Parameters in causatives, doubling and DOM in Peninsular and Río de la Plata Spanish

FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ & ANDRÉS SAAB

Buenos Aires

Workshop; Romania Nova VII; 2014

Causative constructions present a complex variation among Romance languages. However, little has been said on the comparative aspects referring the varieties spoken in the Americas compared to peninsular varieties. The standard analysis, Kayne 1975, assumed that causative with "faire" type involved a process of dativization of the causee subject with transitive verbs, although dativization is unavailable for unergative and unaccusative verbs. Subject causees of unergatives and unaccusatives behave like regular objects and get accusative case. 1. J?ai fait manger le gateau *(à) Paul. 2.J?ai fait sortir (*à) Paul. 3.J?ai fait sourire (*à) Paul. However, Spanish subject causees in all its varieties require "a", independently of the status of the embedded verb, unacusative, unergative or transitive: 4.Hice comer la tarta *(a) Pablo. 5.Hicer salir *(a) Pablo.6.Hice sonreír *(a) Pablo. The difference is due to Differential Object Marking. If DOM is an expression of accusative case for animates, the need for the preposition in Spanish in (5) and (6) will be explained. (4) has a, but it is a dative, which coincides with the accusative a. However, this morphological distinction on the expression of objects in Spanish has consequences in the syntax. This is shown in the distributional properties of causee subjects. Thus, causee subjects cannot appear in preverbal position in French, but they can appear pre-infinitival in all varieties of Spanish. One of the empirical observations we make is that this pre-infinitival position is made available by DOM with variation on whether clitic doubling is required: 7. *J?ai fait Paul sortir/*J?ai fait Paul manger le gateau/* J?ai fait Paul sourire. 8. Lo hice a Juan trabajar. (Río de La Plata Spanish, RPS) 9. (Le) hice a Juan trabajar. (Peninsular Spanish) Clear evidence that this extra position and DOM are related comes from the behavior of inanimate or non specific DPs in contexts of unaccusative and unergative verbs. Inanimates can appear without a in post-infinitival position optionally. Some speakers might still allow "a": 10.a. Yo hice derrapar la moto/Yo hice derrapar a la moto. b. Yo hice saltar el convertidor/ Yo hice saltar al convertidor. However, "a" is obligatory when the inanimate appears in pre-infinitival position: 11.a. *Yo hice la moto derrapar /Yo hice a la moto derrapar. 12.b. *Yo hice el convertidor saltar / Yo hice al convertidor saltar.If DOM was just a pure morphological manifestation of accusative case as assumed by many linguists, it remains mysterious why there is such asymmetry between animates and inanimates in these contexts. Thus we conclude accusative case is not deployed in these examples with DOM or, alternatively, movement out of vP for DOM is required for all dialects. The link of DOM with movement is also confirmed by languages that do not have DOM when the object is in situ, like colloquial Italian, where movement of pronominal objects to the left periphery must be done with DOM. Thus DOM is a diagnostic of movement to the left: 13. Ho visto (*a) te. / A te ho visto. This movement can be overt as in the examples in (8) and (9) or it can be further masked by the movement of the infinitival (4) (5) and (6). Thus examples in which DOM appears final have been also moved, but remnant of the infinitival masked that movement (Burzio 1986, Kayne 2005): 14. Yo hice [saltar]i al convertidor ti /Yo hice [salir]i a Juan ti/ Yo hice [leer el libro]i a Juan ti Since inanimates in Spanish, and all objects in French, are not subject to any movement in the syntax because they do not require DOM, the lack of pre-infinitival subjects is derived. However, that preverbal infinitival position is not licensed in the same way in all dialects. Thus, in RPS it requires obligatorily clitic doubling, while it does not in Peninsular Spanish: 15. ??Juan hizo a Pedro trabajar. (with unmarked intonation in RPS) 16. Juan hizo a Pedro trabajar.(Peninsular Spanish) Moreover, the kind of clitic used changes from dialect to dialect. While RPS uses the system also used for masculine and feminine with transitive verbs, Peninsular Spanish and other Latin American varieties might use the clitic otherwise used for datives and with doubling. This dative -as in many varieties of Peninsular Spanish- is extended to unaccusative and unergative verbs (18): 17. Juan lo hizo a Pedro trabajar/sonreír/salir. (with unmarked intonation in RPS) 18. Juan le hizo a Pedro trabajar/sonreír/salir. (Peninsular Spanish) 19. Juan le hizo sonreír/saltar (Peninsular Spanish) 20. *Juan lo hizo sonreír/saltar (Peninsular Spanish)However, inanimates that might be used with DOM do not permit doubling with "le" with these inanimates in Peninsular Spanish: 21. *?Juan le hizo al convertidor saltar. For us these facts can be understood if we assume that the movement of animates and animates is not the same with DOM. We will propose that animates move further from the vP than inanimates. This asymmetry is linked to the choice of clitic and the possibility of doubling. Thus the longer the movement, the possibility of clitic doubling is allowed or required. Thus Peninsular Spanish generalized leísmo indicates that DOM DPs are moved even higher in the structure than DOM DPs in RPS. Thus, a more articulated left periphery of the vP for the different dialects of Spanish is proposed. This new more articulated theory could be applied cross linguistically. For instance, Catalan allows DOM only with pronouns because pronouns are the only ones allowed to move out of the vP. Brazilian Portuguese, instead, is a language that does not move any element to the left periphery of vP, and shows no DOM. Therefore, the pattern of causatives in this language is similar to the one of English.