The Subject Cycle: Linguistic Change and Cognitive Principles
Elly van Gelderen
20 August 2007
Abstract
In this paper, I provide examples of subject pronouns changing to agreement
markers, agreement markers disappearing, and pronominal subjects being
renewed again. This phenomenon is well-known from the linguistic literature of
the 19th century and part of the Linguistic Cycle as e.g. Hodge (1970) calls it.
This particular cycle involves the subject, and I therefore refer to it as the Subject
Cycle.
I provide a classification for the stages of the cycle using specific criteria
as well as ways in which these stages change. The main languages I discuss (in
order of appearance in the paper) are Urdu/Hindi, Japanese, Modern English,
Standard and Colloquial French, stages of Egyptian, Welsh, Navajo, Spanish,
varieties of Italian, Warlbiri, Old and Middle English, O'odham, and varieties of
Dutch. One type of language I discuss is the Pronominal Argument (PAL) one. I
show that, even though PALs are relevant to the Subject Cycle, they represent a
special stage.
I argue the changes are brought about by certain cognitive principles (or
third factor principles as in Chomsky 2005; 2006), in particular by Economy
Principles. Language change is therefore not so much triggered by new data as by
new reanalyses of the linguistic data (that are then accepted).
Emphatic (non-argument) pronouns can be reanalyzed as subject pronouns which in turn
can be reanalyzed as agreement and then be lost. I refer to this series of changes as the
Subject Cycle. Givón's (1971; 1978) views that agreement markers arise from pronouns
that are adjacent to the verb are well-known: "agreement and pronominalization ... are
fundamentally one and the same phenomenon" (1978: 151). Subjects aren't the only
arguments involved in this cycle since object pronouns can become agreement markers
too but I will leave that unexplored here.
There are many examples of the various cross-linguistic stages synchronically and
diachronically. Lambrecht (1981) and others show that the Modern French pronoun is
really an agreement marker accompanied by an optional topic. Jelinek (1984; 2001) has
argued for Athabaskan, Arabic, and Australian languages, to name but a few, that the
agreement morphemes are the arguments. Katz (1996) has considered the status of the
subject pronoun in diachronic stages of Hebrew and Turkish. In this article, I classify the
stages in terms of positions in the phrase structure and provide instances of all of the
stages. I also suggest some reasons why one stage is reanalyzed as the next.
In section one, I provide some background on the Subject Cycle as well as on
Minimimalism, the framework used in this paper, and list criteria to distinguish
arguments from agreement. The section discusses Economy Principles such as feature
Economy and Specifier to Head and closes with a precise formulation of the Subject
Cycle's stages. In section two, one stage of the cycle is examined in Hindi/Urdu and
Japanese and another in English and French. In Hindi/Urdu and Japanese, the subject
pronoun is a real argument but in English and French, subject pronouns are becoming
agreement markers. Section three examines the stage where the agreement marker is the
argument and section four considers the change from this stage to one the agreement
loses argument status. Section five examines where the cycle `starts' and how renewal
takes place. Section six is more speculative and considers mechanisms by which
pronouns are reanalyzed as prefixes or suffixes and section seven is a conclusion.
In general, when I discuss `change', I mean it as a reanalysis by the language
learner (in the sense of Andersen 1973 and Lightfoot 1979), i.e. as the incorporation of
something in the grammar of the learner. I avoid the term grammaticalization in this
paper since for many linguists this terms has become too general to be helpful.
1
2
The Subject Cycle
Arguments can be expressed synthetically (through agreement) or analytically (through
pronouns). This has been recognized for a long time, e.g. in Hodge (1970) for the stages
of Egyptian. Subject agreement arises through incorporation of subject pronouns into the
verb and this can be done through varying mechanisms resulting in either prefixes or
suffixes. There are other cycles, e.g. Jespersen's Negative Cycle, using the same
mechanisms but this paper is restricted to the Subject-Agreement Cycle.
1.1
What is the Subject Cycle?
Givón (1984) provides the stages in (1a). In (1b), I have added first and second person
pronouns. The latter two derive from emphatic pronouns, often from oblique ones <1>:
(1)
a.
demonstrative > third person pronoun > clitic > agreement > zero
b.
oblique > emphatic > first/second pronoun > clitic > agreement > zero
For instance, the Latin demonstrative ille `that' was reanalyzed as the French article le
`the', the third person subject pronoun il `he', and the third person object pronoun le `him'.
As we'll see below, the French pronominal il is on its way to becoming an agreement
marker. The originally oblique emphatic pronouns moi `me' and toi `you' are becoming
first and second pronoun subjects respectively. As Bresnan & Mchombo (1987) argue,
many languages have two sets of pronouns for new and old discourse information. In
English, the former would be more stressed than the latter. One can use (1) and say that
the newer information is always expressed by an element more on the left-hand side.
The changes in (1) are very common and I will mention just a few here. Proto
Indo-European verbal endings -mi, si, -ti are seen as early as the 19th century to arise
from pronouns (e.g. Bopp 1816). According to Tauli (1958: 99, based on Gavel & HenriLacombe 1929-37), the Basque verbal prefixes n-, g-, z- are identical to the pronouns ni
‘I’, gu ‘we’, and zu ‘you’. Givón (1978: 157) says that Bantu agreement markers derive
from pronouns. Hale (1973) argues that in Pama-Nyungan, inflectional markers are
derived from independent pronouns. Likewise, Mithun (1991) claims that Iroquoian
agreement markers derive from Proto-Iroquoian pronouns and Haugen (2004: 319)
3
argues the same for Nahuatl. Wolfart (1973: 15; 38) shows that in Cree, the verbal
singular person markers are ni-, ki-, o-/ø and that the full sets of pronouns are based on
these, namely niya, kiya, wiya. Fuß (2005) cites many additional examples.
1.2
Agreement versus arguments
Distinguishing an argument from an agreement marker is notoriously difficult. An
argument is assigned a theta-role by the verb or through entering a particular construction
(e.g. Hale & Keyser 2002) when they first merge. Agreement, on the other hand, shows
the relationship between a displaced element and the verb. Nominals that lack a theta-role
cannot be quantified or focussed; they are topics, i.e. adjuncts. In this case, either the
agreement can be linked to a theta-role or there can be a empty element, pro, that bears
the theta-role.
Agreement markers are always heads and nominal arguments are typically
phrases but pronouns can be either. Agreement markers cannot be coordinated but full
pronouns can be. Thus, coordination forces the appearance of full pronouns, as shown by
the difference between (2) and (3) in Malagasy (from Pearson 2001), where a `weak'
pronoun is shown in (2) and a full pronoun in the coordinated nominal in (3):
(2)
Hita-ny
tany
an-tokotany
i-Koto
see-3
there
AN-garden
Koto
Malagasy
`S/he/they saw Koto in the garden'
(3)
Hitan' izy
sy
ny zaza
tany
an-tokotany
i-Koto Malagasy
see
and
DET child
there
AN-garden
Koto
3S
`S/he and the child saw Koto in the garden'. (Pearson 2001: 43)
Agreement is represented in a Minimalist framework as having uninterpretable person
and number features on a probe, e.g. T, that need to find an element with interpretable
ones to agree with. The feature status will be important when we consider change. The
characteristics of the different elements are given in Table 1 below.
4
As to the phrase structure status, pronouns are ambiguous between heads and
phrases. According to Cardinaletti & Starke (1996: 36), pronouns can be `deficient heads',
or `deficient XPs', or `non-deficient XPs' (XPs being full phrases). Phrases can be
coordinated and modified; they bear theta-roles and occur in specifier positions. Pronominal
heads bear theta-roles but cannot be modified or coordinated since that would render them
into non-heads. Finally, what look like agreement morphemes may or may not bear thetaroles but they are definitely heads. Zwicky & Pullum's (1983) criteria to distinguish
agreement from non-agreement (a pronominal head in our terms) are well-known and
include the fact that agreement is obligatory and has a fixed position. The differences I
use to distinguish the stages are summarized in Table 1 regarding argument-status,
morphology, and syntax.
Theta-role
XP or X
fixed position phi
language
i Full pronoun
yes
XP
no
yes
Hindi/Urdu, Japanese
ii Head pronoun
yes
X
no
yes
French, (English)
iii Agreement (=PAL) yes
X
yes
yes
Navajo, Old English
iv Agreement
X
yes
no
Hindi/Urdu, etc
Table 1:
no
Differences between pronouns and agreement
In Table 1, three syntactic/historical stages are represented since (i) and (iv) occur
simultaneously. The PAL stage (abbreviation of Pronominal Argument Language, as in
Jelinek 1984) is one where the agreement affix bears the theta-role. I will argue in section
three that this stage is special and may have a cycle of its own. I'll now turn to some
factors that may be involved in the changes.
1.3
Minimalism and Economy Principles
Chomsky (2006: 2) identifies three factors that are crucial in the development of
language in the individual "(1) genetic endowment, which sets limits on the attainable
languages, thereby making language acquisition possible; (2) external data, converted to
5
the experience that selects one or another language within a narrow range; (3) principles
not specific to FL. Some of the third factor principles have the flavor of the constraints
that enter into all facets of growth and evolution, [...] Among these are principles of
efficient computation".
Van Gelderen (2004) identifies two principles of efficient computation that also
account for language change, the Head Preference and Late Merge Principles. The former
can be formulated as (4), and this could be a more general cognitive principle, a third
factor principle, `analyze something as small as possible':
(4)
Head Preference Principle (HPP):
Be a head, rather than a phrase.
This means that a speaker will build structures such as (5a) rather than (5b) if given
evidence that is in principle compatible with either. The FP stands for any functional
category and a pronoun (but categories such as adverb or preposition could occur too) is
merged in the head position in (5a), but occupies the specifier position in (5b):
(5) a. FP
b.
F’
F
FP
F
...
...
Hawkins' (2004) efficiency principle has a Minimize Forms, a much less specific principle
than the HPP. Besides, Minimize Forms is a performance principle. Optimality Theory has
constraints as well, e.g. STAY (`do not move') and TELEGRAPH (`do not spell out FCs).
These constraints are ordered differently cross-linguistically, however, unlike the Head
Preference and Late Merge ones.
The Head Preference Principle is relevant to a number of historical changes, as listed
in Table 2: whenever possible, a word triggers a head status rather than a phrase one.
Spec > Head
Spec > Head
Demonstrative pronoun that to complementizer
Demonstrative pronoun to article
6
Negative adverb to negation marker
Adverb to aspect marker
Adverb to complementizer (e.g. till)
Full pronoun to agreement
Table 2:
Examples of the Head Preference Principle
In this way, pronouns change from emphatic full phrases to clitic pronouns to agreement
markers, and negatives from full DPs to negative adverb phrases to heads. This change is,
however, slow since a child learning the language will continue to have input of a pronoun
as both a phrase and a head. For instance, coordinated pronouns are phrases and so are
emphatic pronouns. If they remain in the input, phrases will continue to be triggered in the
child's grammar. Lightfoot (e.g. 2006) develops an approach as to how much input a child
needs before it resets a parameter, e.g. from OV to VO. In the case of pronouns changing to
agreement markers, the child will initially assume the unmarked head option, unless there is
a substantial input of structures that provides evidence to the child that the pronoun is a full
phrase.
Within early Minimalism, there is a second economy principle (see e.g. Chomsky
1995: 348). To construct a sentence, we need to select lexical items from the lexicon, put
them together, or Merge them, and Move them. In Early Minimalism, Merge "comes `free'
in that it is required in some form for any recursive system" (Chomsky 2001: 3) and is
"inescapable" (Chomsky 1995: 316; 378) but Move requires additional assumptions. This
means that it is less economical to merge early and then move than to wait as long as
possible before merging. This is expressed in (6):
(6)
Late Merge Principle (LMP):
Merge as late as possible
Principle (6) works most clearly in the case of heads. Thus, under Late Merge, the
preferred structure would be (7a) with the auxiliary base generated in T, rather than (7b)
with the auxiliary base generated in a lower position and moving to T. The LMP accounts
for the change from lexical to functional head or from functional to higher functional head
so frequently described in the grammaticalization literature (e.g. Heine & Kuteva 2002):
7
(7)
a.
TP
T
b.
vP
might
TP
T
vP
v'
v
v'
...
v
...
might
Late Merge also accounts for lexical phrases becoming base generated in the
functional domain, e.g. the adverb fortunately. When it is first introduced into the English
language from French in 1386, it is as adjective, as in (8), meaning 'happy, successful,
favored by fortune'. In (9), it still has that meaning but is preposed, and ambiguous in
structure. In (10), it has been reanalyzed as a higher adverbial:
(8)
Whan a man..clymbeth vp and wexeth fortunat. (OED, 1386, Chaucer)
(9)
Most fortunately: he hath atchieu'd a Maid That paragons description, and wilde
Fame: One that excels the quirkes of Blazoning pens (Shakespeare, Othello)
(10)
Fortunately, Lord De la War..met them the day after they had sailed (OED,
1796).
Structure (11a) shows the more recent structural representation and (11b) the earlier one.
The prefered one under the LMP is (11a):
(11)
a.
CP
AP
Fortunately
b.
CP
C'
C
C'
TP
...
C
TP
....
VP
...
AP
fortunately
The question can be asked which lexical items are `prone' to a reanalysis under
the LMP? If non-theta-marked elements can wait to merge outside the VP (Chomsky
1995: 314-5), they will do so. I will therefore argue that if, for instance, a preposition can
8
be analyzed as having fewer semantic features and the PP of which it is the head is less
relevant to the argument structure (e.g. to, for, and of in ModE), it will tend to merge
higher (in TP or CP) rather than merge early (in VP) and then move. How does he LMP
work in practice? Assuming a lexicalist hypothesis in which a lexical entry "contains
three collections of features: phonological ... semantic ..., and formal" (Chomsky 1995:
230), a Lexical Item such as the light verb go might have semantic features of [motion,
future, location]. If go occurs in the numeration with another verb, e.g. bring, one of the
semantic features of go can be activated, in this case [future] rather than all. In that case,
a biclausal structure can be avoided as well. Other examples are listed in Table 3.
On, from P to ASP
VP Adverbials > TP/CP Adverbials
Like, from P > C (like I said)
Negative objects to negative markers
Modals: v > ASP > T
Negative verbs to auxiliaries
To: P > ASP > M > C
PP > C (for him to do that ...)
Table 3:
Examples of the Late Merge Principle
Pronouns fit this picture completely. When they are full pronouns, they are relevant to thetamarking in the lower domain as well as to checking the person and number features of the
higher T. After they are reanalyzed as higher heads, a new element for theta-marking is
assumed (could be null) and the higher head no longer moves.
It is also possible to think of syntax as inert, and reformulate Late Merge in terms
of feature change and loss. From Chomsky (1995) on, features are divided in
interpretable (relevant at Logical Form) and uninterpretable (only relevant to move
elements to certain positions). Interpretable features are acquired before uninterpretable
ones, as argued in Radford (2000), but are later reinterpreted as uninterpretable ones,
triggering the functional/grammatical system. The same reanalysis happens in language
change. For instance, changes in negatives can be accounted for by arguing that their
(initially) semantic features are reanalyzed as interpretable ones and then as
uninterpretable ones, as in (12). Changes connected to the Subject Cycle occur because
the interpretable person (and gender) features of a full pronoun are reanalyzed as
uninterpretable when they become agreement, as will be shown in (13) below:
9
(12)
Feature Economy
(to be expanded)
Minimize the semantic and interpretable features in the derivation
This is of course not responsible for the entire cycle, and I return to this Principle below.
I will use the Minimalist insight that "language is a perfect solution to interface
conditions" (Chomsky 2006: 3) and I will argue that Economy Principles are responsible
for the various stages of the cycle. Computational efficiency is different for the LF
component (Logical Form, but also called Conceptual Intentional Interface) than for the
PF one (Phonological Form, or Sensorimotor Interface). Chomsky argues that “the
conflict between computational efficiency and ease of communication” is resolved “to
satisfy the CI interface” (2006: 9). This would mean a preference for interpretable
features. Evidence from language change shows that computational efficiency can
sometimes favor the CI-side (by renewal of the forms) and sometimes the SM one (by
(12)).
1.4
The Mechanisms behind the Cycle
Another way to see the stages of Table 1 is as in Figure 1. In stage (a), the nominal and
pronominal (abbreviated as pron to avoid confusion with pro in pro-drop) are both in the
specifier position. In (b), the pronoun is optionally placed in the head position. In (c), the
nominal and (emphatic) pronoun in the specifier position are optional and the pronoun
must be represented on the verb (=polysynthetic or pronominal argument) <2>. The next
stage is for the agreement to start becoming less relevant and for the material in the
specifier to become obligatory again. Then we are back at stage (a).
a.
TP
T’
DP
pron
b.
T
VP
pron
(=HPP)
T’
DP
(English, Urdu/Hindi, Japanese)
10
TP
pron-T
VP
(Non Standard French)
c.
TP
T’
[DP]
[pron]
pron-T
(=LMP)
VP
(Navajo, Old English)
Figure 1:
Stages of the Subject Cycle
([...] indicates and optional adjunct)
In terms of the principles formulated in section 1.3, the reanalysis from stage (a) to (b) is
expected under the Head Preference Principle, and that from (b) to (c) under the Late
Merge Principle or under Feature Economy, if we think of agreement now merged as a
separate entity, e.g. through uninterpretable phi-features in T. Though these stages seem
to make sense logically, I show in section three that the one from (b) to (c) doesn't occur
this way. Instead, there is a direct reanalysis from (b) to (a). Stage (c) is a possible stage
but an optional one.
As mentioned, one can also see the cycle purely in terms of feature change:
topic/emphatic pronouns have interpretable phi-features but regular pronouns can be
reanalyzed, starting with the most definite first and second person features, as not having
interpretable person features. The reason for the reanalysis first of the most definite this
way is that they are most often preposed as subjects. The reanalysis as an agreement head
means the phi-features are reanalyzed from interpretable on the (pro)noun to
uninterpretable on the agreement, as in (13), expanded from (12) above:
(13)
Feature Economy (expanded)
Adjunct
emphatic
[i-phi]
Specifier
>
full pronoun
[i-phi]
>
Head
affix
head pronoun >
agreement
[u-1/2] [i-3]
[u-phi]
As far as theta-roles are concerned, emphatic pronouns have none, pronouns have them
and agreement does not. Theta-checking/probing differences have not been added here.
11
An important consideration in the agreement cycle is the occurrence of pro-drop,
or null subjects (and objects). When the pronoun is optional, it is not clear if the
agreement is tied to the theta-role (and an argument is superfluous) or if an empty
argument pronoun is present. The occurrence of pro-drop is therefore not decisive even
though the question is relevant to consider. Rizzi (1982: 154) ties the occurrence of prodrop to rich agreement in languages such as Italian, so that pro is licensed by agreement.
This is still accepted as one way that pro-drop is licensed. To account for pro-drop in
languages such as Chinese that lack agreement, Huang (1984) suggests that pro-drop can
be licensed in a language that completely lacks agreement (Chinese), but not in one that
has partial agreement (Standard English). The latter is not a `natural' stage where
agreement is concerned but kept alive prescriptively.
Since the 1980s, many other analyses have been proposed. Most recently,
Neeleman & Szendroi (to appear) have suggested it is the morphological shape of the
pronoun that determines if the pronoun can be left out or not (though they still allow
context-sensitive spell-out rules where full agreement licenses a zero spell-out). If the
pronoun has agglutinative morphology and different parts of a pronoun are spelled out by
different spell-out rules, there is pro-drop. Thus, a Japanese pronoun watasi-ga 'I-NOM'
has a very identifiable Case morpheme -ga and this allows the top layer of the pronoun to
be spelled out as -ga whereas the NP part can be spelled out as watasi. If it is the
morphological shape of the pronoun and not the type of agreement that determines if prodrop occurs or not, pro-drop is expected to occur at any stage in the cycle. This is indeed
the case.
2
Full pronouns to heads
In this section, I look at examples from stage (a) in Figure 1 and the transition to stage
(b). Section 2.1 shows that Hindi/Urdu and Japanese are languages where pronouns and
nouns have the same status, i.e. stage (a). In 2.2 and 2.3, English and Colloquial French
are discussed respectively. English is a language where first (and second) person
pronouns are moving towards a loss of independence, i.e. stage (b). In Colloquial French,
12
stage (b) has already been reached for most speakers. In Egyptian and Celtic, as discussed
in section 2.4, there is a complementarity between pronouns and agreement. I argue that
this could be reanalyzed two different ways.
2.1
Stage (a): Hindi/Urdu and Japanese
A clear example of stage (a) is Urdu/Hindi where the pronoun is phonologically not
reduced, as in (14), and can easily be modified, as in (15):
(14)
mẽ `I', tum `thou', woo `s/he', ham 'we', aap `you', and woo `they'
(15)
a.
ham log `we people',
b.
aap log `you people',
c.
mẽ hii `I-FOC'
The pronouns get similar Case endings as full nominals, as (16a) and (16b) show, and are
in similar positions vis-avis the verb, as (17a) and (17b) show, i.e. they need not to be
adjacent to the verb:
(16)
a.
mẽ
nee
us
ko
dekha
I
ERG
him
DAT saw
Urdu/Hindi
`I saw him'.
b.
aadmii nee
kitaab ko
man
book
ERG
peRha
Urdu/Hindi
DAT read
`The man read the book'.
(17)
a.
mẽ
kahaanii
likhtii hũ
I-NOM
story
writing am
Urdu/Hindi
‘I am writing a story’.
b.
woo aadmii
kahaanii
likhtii hẽ
that man-NOM
story
writing is
`That man is writing a story'.
13
Urdu/Hindi
Pronouns are also coordinated, as in (18), and keep the same shape as when they are not
coordinated:
(18)
mẽ
or
merii behn
I
and
my
doonõ dilii
sister both
mẽy
Delhi in
rehtee hẽ
living are
`My sister and I are both living in Delhi'.
The agreement on the verbs is full and pro-drop occurs. Urdu/Hindi also shows a
relatively free word order and rarely uses expletives, compatible with its pro-drop
character.
Could Hindi/Urdu be a language where agreement bears the theta-role and the
subject (pro)noun is the topic? Butt & King (1997) have argued that nominative subjects
are focussed. This means subjects are not in topic positions. An example of a focus
marker is too, as in (19):
(19)
Mẽ
too
us see kahũuga
I
FOC
he to
Urdu/Hindi
tell-FUT-3SM
`I'll certainly tell him'. (Barker 1975, I, 213)
Japanese is a language with pronouns that are very nominal (Noguchi 1997).
Kuno (1973: 17) notes that Japanese "lacks authentic third person pronouns". Instead, it
uses pro-drop or nouns. These pronouns can be modified, as in (20), and vary for
politeness level:
(20)
tiisai kare
Japanese
small he
Their case marking and topic suffixes are identical to those of full nouns as well, as
shown in (21), and they can both be separated from the verb, as shown in (22):
14
(21)
a.
watakusi
wa
1S
TOP
/
Yoko wa
Japanese
Yoko TOP
`As for me/Yoko, ...'
b.
watakusi
ga
1S
NOM
/
Yoko ga
Japanese
Yoko NOM
`I/Yoko ...'
(22)
watashi-wa
kuruma-o
unten-suru
kara.
I-TOP
car-ACC
drive-NONPST
PRT
Japanese
`I will drive the car'. (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.)
Could the Japanese pronominal subjects be topics? Like full nominals, they can
sometimes occur in topic position and be marked for it, as in (22), but they need not be,
as e.g. (23) shows where another element is in topic position, or (24) where more than
one are:
(23)
kondo-wa
watashi-ga
this time-TOP I-NOM
kuruma-o
unten-suru
kara. Japanese
car-ACC
drive-NONPST PRT
`This time, I will drive the car'. (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.)
(24)
kondo-wa
kuruma-wa
this time-TOP car-TOP
watashi-ga
unten-suru
kara. Japanese
I-NOM
drive-NONPST PRT
`This time, as for the car, I will drive'. (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.)
Typically, as we'll see for French, pronoun heads cannot be code switched. Japanese
pronouns, as in (25), can do so (in many cases) showing they are not regular heads:
(25)
watashi-wa
drove the car
Japanese-English
I-TOP
`I drove the car' (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.).
Thus, Urdu/Hindi and Japanese are languages where the subject pronoun is a specifier.
This represents stage (a) of Figure 1.
15
2.2
Stage (a) going on (b)
In English, a difference between (nominative) pronouns and full nominals (and nonnominative pronouns) is starting to appear. I argue that the nominative (I, s/he, etc) marks
the head and the accusative (me, her/him, etc) the phrasal variant. I show how the
modification and coordination of the head and fully nominal variants differ and also how
first and second person pronouns are often repeated if separated from the verb.
English nominal subjects, like subjects in general in Urdu/Hindi, are definitely
phrasal and positioned in the specifier position since they can be modified and
coordinated quite extensively:
(26)
that book's rejection by ten publishers (he had still not heard from The
Applecote Press, Chewton Mendip) had made him a little nervous of putting
pen to paper (BNC - ASS 2596).
(27)
To pay for these new weapons, the Pentagon and the Office of Management
and Budget have proposed a number of cuts in other accounts (http://www.d-ni.net).
English pronouns on their own are less clearly phrasal since they are not that often
modified and coordinated. In the British National Corpus (abbreviated as BNC), the
coordinated she and he occurs 8 times and he and she, as in (28), 19 times whereas these
pronouns are very numerous (640736 instances of he and 352872 of she):
(28)
while he and she went across the hall, Jasper appeared, running ... (BNC - EV1
2028).
The reason that sentences such as (28) are rare may have to do with Case. When
pronouns are coordinated, they get an accusative/oblique case in colloquial speech, as in
(29):
16
(29)
Kitty and me were to spend the day there ... (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me
are such friends!) (Austen, Pride & Prejudice II 16)
Pronouns on their own are marked as nominative, I, she, he, they, we; coordinated and
modified phrasal pronouns show accusative/oblique Case, me, her, him, them, us. The
latter are in topic position.
English has examples where the nominative pronoun is repeated, because this
nominative subject is preferably adjoined to the head in T when possible, as in (30) to
(32). This means the language is between stages (a) and (b) in Figure 1. (30) is from a
piece of creative writing, (31) is spoken text, and (32) from a sports TV broadcast:
(30)
She’s very good, though I perhaps I shouldn’t say so (BNC HDC)
(31)
if I had seen her, er prints I maybe I would of approached this erm differently
(BNC F71).
(32)
I actually I'd like to see that again (BNC-HMN 901).
The same occurs with second person, as in (33) to (35), and infrequently with third (in the
BNC) as in (36) which is the only one for the three adverbs with s/he:
(33)
then it does give you maybe you know a few problems. (BNC - J3Y 72)
(34)
You maybe you've done it but have forgotten. (BNC - FUH 1047)
(35)
Erm you actually you know you don't have to say I'm . (BNC - JYM 79)
(36)
Erm he perhaps he remembered who he was talking to and what it was all about.
(BNC - JYM 1176)
Subject pronouns are not repeated after VP adverbs such as quickly, at least in the
BNC, as expected if pronouns are in the T position:
(37)
%I quickly I ...
(38)
%I completely I ...
17
Another sign that nominative pronouns are moving towards agreement is that
there is an emphatic in English. It is in the accusative/oblique form of the pronoun, e.g.
me in (39) and (40), occupying a topicalized position:
(39)
Me, I've been a night person longer than I can remember (BNC-GVL 335).
(40)
Me, I was flying economy, but the plane, … was guzzling gas (BNC – H0M 36)
In English, the emphatic is most acceptable with first person, e.g. as in (39) and (40), and
second person, as in (41), but with third person or an indefinite, they are unattested, as
(42) to (44) indicate. This shows that the emphatic is still a topic in third person:
(41)
You, you didn’t know she was er here (BNC – KC3 3064)
(42)
%Him, he .... (not attested in the BNC)
(43)
%Her, she shouldn’t do that (not attested in the BNC)
(44)
%As for a ..., it ... (not attested in the BNC)
If the subject is being renalyzed as agreement, how does this work when the
auxiliary inverts in questions, i.e. when it moves to C. There are a number of varieties of
English where this movement is not taking place, e.g. African American Vernacular
English (AAVE) as in Green (1998: 98-9):
(45)
What I'm go'n do?
AAVE
`What am I going to do'
(46)
How she's doing?
AAVE
`How is she doing'
There may be a few indications that this pattern occurs in relatively standard English. So,
though third person pronouns and full nouns occur on their own when the modal moves
to C, as in (47) to (49), first and second do not appear this way in copora searches, as in
indicated by (50):
18
(47)
What else could possibly he be?
(http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2006/10/file-under-police-dog-whistlepolitics.html)
(48)
Might possibly the human race now achieve its broader destiny?
(http://my.athenet.net/~dickorr/Sovran's_Eye1.html).
(49)
Could possibly the third set numbers stand for letters, characters, rather than
words? (http://forums.steinitzpuzzlers.com)
(50)
% might/could/will possibly I (not attested on a google search or on the BNC)
This shows that third person is more syntactically independent, i.e. in a specifier position.
In section five, on the basis of more languages, I will suggest that first and second
person pronouns are always the first to be adjacent to the verb, as in (30) to (35), and to
be accompanied by additional topics, as in (39) to (41), and that a third person is later. I
now turn to Colloquial French.
2.3
Stage (b)
French is one of the Romance languages to have lost pro-drop, some verbal agreement,
and to have developed clitic subjects. The development we saw starting with English
pronouns has gone further in French, as is well-known since e.g. Lambrecht (1981).
Below, I provide evidence that the (non-standard) French pronoun is often analyzed as
agreement marker. As before, I will examine modification, coordination, and position vis
a vis the verb. The pronoun is also frequently accompanied by a full nominal or emphatic
pronominal in topicalized position. Modern written French is very different from the
spoken language. I will therefore discuss different varieties and use terms such as
colloquial and standard French, while French is used when all varieties are included.
Modification and coordination are rare in general with pronouns. Pronouns refer
to already known information so are not often modified. I examined 1000 occurrences of
je in the spoken Corpus d'entretiens spontanés, hence CdES, and found not a single
19
instance of a pronoun that was modified by a PP or other word, or was coordinated. This
latter fact is well-known, and shown in (51):
(51)
*Je et tu ...
French
I and you
This is not true e.g. for third person feminine, as (52) shows:
(52)
et c'est elle qui a eu la place.
French
and it was her who has had the place (CdES)
The regular pronoun is never independent from the verb, as shown in (53) and by
the ungrammaticality of (54). In (53), écris must be preceded by a subject pronoun and the
same is true in (55) and (56). As Tesnière (1932) already put it, French is a synthetic
language with an analytic orthography:
(53)
Je lis et j'écris
Colloquial French
I read and I-write
(54)
*Je lis et écris
Colloquial French
`I read and write'.
`I read and write'.
(55)
J’ai
vu
I-have seen
(56)
ça.
French
that
*Je probablement ai vu ça
French
I probably have seen that
Lambrecht (1981: 6) mentions the elimination of clitic-verb inversion, as in (57). Instead,
one hears (58) and (59):
(57)
Où
vas-tu
where go-2S
20
Standard French
(58)
tu
vas
où
2S
go
where
Colloquial French
`Where are you going?'
(59)
que
tu
vas
that
you
go
Colloquial French
`Are you going?'
Auger (1994: 67) agrees with that for Quebec Colloquial French, saying that only second
person clitics ever appear postverbally. De Cat (2005: 1199) disputes the claim that
inversion no longer occurs but her data from Belgian, Canadian, and French French show
that inversion is infrequent (e.g. in Belgian French, only 2% of Yes/No questions are of
the kind in (57) and only 21% in Canadian Yes/No questions).
If the subjects are being reanalyzed as agreement markers, how can this happen
with the other clitics in Standard French, such as the negative and object in (60)?
(60)
mais
je
ne
l'ai
pas
encore démontré
but
I
NEG it-have NEG yet
Standard French
proven
`but I haven't yet proven that'.
(Annales de l'institut Henri Poincaré, 1932, p. 284; from a google search)
It turns out that these are very rare in Colloquial French. As is well-known, the negative
ne is fast disappearing and object clitics are being replaced by ça, as in (61):
(61)
j'ai
pas
encore démontré
I-have NEG yet
proven
ça
Colloquial French
that
` I haven't yet proven that'.
Fonseca-Greber (2000: 127) in her study of Swiss Spoken French shows that
forms such as je `I' always precede the finite verb. If they were anything else than
agreement, this wouldn't be the case. She also shows (p. 314) that all emphatic pronouns
(except for eux `them') are accompanied by the subject pronoun. With proper nouns, the
21
percentage is lower (p. 321), for person names around 75% and for place names around
35%. Definite NPs (p. 329) have additional pronouns around 60% of the time, with
human singulars the highest. Doubled `pronouns' occur very frequently with indefinite
subjects, on average 77%. Examples are:
(62)
une omelette elle est comme ça
Swiss Spoken French
an omelette she is like this
`An omelette is like this' (Fonseca-Greber 2000: 335).
(63)
si un: un Russe i va en france
Swiss Spoken French
if a a Russian il goes to France
`If a Russian goes to France'. (Fonseca-Greber 2000: 335)
Quantifiers are the least likely to have doubling, namely about 20 %, but they do occur,
as in (64):
(64)
c'est que chacun il a sa manière de ...
Swiss Spoken French
it is that everyone he has his way of
`Everyone has his own way of ...' (Fonseca-Greber 2000: 338).
This is the last stage before the pronoun is reanalyzed as an agreement marker. Once that
happens, quantifiers will generally occur with the clitic/agreement marker. For a similar
reason that (64) is rare, Colloquial French does not allow (65) (yet), according to Roberge
(1988: 356), namely that the pronominal il would be bound:
(65)
*Qui il est allé?
Colloquial and Standard French
who he is come
`Who has come'?
However, Lambrecht (1981: 30) reports a switch from standard (66) to colloquial (67):
(66)
22
C'est moi qui conduis
Standard French
(67)
C'est moi qu'je conduis
Colloquial French
It is me that I-drive
`It is me that drives'.
A final argument to show that moi `me' is an emphatic or possibly a subject (as
well as toi `you' and some others) comes from code switching. In Arabic, the agreement
morpheme on the verb has a theta-role (or there is an empty subject with a theta-role) and
a subject is therefore optional. If present it has to be the emphatic form, and this is true in
code switching in (68) as well. In (69), the emphatic Arabic does not suffice, and a
French tu is needed, evidence that tu is part of the French agreement morphology:
(68)
(69)
moi dxlt
I went-in-1S
`I went in'.
nta tu vas travailler
you you go work
`You go to work' (from Bentahila and Davies 1983: 313).
Arabic-French
Arabic-French
This may show that the emphatic is in the argument position, as in stage (a) of Figure 1,
at least for first and second person pronouns.
To conclude the discussion on French, French is in transition between having
subject arguments expressed analytically to having them expressed synthetically.
Different varieties of French are in different stages, as one would expect. French
pronouns show more evidence towards agreement status than English ones. In the next
subsection, I examine a stage where pronouns can be seen to incorporate into the verb but
without an immediate new emphatic element moving into the specifier of the TP.
2.4
Pronouns and nominals in complementary distribution
In some Australian languages (Dixon 1980), Old Egyptian and Coptic, and some of the
modern Celtic languages, the pronoun is in complementary distribution with the
23
agreement marker. Siewierska & Bakker (1996) note that these languages are rare, and to
their knowledge a strict complementarity only occurs in Celtic and the Amazonian
language Makushi. An analysis that has been given for this phenomenon is incorporation
of the pronoun into the V or C (Willis 1999: 217). I will first cite some examples from
Old Egyptian and Coptic and then from Celtic.
Reintges (1997: 62-6) shows for Old Egyptian that full nominal subjects and
pronominal subjects have different distributions (with eventive verbs). In (70), there is
only a perfective marker on the verb whereas in (71) the pronominal subject is placed
together with the initial verb:
(70)
hnc-f
'h'-n
Pjpj
hr
mht(y) pt
Old Egyptian
stand.up-PF
Pepi
at
north heaven with-3SM
`(King) Pepi has stood up with him at the northern side of heaven'
(Pyramid Texts, 814b/P, Reintges 1997: 62)
(71)
χnty-sn
'h'-k
Old Egyptian
stand.up-2SM in.front-3P
`You stand in front of them' (Pyramid Texts, 255b/W, Reintges 1997: 62)
Reintges argues that the endings are incorporated pronouns that occupy the same
(original) positions as full nominals.<3>
The same remains true in a later stage, Coptic. When a full nominal subject is
present in Coptic, the markers on the auxiliary or verb are absent, as the difference
between (72) and (73) shows:
(72)
hən
te-unu
de
a
pe.f-las
meh
in
the-hour
PRT
PF
the-his-tongue fill
ro-f
Coptic
mouth-his
`Immediately, his tongue filled his mouth'
(73)
a-f-ent-əs
ehun
e-t-plis
rakte
PF-he-bring-her
PRT
to-the-city
Alexandria
Coptic
`It (the ship) brought her into the city of Alexandria' (both from Reintges 2001:
178).
24
Celtic languages languages are varied in their use of agreement with overt
subjects. Middle Welsh has three sets of (preverbal) pronouns, but even the least
emphatic of these are full phrases (Willis 1999), as in (74):
(74)
ac
ef
ehun
yn y
priawt person a
and
he
himself in his own
person PRT
'e
gwylwys
MWe
3S-ACC watched
`and he himself watched it in person'.
(Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys 141-2,Willis 1999: 136)
In (74), ef `he' is separated from the verb as well as modified. Willis argues that by early
Modern Welsh, this situation has changed radically and modified and coordinated
pronouns are very rare. This shows a reanalysis to head has taken place.
There is then a stage where the pronouns are doubled, as in 18th century (75),
especially first person, and the preverbal ones are reanalyzed as complementizers:
(75)
Mi
af
fi
'n
feichiau
trosti
I
go
I
PRT
surety
for-her
Early ModWel
`I'll act as surety for her' (Enterlute Histori 50.6, Willis 1999: 213).
None of the modern Celtic languages shows agreement between the verb and the
subject if there is a full DP subject, as (76ab) from Modern Welsh show:
(76)
a.
b.
Gwelodd
y
dynion ddraig
Saw-3S
the
men
*Gwelsan
y
dynion ddraig
Saw-3P
the
men
Welsh
dragon
Welsh
dragon
‘The men saw a dragon’ (from Borsley & Roberts 1996: 40).
An analysis of pronominal subjects in these languages is given in (77) with the pronoun
as a head moving to T:
25
(77)
TP
T'
T
vP
san
v
...
gwel
Modern Welsh optionally has an emphatic pronominal subject with an inflected
verb, as in (78), but this is impossible in Irish, as in (79):
(78)
Gwelsan
(nhw) ddraig
Saw-3P
they
Welsh
dragon
‘They saw the dragon’ (Borsley & Roberts 1996: 40).
(79)
chuirfinn
(*mé) isteach ar
put.1S.COND I
in
on
an
phost sin
ART
job
Irish
DEM
`I would apply for that job´ (McCloskey & Hale 1984)
And an analysis of these would be as in (80), indicating that the emphatic is being
reanalyzed as specifier of the TP and san is agreement in T:
(80)
CP
C
TP
nhw
T'
T
vP
san
v'
v
gwel
26
...
This structure is as in stage (a). So the history of Celtic first shows a full phrasal subject
in (74), then a head in (75), and then a phrasal pronoun in (78) for Welsh. This is an
instance where stage (a) of Figure 1 is reanalyzed as (b) and (b) as (a).
3
Agreement as argument
In this section, I provide data on languages where the agreement marker bears the thetarole, i.e. stage (c) in Figure 1. These are called Pronominal Argument Languages (or
PALs). I first provide some background information on this kind of language, focussing
on Navajo. I then indicate how Spanish and varieties of Italian, even though they share
many characteristics of PALs, do not fit this classification (contra e.g. Ordóñez &
Treviño 1999). The latter's cycle instead goes from (a) to (b) and (a) again.
Jelinek (1984), in examining Warlpiri, argues that languages have either lexical or
pronominal arguments. In non-configurational languages "Clitic Pronouns [are] Verbal
Arguments" (1984: 43). Jelinek's version of this difference/parameter is (81):
(81)
Configurationality Parameter <4>
a.
In a configurational language, object nominals are properly governed by the
verb.
b.
In a [...] non-configurational language, nominals are not verbal arguments,
but are optional adjuncts to the clitic pronouns that serve as verbal arguments
(Jelinek 1984: 73).
Making a similar point, Baker (1995; 2001) proposes the following macroparameter:
(82)
The Polysynthesis Parameter
Verbs must include some expression of each of the main participants in the event
described by the verb (the subject, object, and indirect object) (Baker 2001: 111).
27
Baker (2001: 148; 149) distinguishes between Subject and Object Polysynthesis. In this
section, I just regard Subject Polysynthesis.
In full fledged PAL languages, all pronouns and nominals are adjuncts. For
instance, in Navajo (83), the subject and two objects are marked on the verb:
(83)
bínabinishtin
Navajo
b-í-na-bi-ni-sh-tin
3-against-around-3-Q-1S-handle-IMPF
`I teach it to him' (Young & Morgan 1987: 223)
Characteristics of PAL languages, as in Baker and Jelinek, are (a) optionality of
nominals (DPs as well as independent pronouns), as in (84), for Navajo, (b) sentences with
more than one nominal are rare, (c) nominals as in (85) are adjuncts, (d) absence of anaphors
and non-referential quantified DPs, (e) minimal embedding:
(84)
Nanishté
Navajo
na-ni-sh-té
around-you-I-carry.IMPF
`I am carrying you around'.
(85)
(Diné bizaad) yíníshta'
Navajo
Navajo language 1-study
`I am studying Navajo'.
The optionality of nominals, as in (84), follows if they are adjuncts, and so does their being
specially Case marked in some languages. Regarding (d), Baker (1995: 49f.) makes the
point that anaphors such as `himself' would be adjuncts and hence outside the c-command
domain of the real subject. Quantifiers have been argued to be adverbial (Jelinek 1995; Faltz
1995). Thus, in (86), ałtso `all' is not a quantifier with scope over the entire sentence but just
over the adjacent DP:
(86)
28
má'ii
ałtso
dibé
baayijah
Navajo
coyote all
sheep 3-3-ran-away
`The sheep ran away from all the coyotes' or
`All the sheep ran away from the coyotes'. (Jelinek 2001: 18).
As to (e), Hale (1989) notes that (non)-configurationality is confined to constructions, not
languages, and notes that sentential complements such as (87) and (88) in Navajo have to be
configurational, even though Navajo as a whole is non-configurational:
(87)
Shi-zhé'é kinla'nígóó deesháál nízin
Navajo
my-father Flagstaff-to 1-will.go 3-want
`My father wants to go to Flagstaff' (K. Hale 1989: 300).
(88)
doogáál ní
Navajo
3-arrive 3-said (disjoint reference)
`He said that he arrived' (Willie 1991: 143).
Baker (1995: chapter 10) says that polysynthetic languages avoid embedded arguments.
Constructions such as (87) are rare in Navajo; the preferred embedding strategy being
nominalization, as in (89) for instance:
(89)
honeesná-nígíí yoodlá
Navajo
3.win-NOM 3.believe (free reference)
`He believes he won' or `he believes the winner' (Willie 1991: 178).
These characteristics of Navajo indicate that a grammatical specifier position is
not available. The adjuncts, as in (85) and (86), are not in the specifier of TP. Instead the
role of agreement is prominent and in this, it resembles the stage a number of Romance
languages are in. I first provide a few examples where this seems the case, but then show
that neither Spanish not Italian dialects are being reanalyzed as (c); rather they are
reanalyzed as (a).
29
In Spanish and standard Italian, as is well known, subjects are optional and one
could argue that the agreement, shown in bold in (90) and (91) for Spanish, is the
argument
(90)
(Muchas tribus) buscaban
la opotunidad
de rebelarse
many tribes
the opportunity
to rebel
sought-3P
Spanish
`Many tribes sought to rebel'.
(91)
a.
(nosotros) buscábamos
`we sought'
b.
(vostros) buscabais
`you sought'
c.
(ellos, ellas) buscaban
`they sought'
Ordóñez & Treviño (1999) show that pre-verbal overt subjects pattern with left dislocated
objects in ellipsis, extraction of quantifiers, and interpretation of preverbal quantifiers.
Postverbal subjects in Spanish, however, do function as arguments (as different tests
show though Ordóñez & Treviño 1999 do not take this into account), quantified subjects
are grammatical as are embedded objects though. So, Spanish exhibits agreement, and
has frequent topicalized subjects.
In standard Italian, the situation is similar to Spanish but, as is well known since
e.g. Brandi & Cordin (1989) and Poletto (2004), there is an incredible diversity across the
different dialects. I will come back to this in section five when talking about the
definiteness hierarchy. In Venetian Italian, full nouns and pronouns, as in (92), can be
doubled but not indefinites, as (93) shows:
(92)
Ti te magni sempre
Venice
you you eat always
(93)
Nissun (*el) magna
Nobody he eats (both from Poletto 2004)
30
Venice
In other varieties, especially Northern varieties such as Trentino and Fiorentino, all of
these are grammatical, even the quantified one, as in (94) to (96). That means these
varieties are back to stage (a) in Figure 1 and didn't reanalyze as stage (c). If they had,
they would have stopped using the specifier of TP and there's no evidence that they have
since quantifiers and other argument are possible:
(94)
Nisun
l'ha
dit
nobody
he-has said
niente
Trentino
nothing
`Nobody said anything' (Brandi & Cordin 1989:118)
(95)
Tut
l'è
capita
everything
it-has happened
de
not
at
night
Trentino
`Everything happened at night' (Brandi & Cordin 1989:118)
(96)
a.
Tuc i panseva
Albosaggia (Lombard N.)
Everybody they thought..
b.
Vargù al ruarà tardi
Somebody he will-arrive late (both from Poletto 2007)
In this section I have given an indication how Navajo can be analyzed as a
Pronominal Argument Language. Colloquial French, as discussed in section two, and
Spanish (and standard Italian) resemble Navajo in the importance that agreement plays.
The agreement marking, however, doesn't necessarily have a theta-role (as it does in
Navajo) since there are some overt subject arguments. Varieties of Italian show that they
are now at stage (a). In the next section I show how stage (c) can be reanalyzed as stage
(a).
4
From Agreement as Argument to Nominal as Argument
In (94) to (96) above, we saw that some dialects of Italian may be `back' at stage (a) from
an earlier stage (b). In this section, I show how stage (c) can be reanalyzed as stage (a). I
31
first briefly discuss the loss of PAL-hood in Pama-Nyungan, based on Jelinek (1987), and
then go into a similar loss in the history of English.
Jelinek (1987) provides a scenario where stage (c) of Figure 1 is reanalyzed as (a).
She argues that Proto-Pama-Nyungan was a PAL language where nominals were
adjuncts. The development of Dyirbal, a Pama-Nyungan language, shows that it evolves
from an accusative PAL into a split ergative non-PAL. The older stage, still represented
by Warlpiri, has (pro)nominals adjoined and the real arguments marked through
inflection on the AUX (in second position), as in (97), and zero for the third person, as in
(98):
(97)
Wawirri
kapi-rna
panti-rni
yalumpu
kangaroo
FUT-1S
spear-NONPST
that
Warlpiri
`I will spear that kangaroo' (Hale 1983)
(98)
Ngarrka-ngku ka-0
panti-rni
man-ERG
spear-NONPST
PRES-3S.NOM-3S.ACC
Warlpiri
`The man is spearing it' (Hale 1983).
In Warlpiri, there are separate pronouns as well, and these are Case-marked the same as
the full nominals. This prompts Jelinek (e.g. 1983: 80) to regard them as adjuncts and the
markers on the AUX as NOM/ACC marked arguments in (99):
(99)
ngajulu-rlu
ka-rna-ngku
nyuntu-0
I-ERG
PRES-1NOM-2ACC you-ABS
nya-nyi
Warlpiri
see-NONPST
`I see you' (Jelinek 1983: 80; Hale 1973: 328)
The change that occurs in Dyribal is that it becomes a split ergative language
marking ergative/absolutive on nominals and nominative/accusative for pronouns.
Because of the absence of a third person pronoun AUX, the nominal was reanalyzed as
an argument, and the ergative and absolutive, as in (100), "became grammatical cases"
(Jelinek 1987: 103):
32
(100) yabu
numa-ŋgu
mother-ABS father-ERG
bura-n
Dyirbal
saw
`Father saw mother' (Jelinek 1987: 102).
The ergative Case derives from an instrumental. Since Dyribal has no AUX, the nouns
and pronouns are the arguments. I'll now turn to English.
We have seen above that Modern English is in stage (a) perhaps being reanalyzed as
stage (b). Old and Early Middle English, I will argue, are in transition between (c) and (a).
Bonneau & Pica (1995) similarly argue that Old English developed from a system in which
complement clauses, relative clauses, and DPs "were interpreted as adverbials to a system in
which they are interpreted as arguments of the verb". I will likewise argue that DPs and CPs
are not arguments and that Old English verbal subject agreement is argumental and that the
language is in stage (c) .
Evidence for this can be found in the overt verbal agreement, the -est ending in
(101), that eliminates the need for a full subject, with all kinds of subjects, as in (102):
(101) ær ðon ðe hona creawa ðriga mec onsæcest
before that that rooster crows thrice me-ACC deny-2S
`You will deny me three times before the rooster crows' (Lindisfarne Gospel,
Matthew 26.75).
(102) þæt healreced hatan wolde | medoærn micel men gewyrcean
that palace command would meadhall large men to-build
`that he would order his men to build a big hall, a big meadhall' (Beowulf 68-9).
Instances of (101) and (102), i.e. of a null subject, are especially numerous with third person
singular and plural pronouns. This kind of pro-drop continues up to the mid 13th century.
Berndt (1956) estimates that in some Old English texts only 20% of subjects are overt. Prodrop is particularly frequent with third person pronouns, which I come back to in section
five.
33
Old English verbal agreement distinguishes person and number separately. In
addition, subjects in the traditional sense are often optional, and a topic appears, as in (103)
and (104), from the 15th century, without being clearly integrated:
(103) As for þe toþer.tway enemyes. wich ben ... seruauntes to hem. [...]. mowe sone be
ouer come. whan here lordis and maystris ben ouercome
`As for the other two enemies, which are servants to them ... [They] must soon be
defeated, when their lords and masters are defeated' (The Tree of xii frutes 149.1114).
(104) As for the secunde þinge wiche longith to a religious tree þat is plantid in religioun:
is watering
`As for the second thing which pertains to a religious tree that is planted in religion
is watering' (Idem 5.8).
Other characteristics of Pronominal Argument Languages are that they not have
object reflexives; see Baker (1995: 53). The absence of reflexive pronouns in Old English is
well-known (e.g. Faltz 1985); simple pronouns, as in (105), function reflexively instead:
(105) Ic on earde bad | ... ne me swor fela
I on earth was-around ... not me-DAT swore wrong
`I was around on earth ... I never perjured myself' (Beowulf 2736-8).
Quantifiers or, as Lightfoot (1979) calls them, pre-quantifiers are quite complex in
Old and Middle English. They are inflected as adjectives; many have an adjectival meaning,
e.g. eall means `complete'; and some have pronominal functions. This shows they are more
referential in keeping with what is known about quantifiers in polysynthetic languages.
Carlson (1978) provides different reasons why she thinks that quantifiers are not a
separate category in Old English. Two that I find interesting are (a) pre-quantifiers can
occur together, as in (106), and can modify a pronoun, as in (107):
(106) Mid childe hii weren boþe two
34
With child they were both two
(Layamon, 2399, Carlson 1978: 308)
(107) Ealle we sind gebroðra ... and we ealle cweðað
All we are brothers ... and we all say
(Aelfric Homilies I 54.8, Carlson 1978: 320)
In PALs, clausal arguments are unexpected since it would be difficult to represent
them on the verb. (108) is an example of lack of embedding but it has to be stated that this
does not occur always. There are instances of embedded sentences even in Old English:
(108) An preost was on leoden. la3amon wes ihoten. he wes leouenaðes sone. liðe him beo
drihten. he wonede at ernle3e. at æðelen are chirechen
A priest was among people. Layamon was called. He was Liefnoth's son. kind him
be God. He lived at Areley. at lovely a church
`There was a priest living here, called Layamon. He was the son of Liefnoth, may
God be him kind. He lived at Areley, at a lovely church' (Layamon, Caligula 1-3).
A feature of PALs that hasn't received (as) much attention is the lexical
incorporation of aspectual information, such as `around' in Navajo (84). Inner aspect is also
typical for Old English verbs (frequent use of affixes) but I will not go into that much here.
If subject pronouns are adjuncts in Old English, and the agreement is the real
argument, how are subjects Case marked? It can be argued that there is a split Case system
for subjects and objects, with objects being assigned inherent Case (by the V, Adj, or P), and
subjects nominative Case by a functional category. In (109), the subject is nominative and
the object him is dative because the verb forscrifan `proscribe' assigns a Goal theta-role:
(109) siþðan him
since 3S-DAT
scyppend
forscrifen
creator-NOM banned
`Since the creator had banned him' (Beowulf 106).
35
hæfde
had
Inherent Case depends on the theta-role and can be genitive, dative, or accusative. It is,
again relevant in section five, more frequent on third person pronouns than on first and
second person (van Gelderen 2000).
In Old English, subjects are adjuncts with nominative Case while objects have
inherent Case. Thus, Old English Case is interpretable (in terms of Chomsky 1995) and so is
agreement. The loss of inherent Case around 1200 triggers checking of uninterpretable Case
features in functional categories starting with the most definite nominals.
In this section, I have indicated that a number of the key characteristics of
Pronominal Argument languages also hold for Old English. Like Navajo, but unlike
varieties of Italian, the grammatical specifier position (Spec TP) is not present and the
language is in stage (c) of Figure 1. This means that Old English stage (c) has been
reanalyzed as Modern English stage (a).
5
Stages in the Cycle
In the present section I address two issues. (I) What is the typical `start' of the reanalysis
of a subject pronoun as an agreement marker, and of the topic as subject pronoun? (II)
What is the source for the renewals? The answer to (I), I suggest, is that preposing is
more prevalent with more definite elements due to discourse considerations; the answer
to (II) is that the element with the relevant features is incorporated. Each question is
addressed in a separate subsection. The last section provides a summary.
5.1
Definiteness and Feature Economy
Above it was shown that first person pronouns may be the first to be reanalyzed as
agreement markers. In Old English, the third person is more often dropped than first or
second person pronouns. This means that first and second person are the first to be
reanalyzed as subjects. Then, in Modern English, as we've seen in section two above, it is
36
the first and second person that are more like agreement markers, i.e. marked with
uninterpretable features, again leading the cyclical changes.
Definite nominals are ahead of indefinite nominals as well. For instance, Garrett
(1990: 228; 234ff) shows that doubling in Lycian only occurs with definite NPs and in
Kambera, according to Klamer (1997), clitic subjects occur when the subject is definite.
There is typically the same set of changes, namely as in (110), as also mentioned above:
(110) Definiteness Hierarchy
1/2 > 3 > definite > indefinite/quantifier
In what follows, I will give more examples of this sequence, starting with Italian dialects.
Poletto (1993; 2004) shows that the hierarchy in (110) occurs in Italian dialects.
In the Italian of Venice, first and second pronouns must be doubled <5>, as in (111),
definite nouns may be, as in (112), but quantified nouns cannot, as in (113):
(111) Ti te magni sempre
Venice
you you eat always
(112) Nane (el) magna
Venice
John he eats
(113) Nissun (*el) magna
Venice
Nobody he eats (all from Poletto 2004)
In some other varieties, all of these are grammatical, even the quantified one<6>, as in
(114), and these varieties are back at stage (a). The reasons they are not at stage (c) is that
at that stage quantifiers do not occur, and they do in this variety:
(114) Gnun a m capiss
Nobody he me understands
`Nobody understands me' (from Poletto 2004).
37
Torino
Other instances of the hierarchy can be provided. In the history of English,
contraction of pronouns to the left of verbal elements starts with first person around 1600,
as in (116) from 1608 and (117) from 1630, both taken from the Early Modern English
part of the Helsinki Corpus (HC):
(116) Ill haue another foole, thou shalt dwell no longer with me (Robert Armin)
(117) I’le be at hand to take it (Thomas Middleton)
Due to the spelling variants, it is hard to get a total picture. In the Early Modern English
period, contraction with first person is more frequent. For instance, in Shakespeare's The
Merry Wives of Windsor, there are 213 third person masculine singular pronouns and 10
of those are contracted (=5%), but of the 745 first person singular pronouns 74 are
(=10%). (X-square 4.898, p < .05).
This asymmetry is still present in Present Day English as Table 3 shows (for the
Faculty Meetings part of the Corpus of Spoken American Professional English, or CSE)
and as other studies have shown, e.g. Kjellmer (1997). The explanation is that first person
pronouns adjacent to auxiliaries are becoming agreement markers. They are moving
towards having uninterpretable person features. What stops the complete change is that
main verbs do not move and therefore there will always be some pronouns that will have
to be in specifier position in English but not in French.
I
you
uncliticized
cliticized
total
_____________________________________________
2037
685 (=25%)
2722
1176
162 (=12.1%)
1338
he
128
Table 3:
19 (=12.9%)
147
Contraction with pronouns in CSE-FAC (significant between first and
second and second and third at p < .001).
Let me add a note on the contraction of nouns and auxiliaries. Axelsson (1998: 94ff.), in
a study of contraction in 20th century newspapers, finds a small number of such
38
contractions. Many of these involve personal, company, or geographical names and
simple nouns of one syllable, as in the slightly odd (118):
(118) Hat’s the way to do it
(Axelsson 1998: 97).
Names can be seen as D heads and therefore incorporate as well. There are only a very
few instances where such an analysis is problematic.
Poletto's explanation of the hierarchy involves feature checking: if there are too
many features on the verb that the verb is checking, the verb is saturated and a clitic "is a
sort of substitute for a verb" (2000: 147). Poletto (2007) develops a very ingenious model
that explains the hierarchy in (110) in terms of features. The element on the left-hand side
in (1) is the one with most features, number, person, case, and gender (in some
languages) and rather than using the entire DP to check all the features in separate
functional categories, Poletto argues that the clitics or agreement markers do this more
economically. Poletto (2007) claims that pronoun doubling is more frequent with those
elements that have "more functional information", and that the (too large) number of
features to be checked is the cause of the doubling. She explains the Definiteness
Hierarchy in (110) by a universal order of checking domains (first and second below third
below plural etc). I will also use features but argue something a little different.
In section one, I have argued that there is a cognitive principle helping the
acquisition process, namely Feature Economy, and that DPs and other elements are
reanalyzed with fewer semantic and interpretable features. The consistency with which
certain interpretable features disappear first, i.e. are reanalyzed as uninterpretable, needs
to be explained. In section four, I noticed briefly that Old English third person pronouns
have inherent Case more frequently (and that pro-drop is more likely). This means that
first and second person pronouns have uninterpretable features before third person ones
do. If displacement is brought about by discourse factors (e.g. Chomsky 2002), i.e.
definite elements are more often subjects, these elements are the first to be seen as
moving and having uninterpretable features and become probes.
39
5.2
Source of the Renewals
Most new emphatic or topic pronouns derive from oblique pronouns, as in (119). Hale
(1973), in discussing Warlbiri subject and object markers, says that, historically, the
pronouns became cliticized and that new forms were created from oblique pronominals.
Third person pronouns (e.g. Latin to Modern Romance) are created from demonstratives.
Asian pronouns derive from honorifics. In what follows, I give some examples of this
trend, typically giving parts of cycles:
(119) The loss of phi-features
oblique >
emphatic subject >
pronoun >
agreement >
[i-phi]
[i-phi]
[i-phi]/[u-phi] [u-phi]
zero
Steele (1976) mentions that, in some Uto-Aztecan languages the clitics in second
position (i.e. following the first element), are derived from independent pronouns. Steele
(1979: 472) argues that proto Uto-Aztecan has an auxiliary marking modality, subjects,
and tense in second position. The different daughter languages have different orders and
positions. In O'odham, this comes out as (120) where the auxiliary `añ is reduced from
the first person pronoun 'a: ñi:
(120) ‘a:ñi
I
‘añ
s-ba:bigǐ
ñeok
1S-IMPF
slowly
speak-IMPF
O’odham
`I was speaking slowly’. (Zepeda 1983: 18-9)
O’odham is pro-drop and the optional subject pronoun could in fact be in a topic position,
as in (121):
(121)
CP
(‘a:ñi)
C'
C
40
TP
‘añ
pro
...
[u-phi] [i-phi]
(122) also suggests that the auxiliary is in the CP-domain since the auxiliary is cliticised
to the Q head:
(122) N-o
Q-3.IMPF
hegam
hihim
they
walk-IMPF.P
O'odham
`Are/were they walking?' (Zepeda 1983: 14; 21)
O'odham, like Luiseño, marks its auxiliary with subject and aspect and is therefore a
subject PAL. Many other Uto-Aztecan languages do not mark the subject on an auxiliary,
e.g. Hopi.
Harris (1978) discusses the evolution in Romance of `disjunctive' and
`conjunctive' pronouns, i.e. emphatic and clitic respectively. Old French, when it is still
pro-drop, has second person tu and toi for nominative and accusative emphatic. After the
loss of pro-drop, tu becomes the regular clitic pronoun and toi becomes the emphatic for
both nominative and accusative. The two stages are represented in Table 4:
Old French
Modern French
Emphatic
Regular
Emphatic
Regular
Subject
tu
zero
toi
tu
Oblique
toi
te
toi
te
Table 4: Changes in French second person pronouns (from Harris 1978: 117)
Athabaskan agreement prefixes are very similar to the emphatic pronouns, as in
(123):
(123) shí
I
éiyá
Lena
yinishyé
TOP
Lena
1S-called
`I am called Lena'.
41
Navajo
As mentioned in connection with the cline in (110) above, the full pronoun in e.g. (123)
might be used for new discourse information.
In this section so far, I have discussed a definiteness hierarchy and provided
additional examples of renewal. I'll now do a brief summary of Head Preference and
Feature Economy.
5.3
Head Preference and Feature Economy
In section one above, I have provided an outline of the different stages and have given
more empirical detail in the remaining sections. I'll now review the mechanisms of how
certain stages are reanalyzed by the language learner as another stage. Figure 1 is
repeated for convenience.
a.
TP
T’
DP
pron
b.
T
TP
T’
DP
VP
pron
(Urdu/Hindi, Japanese)
c.
(=HPP)
pron-T
VP
(Non Standard French)
TP
T’
[DP]
[pron]
pron-T
(=LMP)
VP
(Navajo, Old English)
Figure 1:
Stages of the Subject Cycle
The transition from (a) to (b) to (c) is facilitated by the Head Preference Principle and
Late Merge. Both of these can be seen as a reinterpretation of the interpretable phifeatures of the pronoun in the Specifier position as uninterpretable as agreement feature.
In stage (c), there is no longer Case checking and this means that [uCase] has disappeared
from the pronoun. For French, the changes could be summarized as:
42
(124) Old French
Standard French
Coll French
iCase
uCase
uphi
iphi
iphi
All of these point towards a loss of features during the history of language.
6
Subjects reanalyzed: suffixes or prefixes?
This section is more speculative. I will examine why agreement is expressed as a prefix
in languages such as the ones we have seen above and as a suffix in the languages we'll
see in the first part of this section.
6.1
Reanalysis as C: Suffixes
In many languages, agreement is expressed as a a suffix. In these languages, verbs often
move to C (or Fin), as in (125a). The (pronominal) subject needs to be adjacent for many
speakers, as the ungrammaticality of (125b) shows, and the inflection is different as
(125c) shows:
(125) a.
Ga
jij
daar
vaak
heen?
go
you
there
often to
`Do you go there often?'
b
*Ga
vaak
jij
ga
often you
daar
heen
ther
to
`Do you go there often?'
c.
Jij
gaat
daar
vaak
heen
you
go
there
often to
`You (seem to) go there often'.
43
Dutch
In subordinate clause, the complementizer is in C, as in (126a), and it too has a special
relationship with the subject. As in (125b), for example, for many speakers, adverbs
cannot come in between, as (126b) shows:
(126) a.
... dat ie gisteren zou aankomen
Dutch
that he yesterday would arrive
b.
*... dat gisteren hij/ie zou aankomen
that yesterday he would arrive
`that he'd arrive yesterday'.
In some varieties of Dutch, subject pronouns on C can even be argued to be agreement
markers, e.g. in (127), and certainly in (128):
(127) ... da-k daar
niet
heen
wil
that-I there
not
to
want
Dutch
`that I don't want to go there'.
(128) Da ken-ik ik
Flemish
that know-I I
`I know that'.
De Vogelaer et al. (2002: 236) provide the paradigm for Dutch inverted and non-inverted
verbs with the doubled subject pronouns, as in (128), and maps of the Dutch speaking
areas where they occur, mainly in Flanders and Brabant. The doubling shows that the
clitic has become an agreement marker (and C is a probe looking for interpretable phifeatures). De Vogelaer et al (2002: 242) conclude that sentences without inversion are
more pragmatically marked. The least acceptable are the third person ones. The noninverted doublings are not at all acceptable.
Verb-movement may be the reason why many agreement markers are suffixes. In
VS constructions, the verb moves to the position of the pronoun on its way to a higher
position, as in (129). The pronoun can be seen as a head in C triggering this movement:
44
(129)
CP
C'
C
TP
T'
T
vP
pron
...
The reanalysis/change to a stage where the pronoun is agreement is of course easy to
`explain' as Feature Economy. C is reanalyzed as a probe with [u-phi]. I will give some
further examples.
In Old Norse (Faarlund 2004: 35; EyÞórrson 2004; Boer 1920: 210), first and
second person pronouns may cliticize on the verb, as in (130), from 500 CE. In Icelandic,
hygg ek can be hykk `think-I' and the Old English and Old High German second person
singular -st derives from the Germanic/Indo-European the 2S clitic (Lühr 1984), as in
(131) repeated from (101) above:
(130) hariuha
Hariuha
haitika
farawisa
named-I
danger-knowing
Old Norse
‘I am called Hariuha, the one who knows danger’. (Sjælland bracteate 2 I Krause
1971).
(131) ... mec onsæcest
Old English
... me betray-2S
`you betray me'.
Middle Dutch (Royen 1929: 487) and, as seen above, colloquial Dutch have a clitic, as in
(132). Middle English hastow, wiltow, and other forms, as in (133), Old High German
has (134), Farsi umad-esh ‘came-he’, Alemannic (135), and probably the Proto-IndoEuropean verbal endings -m, -s, -t (see Bopp 1816; Brugmann 1904) derive from a
movement of the verb to the demonstrative pronoun:
45
(132) da kank nie doen
Dutch variety
that can-I not do
(133) Sestow this people?
Middle English
`See you these people'
(Piers Plowman 468)
(135) ni wane theih thir gelbo
OHG
NEG think that-I you deceive
`Don't think that I deceive you' (Otfrid I 23, 64, Somers Wicka 2007)
(136) hätt-er gseit
Alemannic
has-he said (Giacalone Ramat 1998: 117).
Many of these stages then double the pronouns, e.g. Old Norse (Boer 1920), as in
(137), where the full pronoun is base generated in an argument position:
(137) Fanca
ec
found-I-NEG I
mildan mann eþa
mild
man
sva
noble and
matar goðan,
food
good
`I found none so noble and free with his food'
(Hávamál 39, from http://etext.old.no/Bugge/havamal.html)
In this section, I have provided examples of subject pronouns being reanalyzed
not as T (as in e.g. French) but as C. The definiteness hierarchy is relevant and renewal
does occur.
6.2
Prefixes
In 6.1, I have suggested a simple reason that subject pronouns are reanalyzed as suffixes,
namely that the verb somehow adjoins to the their left (in accordance with Kayne 1994). I
will now consider the origin of agreement prefixes.
Theta-marked subjects are merged in the Specifier of a vP. This means that in the
stage where the pronoun is a phrase, it moves from specifier of vP to specifier of TP or
46
another functional category above vP in languages such as English. The next stage is the
result of a reanalysis by the language learner of the pronoun as a head. Chomsky (1995:
249) says "a clitic raises from its [theta]-position, and attaches to an inflectional head. In
its [theta]-position, the clitic is an XP; attachment to a head requires that it be an Xo".
Thus, in its vP-internal position, the subject is a phrase, but it then moves as a head. It is
this movement that is complex since it interacts with the movement of auxiliaries.
Let’s assume a simplified VP-shell which looks like (138) and where the main
verb see moves to v:
(138)
vP
v’
DP
D
v
you
VP
V’
me
V
there
see
The subject then moves as a head (internal merge) to T. On its way to T, it can move
through other heads, as in e.g. (139), assuming Kayne (1994):
(139)
TP
T’
T
MP
M’
M
vP
you’ll you
(140) You'll see me there.
47
v’
v
VP
see
me there
Initial merge of the pronoun is in the specifier because of theta-checking. The Tposition has uninterpretable phi-features and probes for interpretable phi-features to agree
with. It finds these in those of the subject pronoun. The next stage is when the pronoun is
seen as late merged in T, and reinterpreted as being T with uninterpretable features and as
a prefix, as may be happening in French.
Sentences such as (141) and (142) have 've in T with the subject and modal
auxiliary left adjoining to it:
(141) She'll've done that yesterday.
(142) He'll've seen what recently transpired abroad.
(http://www.footballpoets.org/Graham_Shaw/index.asp?poem=Europless)
In this section, two kinds of agreement morphemes wer discussed, one that
ultimately grammaticalizes as a probe in C and the other as a probe in T. Renewal of a
pronoun in the original argument position also occurs.
7
Conclusion
This paper has given descriptions of various stages of the Subject Cycle. I have identified
three main stages in the Subject Cycle, one with the pronoun as specifier (stage a), one
with the pronoun as head (stage b), and one without a real specifier (of TP) position
available (stage c). Languages such French and English are moving from (a) to (b) and
varieties of Italian are moving from (b) to (a). This is not a reversal or a counterexample
to the unidirectionality of the change since the next stage uses a renewed specifier not the
old one.
The Definiteness Hierarchy is very relevant as to where the cyclical changes start.
As is well-known, more definite nominals appear in the Spec TP and hence they are
reanalyzed earlier. A discussion of the difference between pronouns becoming prefixes or
suffixes is also included. and the difference has to do with a reanalysis as either T or C.
48
The status of stage (c) is interesting. It seems that in this stage specifiers play a
minor role and heads are the theta-bearers. This stage is characterized by a lack of
quantifiers, nominal reflexives, and embedded sentences. If Old English is in this stage as
I have argued, it can be shown to having been reanalyzed as Middle and Modern English
(a). Navajo is definitely in stage (c) but certain other Athabaskan languages seem to be
moving in this direction as well (Rice & Saxon 2005). Stage (b), at least in the languages
I have surveyed is not reanalyzed as stage (c), and Table 5 summarizes the possiblities
discussed in this paper.
(a) to (b):
English, French
(b) to (a)
Varieties of Italian
(a) to (c)
not attested
(c) to (a)
Old English
(b) to (c)
not attested
(c) to (b)
not attested
Table 5:
Changes in the Subject Cycle
Rather than just stating that a pronoun is reanalyzed as a clitic or agreement
marker, I have provided structural positions for each of the stages and have argued there
are Economy Principles that aid the language learner in the acquisition. The Head
Preference and Late Merge Principles are general cognitive principles that help the
language learner acquire a grammar. They can be reformulated in terms of Feature
Economy. Lexical items are first selected from the lexicon and then merged and
remerged in a derivation. The heavier the feature load, the less economical is the
derivation. Hence, the tendency to be analyzed by the learner as light as possible.
Let me say something about linguistic change too. Lightfoot in much recent work
(e.g. 2006) has talked about `cuing'. This refers to the "idea that children scan their
linguistics environment for structural cues" (2006: 32) and concerns the change of the
triggering experience from the E-language such that the language learner will come up with
an I-language different from that of the previous generation. Thus, for Lightfoot, change can
only come from the outside, i.e. triggered by variable data. In this paper, I have argued the
opposite, namely that change can come from the inside as it were.
49
Abbreviations and notes
ACC
Accusative Case
BNC
British National Corpus
CdES
Un Corpus d'entretiens spontanés
CI
Conceptual Intentional
CP
Complementizer Phrase
CSE
Corpus of Spoken English
DAT
Dative Case
ERG
Ergative Case
FOC
Focus marker
HC
Helsinki Corpus
HPP
Head Preference Principle
i-
interpretable
LMP
Late Merge Principle
NOM
Nominative Case
OED
Oxford English Dictionary
PAL
Pronominal Argument Language
PRT
partcicle
phi
person and number features
PRES
present
PST
past
S
singular
SM
Sensory Motor
TP
Tense Phrase
u-
uninterpretable
UG
Universal Grammar
X
any head
XP
any phrase
1P
first plural etc.
3SM
third person singular masculine, etc
%
unattested
50
<1>
This use of oblique pronouns actually indicates a switch from a dependent
marking to a head marking system, but I will not go into that here.
<2>
It is not clear that specifiers are as relevant in these languages. I come back to this
briefly in section 3.
<3>
Old Egyptian also has a stative paradigm and here Reintges (1997) argues that the
verbal endings are agreement markers since they are obligatory.
<4>
Initially, non-configurational languages are defined as having free word order (e.g.
Hale) but then the emphasis shifts away from that because Navajo has relatively strict word
order, and languages with free word order such as German can be accounted for through
scrambling. There is structure to non-configurational languages.
<5>
I have not taken the EPP into account, i.e. obligatory subjects.
<6>
There is, as many people have pointed out a difference between universal quantifiers
and negative or existential ones. For instance, Poletto (2007) provides the following
difference:
(i)
Bisogna
che
tuti
i
faga
citu
necessary
that
everyone they make silence
Bellinzona
`It is necessary that everyone is silent'.
(ii)
Quaidun
telefunarà
al
prufessur
Somebody
will-phone
to-the teacher
Bellinzona
(Poletto 2007: 6)
Universal quantifiers are typically doubled by a plural and more easily left dislocated.
Poletto argues this is because they are interpreted as [+specific]. Her explanation for the
doubling hierarchy has to do with the number of features: the more features, the easier the
doubling. This doubling is more economic because the feature will be checked through the
clitic and the entire element (e.g. DP) won't have to move.
51
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