Double-Object construction in Romance

MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA

Lublin

Congreso; Linguistics Beyond And Within; 2018

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

Contrary to long assumed (e.g. Kayne 1994), DOC could not only be possible in Romance, but could also explain important facts. A configurational asymmetry associated with Benefactive (BEN) Alternation in English (Pesetsky 1995, Larson 1990) could: (i)account for the availability of diverse readings for SE in Romance with some verbs but not with others within the same semantic class (Levin 1993 i.a.); (ii)bring out finer structural contrasts among apparently similar verbs with crucially distinct behavior.(I).Only (α)passive-impersonal reading for SE is available across verb classes like Change-of-Possession and Change-of-Location verbs, but an important part allow (α) as well as (β): a yet untapped benefactive reading ((1)a-b), different from the distributive reading (Se asignaron (todos los) coches importados ?They assigned (all) the imported cars to each other?)).(II).(I) correlates to a major argument structure contrast, with consequent asymmetric (i)syntactic patterns (e.g. passivization alternatives) and (ii)aspectual function of SE.Combining two major analysis in the literature (Hale & Keyser 2002, Larson 1990), we propose that comprar-like verbs are compatible with a configuration that decomposes into two heads: (i) a monadic causative Vo typically selecting for SCs (vCAUSE, Harley 2004, Folli & Harley 2007); (ii) a pº heading the stative (SC) predicate instantiating the POSS final state lacked by vender (≈have (Benveniste 1966, Hale 1986, Freeze 1992, Kayne 1993; Guéron 1995), P with (HK 2002, McIntyre 2002, Rigau 2005, Rapoport 2012)), in a configuration used to explain possessive meaning crosslinguistically (Harley&Jung 2015). This: (III).explains (2) along with other major verbs classes with similar behavior ((β) in (a)COL verbs regardless of lexicalized direction ((5)a); (b)privative COP verbs ((5)b).(IV).allows to consider the role of SE as aspectually-relevant element in a new light, in line with major oppositions in telicity calculation (measure-out|delimitness) correlated with argument structure. (V).a lot more systematic variation could thus be accounted for (e.g. (i)distinct clitic order and PPT-agreement correlated with (α)-(β) (Italian); (ii)novel Spanish Passives (3)). Selected ReferencesHale, Ken & Samuel J. Keyser. 2002. The View from Building 20. MIT Press.Larson, Richard.1990. ?Double objects revisited?, Linguistic Inquiry 21(4): 589-632.Harley, Heidy. 2002. Possession and the double object construction. Pica & Rooryck (eds.), Yearbook of Linguistic Variation, vol.2, 29-68.Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations. MIT Press.