Broad Subjects and Clitic Left Dislocation

Conclusion

In this paper we have further defended the claim, set out in Doron and Heycock (1999), that a language in which nominative case can be checked by more than one element can allow merging of “Broad Subjects“ in [Spec,TP]. In this earlier work, we argued that such languages included Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic. Here we have further argued that Broad Subjects are found also in Levantine Arabic. The recognition of this possibility then allows an analysis of a residue of left-peripheral XPs associated with a clitic as instances of Clitic Left Dislocation, with properties near-identical to this construction as identified in Italian and Greek. While a number of questions about the nature of the configurations involved remain to be answered, we consider that some progress at least has been made in reducing the apparent proliferation of language-specific properties of elements occupying the left periphery.

This work was supported by Research Grant 35028 from the Leverhulme Trust, which we gratefully acknowledge.