River Plate Spanish Clitic Packages: An OpenCCG Account of Order Constraints

VÍCTOR M. CASTEL

Revista Argentina de Lingüística

FFyL, UNCuyo

Lugar: Mendoza; Año: 2008 vol. 17

0326-6400

This paper addresses the word order constraints underlying the combinatory potential of clitics with other clitics, and clitics with their governing verbs from the perspective of the OpenCCG framework described in Bozsahin et al (2007). Clitics are conceived as functor signs that forward seek for arguments that are either verbs or other clitics. In the former case, the function delivers verbal signs with some of theirs arguments appropriately consumed. In the latter case, the function delivers clitic packages that in turn can be sought for by infinitive, gerund and imperative endings to deliver verbal signs so that again the relevant argument consumption takes place, except that now more than one argument is involved at the same time. The proposed mechanism consists of a single lexical specification for clitics, which is not only independent of the meaning of the clitics but also of the position they occupy in relation to the governing verb. This solution is better than other categorial treatments like, for example, Baschung et al (1987) for French, which declare different order constraints depending on whether the clitics occur on the left or right side of their governing verbs.