. In Old Romance, the 
accusative-dative ordering ('illum mihi') was standard. Most Modern 
Romance varieties have shifted to dative-accusative order ('mihi illum').

In standard French, three constraints apply: (i) Person unicity - there is 
no more than one first or second person in a cluster; (ii) Person first - 
first or second person come first; (iii) No Direct Object person - there 
is no first or second person as a Direct Object in a clitic cluster.

In the Minimalist theory, every clitic is represented as a bundle of 
features (case, affix and person-gender-number). In the text, which is 
rather technical, the author explains how the cluster with 'mihi illum' 
order is derived. Further, he formulates Morphological Opacity (MO) as 
follows: Let F be an Interpretable Feature that cannot be erased in the 
syntax. If the maximal word-level projection X0max contains such a feature 
F, then X0max=[F[...X0...]]. First and second person features cannot be 
erased in the syntax and therefore there will not be any first or second 
person clitic in second linear position.

In the next section, Italian and Spanish are investigated. These languages 
tolerate some clitic combinations that violate MO when one of the clitics 
is a reflexive. This requires parametrization of MO for the two 
languages.  Diachronic changes in Italian and Spanish are then described, 
as well as raising and causative constructions in Standard French. The 
result of this discussion is a final version of MO. This part is closed by 
formulating Case Syncretism property (CSP): In languages with 'mihi illum' 
clusters, at least one feature of a third person cluster pronoun is case-
syncretic.

The following three sections contain discussion of the single groups of 
Romance languges: Case-syncretic group (Valencia Catalan, Portuguese and 
Galician, Italian Basilicatese, Piedmontese, Sardinian, Veneto, Modern 
Occitan, Modern Rumanian) Conservative group (with 'illum mihi' ordering - 
Aragonese, Majorca Catalan, Modern Provençal: Niçois, Old 
French/Occitan/Provençal, (conservative variety of) Modern Occitan, 
Corsican), and Mixed ordering group (Aragonese, Barcelona and Minorca 
Catalan, Modern Gascon, Modern French).

The last section discusses related theoretical issues and unsolved 
problems.

The paper "Strong and Weak Person Restrictions: A feature checking 
analysis" by Elena Anagnostopoulou investigates the constraint which 
prohibits 1st and 2nd person weak direct object together with weak 
indirect object ('me lui' or Person-Case constraint). There are two 
versions of the constraint. In the strong version there is absolute 
prohibition of 1st and 2nd person weak direct object in the presence of 
weak indirect object regardless of the person. In the weak version, 1st 
and 2nd person weak direct object cannot co-occur with 3rd person weak 
indirect object.

There is an interesting correlation between Person-Case constraint and 
agreement restriction in some languages, e.g. Icelandic: In the presence 
of a dative subject, the agreeing nominative object has to be 3rd person. 
The constraint applies only in the case when the nominative object agrees 
with the verb.   The strong version of PCC and the restriction on 
nominative objects in Icelandic are compared, and these similarities are 
found: (i) in both cases the restriction arises in environment involving 
an argument with an indirect object role and another argument with a 
direct object role or, in infinitivals, a lower subject; (ii) the indirect 
object argument typically bears morphological dative or genitive case 
while the other argument has structural Case; (iii) the argument with 
structural Case has to be 3rd person; (iv) reflexive pattern with 1st and 
2nd person pronoun cannot co-occur with the dative argument; (v) the two 
constraints arise whenever both the dative and the argument with structural 
Case relate to the same functional head via movement or agreement; (vi) 
the constraints are relaxed in order to circumvent the prohibition of 
1st/2nd person.

In the next section, a theoretical analysis of the two constraints 
follows. The author proposes use of split feature checking. Further, the 
analysis of the weak version of PCC is discussed, and the author proposes 
to to use Multiple Agree with the two objects. In the last part of the 
paper, the author shows that Multiple Agree can be used also in analysis 
of inverse language, which is shown on Passamaquoddy.

"Non-morphological determination of nominal affix order in Korean" by 
James Hye Suk Yoon starts with a discussion on nature of nominal particles 
in the agglutinative East Asian languages - whether they are affixes added 
to the nominal root in morphology or whether they should be treated as 
heads of functional projections in the syntax. The Korean nominal 
particles behave as phrasal affixes, similar to English possessive: the 
particle attaches to the right edge rather than to Head, the nominative 
particle displays allomorphy and in turn causes stem allomorphy with 
certain stems, it attaches after lexical affixes, it must attach within 
the phrase it is associated with, and it can appear in each conjunct 
separately or once in a coordinate structure.

The next section contains lexicalist critique of syntactic analyses, 
namely Sells' (1995) arguments that show difficulties with syntactically 
oriented analyses. The main arguments are non-local c-selection, problem 
of underlying structure, and paradox of movement and selection. In the 
lexicalist approach, morphological templates are used, but this solution 
brings some problems. First, all slots are optional, which is quite 
unusual. Secondly, the interpretation of null particle is context-
dependent. Thirdly, there are no discontinuous dependencies holding 
among the slots. And finally, the ordering of nominal particles is not 
completely fixed.

The author proposes a non-morphological analysis of nominal particle 
ordering. First, he argues that the honorific Nominative marker '-kkeyse' 
is in fact a Postposition and then he analyses constructions with Copula. 
The question is whether Copula occupies the last slot in the template. The 
answer is that there are several different types of Copula construction in 
Korean: Canonical CC, Inverse CC and Cleft construction, and other 
particles may intervene between the predicate nominal and the Copula. 
Author's conclusion after the analysis is that the Korean nominal 
particles can be treated in syntax.

"Clitic positions within the left periphery: Evidence for a phonological 
buffer" by Adam Szczegielniak discusses auxiliary clitics in Polish. 
Polish has pronominal clitics (which are weak pronouns) and auxiliary 
clitics. The auxiliary clitics must be differentiated from auxiliary 
affixes which attach to verbs. The auxiliary clitics occur in past tense 
formation and serve as subject-verb agreement marker. They attach to the 
elements preceding the verb. They can be stressed and coordinated. They 
can break up a constituent but only when the constituent can be broken up 
by other non-clitic elements (possessive NP, coordination or multi-
syllabic prepositions).

The author adopts Rizzi's (1997) model of Left Periphery phrase structure 
and he argues that auxiliary clitics are generated in Fin (head of the 
Left Periphery that can carry tense/agreement features). The last issue is 
why the auxiliary clitics cannot be clause initial. The author proposes 
that syntax over-generates and the structures with initial auxiliary 
clitics are then ruled out by a phonological filter.

In "The Wh/Clitic-Connection" by Cedric Boeckx and Sandra Stjepanovic, the 
authors observe the parallel between wh-phrases and clitics in Bulgarian 
and Serbo-Croatian. First, they present the facts. In BG, wh-phrases are 
not separable in syntax (they form a unit) and clitics form a cluster in 
syntax, as well. In SC, wh-phrases do not need to form a unit and nor do 
the clitics. Though multiple wh-fronting is possible in both languages, 
they differ in that wh-phrases can be split in SC but not in BG. In 
BG, "Attract All Wh" property takes effect, while in SC we can observe 
selective attraction. The clitic 'li' can intervene in BG wh cluster, 
which is explained by that 'li' is a focus affix in BG, unlike SC, where 
this clitic is a complementizer. 

The conclusion drawn from the above observations is that BG wh-phrases 
form a cluster targeting a unique projection, while in SC the possibility 
exists of targeting distinct projections. In both languages, wh-phrases 
and clitics occupy the same type of projection in syntax. The difference 
between SC and BG is that the former allows multiple such phrases, while 
the latter does not.

In "Morphosyntax of two Turkish subject pronominal paradigms" by Jeff Good 
and Alan C. L. Yu, the authors describe behavior of two Turkish subject 
pronominal paradigm. One of the paradigms (k-paradigm) can be attached to 
past and conditional suffix, while the other (z-paradigm) can be attached 

to any other predicate, verbal and non-verbal with the exception of 
optative and imperative predicates. While the k-paradigm suffixes can 
occur in the end of a verb or between two tense, mood and aspect (TMA) 
markers, z-paradigm suffixes can be only attached to the end of a verb. 
Further, k-ending can be stressed (Turkish stress is word-final), while z-
endings cannot. z-endings can have wide scope over more than one conjunct 
in coordination. Authors conclude that k-paradigm endings are affixes 
while z-paradigm endings are clitics. This hypothesis is supported also by 
the historical development of the two paradigms: z-endings are cliticized 
pronouns but k-paradigm endings are the result of a reanalysis of 
possessives. 

In the rest of the paper, hierarchy of lexical types for Turkish is 
sketched, as well as signs of the single types. The verbs with k-ending 
thus is of lexical type finite, while verb with z-ending is of type non-
finite. The finite verbs can have an element of type subj-suffix as a 
daughter. The non-finite structures, on the other hand, combine with 
elements of the type clitic-pro(noun) in the syntax.

In the paper "On the syntax of doubling", Juan Uriagereka explores the 
relation between clitic doubling and inalienable possession. The author 
first examines sentences like 'le vi el cordón de ella' (lit. her I-saw 
the cord to her). This sentence has only one reading - with inalienable 
possession. The inalienable reading, however is not caused by mere 
presence of the clitic, as the sentence 'vi su cordón de ella' (lit. I-saw 
her cord of her) has the inalienable reading, too. The inalienable 
relation need not involve cliticization. However, when a possessive clitic 
is used, the relevant interpretation must be inalienable.  A sort of 
inalienable possession is implied in any instance of clitic doubling, not 
just possessive examples. This idea is called Inalienable Double 
Hypothesis (IDH): the denotation of a double stands in an inalienable 
relation with respect to the denotation of its clitic.

The next section answers syntactic questions raised by IDH. The passage is 
rather technical and the conclusion is that doubling construction is 
headed by a complete determiner introducing the relational structure, 
whereas the possessive construction is not.

EVALUATION

This book collects papers directed at a quite narrow field of linguistic 
research. In addition, some problems ('me lui' constraint, spurious 'se' 
in Spanish, 'mihi illum' order) are explored in more than one paper, which 
brings the chance for the reader to compare the competing hypotheses.

Most papers are based on Minimalist theory, only one uses HPSG as the 
theoretical framework. Some of the papers contain many technicalities 
which makes them hard to read for someone who is not familiar with all the 
details of the theory, but on the other hand, some other papers 
(Desouvrey, Heap, Good and Yu, above all) are very clear and intelligible.

REFERENCES

Bonet, E. 1991. Morphology after Syntax: Pronominal clitics in Romance. 
Doctoral Dissertation, MIT.

Bonet, E. 1994. "The person-case constraint: A morphological approach." 
MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 22. The Morphology-Syntax Connection: 33-
52.

Bonet, E. 1995. "Feature structure of Romance clitics." Natural Language 
and Linguistic Theory 13:607-647.

Boskovic, Z. 2001. On the Nature of the Syntax-Phonology Interface. 
London: Elsevier.

Cho, Y-M. Yu and P. Sells. 1995. "A lexical account of inflectional 
suffixes in Korean." Journal of East Asian Linguistics 4(2):149-174.

Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, N. 2000. "Minimalist inquiries: The framework." In Step by Step, 
R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds), 89-155. Cambridge MA: MIT 
Press.

Chomsky, N. 2001. "Derivation by phase." In Ken Hale: A life in language, 
M. Kenstowicz (ed.), 1-52. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Franks, S. and T. H. King. 2000. A Handbook of Slavic Clitics. Oxford: 
Oxford University Press.

Grimshaw, J. 1997. "The best clitic: Constraint conflict in morphosyntax." 
In Elements of Grammar, L. Haegeman (ed.), 169-196. Dordrecht: Kluwer 
Academic.

Grimshaw, J. 2001. "Optimal clitic positions and the lexicon in Romance 
clitic system." In Optimality-Theoretic Syntax, G. Legendre, J. Grimshaw 
and S. Vikner (eds), 205-240. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Harley, H. and E. Ritter. 1998. "Meaning in Morphology: Motivating a 
Feature-Geometric Analysis of Person and Number." ms. University of 
Calgary and University of Pennsylvania.

Kayne, R. 2000. Parameters and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Perlmutter, D. 1971. Deep and Surface Constraints in Syntax. New York NY: 
Holt, Reinhart and Winston.

Rizzi, L. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of 
Grammar, L. Haegeman (ed.), 281-337. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

Sag, I. and T. Wasow. 2000. Syntactic Theory: A formal introduction. 
Stanford CA: CSLI.

Sells, P. 1995. "Korean and Japanese morphology from a lexical 
perspective." Linguistic Inquiry 7:119-174.

Sigurðsson, H. Á. 1996. "Icelandic finite verb agreement." Working Papers 
in Scandinavian Syntax 57:1-46.   Zwicky, A. and G. Pullum. 
1983. "Cliticization vs. inflection: English n't." Language 59:502-513. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Hana Skoumalová works at the Institute of Theoretical and Computational 
Linguistics at Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, as a research 
worker. She also teaches courses on constraint-based grammars. Her 
interests are syntax and morphology, and formal methods in linguistics.





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