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Object shift in Romance

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Abstract

This paper discusses the properties of VOS sentences in Romance and their bearing on Case assignment, verb movement, parametric variation, and the structure of the vP periphery / low IP area. The literature on Romance VOS has argued that this order is derived either through object shift (Ordóñez 1997, 1998, 2000) or VP fronting (Belletti 2001, 2004; Zubizarreta 1998), providing empirical evidence in support of both derivations. In this paper, I focus on various aspects of VOS sentences in Romance languages. First, I argue that both object shift and VP-fronting strategies are actually available, but subject to a very specific parametric cut: Western Romance languages (Galician, European Portuguese, and Spanish) resort to object shift, whereas Central-Eastern varieties (Catalan and Italian) fail to do so, requiring the VP-fronting derivation instead (López 2009a). Second, I put forward a previously unnoticed generalization that reveals that only those varieties licensing object shift based VOS can generate VSO sentences, which I refer to as the VOS–VSO Generalization. Finally, I claim that object shift in VOS sentences of Western Romance languages displays a cluster of unnoticed properties that pattern with Scandinavian-style object shift (Bobaljik and Jonas 1996; Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998; Collins and Thráinsson 1996; Holmberg 1986, 1999; Vikner 2006), thus obeying Holmberg’s Generalization (Holmberg 1986, 1999). If on track, the present account not only reveals interesting syntactic similarities between Scandinavian and Romance object shift, but also reinforces a well-known micro-parameter that disentangles Western from Central-Eastern Romance languages.

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Notes

  1. I put aside the possibility that VOS is derived by means of VP remnant movement, as argued for by Haegeman (2000), Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000), Müller (1998), and others, mainly in the context of Germanic languages. As will be seen (and as the different authors have argued; see Costa 2002; Ordóñez 2000, 2005, 2007 and references therein), the Romance data can be accounted for without invoking the remnant-movement option.

  2. An anonymous reviewer asks me to clarify the status of French. As has been noted in the literature (see Ordóñez 1997, 2000, and references therein), French does not license VOS and VSO orders. Clearly, as the reviewer suggests, this is plausibly related to the fact that French is not a pro-drop language. If the analysis put forward in Sect. 5 is tenable, then the specific properties of French follow naturally, since the relevant parameter will be related to the morphological composition of v.

  3. In (9) I depart from Belletti’s (2004:34–38) implementation with respect to the amount of structure that is topicalized. For Belletti (2004), it is vP, while the analysis in (9) assumes it is the VP. Nothing crucial hinges on this. What matters is that c-command between subject and object is impossible.

  4. This analysis resembles Torrego’s (1998) approach to Case-marked direct objects, which also move to SpecvP. López (2009a, 2012) provides empirical evidence that not all Case-marked direct objects target SpecvP. According to this author, Case-marked objects abandon their base position, but not all of them end up above the external argument. I cannot discuss the evidence provided by López (2009a, 2012) due to space constraints. Interestingly for my purposes, López (2012) also takes cases like the ones studied by Ordóñez (1998) to target an outer specifier of the vP.

  5. One comment is in order with respect to the object shift account put forward by Ordóñez (1998). Following Ordóñez, in this paper I concentrate on object shift that targets full DPs, not (clitic) pronouns. The literature on object shift (Holmberg 1986, 1999, 2000; Diesing 1992; Bobaljik and Jonas 1996; Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998; Collins and Thráinsson 1996; Vikner 2006; among others) has used this label to cover both full DP and pronoun movement, although they behave differently (see Holmberg 1999 and references therein for discussion). In the following pages, I will ignore the pattern involving (clitic) pronoun movement (see Leonetti 2007, 2008; Suñer 1988, 2000 for discussion), and regard it as part of clitizication (see Roberts 2010; Raposo and Uriagereka 2005; Uriagereka 1995b and references therein for a summary of cliticization in Romance).

  6. The lack of specific reading of shifted objects may be seen as a problem for an object shift based analysis of VOS sentences. However, as noted above (see previous footnote), I am focusing on situations where a full DP—not a strong or weak (clitic) pronoun—moves, and DPs do not necessarily give rise to a specific interpretation. The literature on Scandinavian object shift, on the other hand, does focus on (weak) pronoun movement. As is well known, pronouns must be interpreted as specific (in (i), the weak pronoun la cannot be interpreted as having a non-specific/arbitrary referent), which I take to be a lexical property of these elements (as argued by Sportiche 1996; Suñer 1988; Uriagereka 1995b; see Leonetti 2008 for discussion):

    1. (i)
      figure m

  7. If Catalan and Spanish involve different derivations for VOS sentences, one might expect that the objects be interpreted differently in these languages, as Louise McNally (p.c.) points out. Though possible, there is no actual interpretive difference between (i) and (ii):

    1. (i)
      figure p
    1. (ii)
      figure q

    As noted above, the direct object can, but need not, be interpreted as specific. My analysis does predict, however, that it should be easier for the direct object to receive a wide scope reading in Spanish. But this is not what we find: un llibre can also out-scope dos estudiants in (ii). I take this to indicate that such reading is obtained through QR (covert movement in the Logical Form component), a mechanism independently available (see May 1977, 1985).

  8. I will assume that T (Infl or AgrS in previous formulations) assigns (alternatively, ‘checks’ or ‘licenses’) nominative Case. For alternative approaches, taking C as the locus of nominative Case, see Bittner and Hale (1996), Chomsky (2007, 2008), López (2007), and references therein.

  9. Since it is orthogonal to the issues that we are considering, I am ignoring here the step whereby the subject raises to the SpecTP (EPP) position.

  10. As an anonymous reviewer points out, (25) should not be taken to indicate that X attracts Y. (In Chomsky 1993, movement was conceived of as a greedy operation, triggered by the moving element.)

  11. Fox and Pesetsky’s (2005) approach is, like Holmberg’s (1999), phonological in nature, but it departs from Holmberg’s (1999) in taking the phonological restriction on object shift not as a constraint on the application of the movement rule itself, but as a domain-final constraint on the output obtained after linearization. For ample discussion of Fox and Pesetsky’s system, I refer the reader to Richards (2004, 2007).

  12. See Kucerova (2007) for an analysis of Czech object shift that also invokes equidistance.

  13. For reasons that I fail to understand, estar is the best auxiliary verb to obtain the order AUX-SVO in Spanish. I have not tested the different possibilities systematically, but ser ‘be’ and haber ‘have’ do not successfully allow such a pattern, which is a necessary condition to test my hypothesis. As an anonymous reviewer points out, modal verbs, like poder ‘can’—and deber ‘must’ too—, also allow the AUX-SVO order, as shown in (i)–(ii):

    1. (i)
      figure x
    1. (ii)
      figure y

  14. An anonymous reviewer makes interesting observations that reinforce this approach. On the one hand, as (s)he points out, this analysis predicts that subjects in VSO sentences with auxiliaries could license subject floating quantifiers, as shown in (ii):

    1. (i)
      figure ac
    1. (ii)
      figure ad

    Crucially, quantifier float is not licensed in the case of objects:

    1. (iii)
      figure ae
    1. (iv)
      figure af

    What the data in (iii) tell us is that the quantifier todo ‘all’ blocks nominative Case assignment if shifted above the subject, unless the verb moves (as in (iv)).

  15. At least, it should be the case that objects move beyond T (or the relevant nominative Case-assigning head). Plausibly, such a position could be Uriagereka’s (1995a) F or Rizzi’s (1997) Fin.

  16. An anonymous reviewer regards this argument as theory-internal. Taking Case assignment to be related to ϕ-feature valuation is indeed a theory-internal decision. (There are different approaches to Case, and this is just one; see Pesetsky and Torrego 2011; Legate 2008 and references therein for alternatives.) However, I think the argument has a clear empirical weight; abstracting away from clitics, verb agreement is subject-oriented in Romance, which means that T (or Infl) can only agree with subjects. If objects could A-move to T, then we would expect for these dependents to agree with the verb in active sentences, which is not what we find.

  17. Here I am assuming a restrictive scenario. Things would be different under a more fine-grained (cartographic) approach to the CP field (see Rizzi 1997 et seq.).

  18. That is to say, when binding is not forced (because the object DP is not quantificational), plural verb-subject agreement across a singular object is perfect:

    1. (i)
      figure aq

  19. As Louise McNally (p.c.) notes, the difference in acceptability in (46) may be due to the possibly non-quantificational status of todos los N ‘all the N’ DPs. She further observes that cada N ‘each N’ and cada uno de los N ‘each one of the N’ may behave differently, since los N in the latter will presumably be associated with its own discourse referent, while N in the former will not. Although this prediction is sensible, I find no remarkable difference between in (i) and (ii).

    1. (i)
      figure ar
    1. (ii)
      figure as

  20. Unlike Spanish, Italian behaves as expected under a Multiple Agree / Co-valuation analysis:

    1. (i)
      figure au

    A reviewer suggests that (i) may be ruled out because the variable contained in the post-verbal subject is not bound by the moved quantifier. If I am correct, variable binding is possible, but it forces an object shift based derivation, which is illicit in Italian.

  21. A reviewer correctly points out that the partitive clitic ne/en can appear with negative quantifiers (see Cinque 1990). This is shown in the Catalan examples in (i) and (ii). Notice, however, that there are non-trivial differences between these examples and (51a). First, ne/en can only be related to internal arguments, and, second, ne/en is not doubling anything, but just substituting the NP component of the subject.

    1. (i)
      figure ay
    1. (ii)
      figure az

  22. Of course, the claim that the object cannot precede the verb in a SVO language is empirically false, for it can in cases of topicalization or focalization, which are not relevant to the present study. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this issue to me.

  23. The odd status of (57) certainly follows from having moved the object to a specifier of a non-finite form, which does not normally allow syntactic objects to stay in its edge, for morphological reasons. As expected from everything I have said, the Catalan counterpart of (57) is much worse.

  24. An anonymous reviewer suggests that (58) be approached in terms of linearization parameters. Although such an approach is appealing, considering it in detail is beyond the scope of this paper. For readers interested in that perspective, see Fox and Pesetsky (2005), Kayne (2010), López (2009b), Richards (2004, 2007), and references therein.

  25. A reviewer points out that similar patterns hold in causative constructions. (For ample discussion, see Guasti 1996; Moore 1996 and Treviño 1994; Zagona 1988; Zubizarreta 1985 and Torrego 2010.) As the examples below show, the causee can raise over the matrix subject if and only if the infinitival verb has raised (see Ordóñez 2007, 2009):

    1. (i)
      figure bi
    1. (ii)
      figure bj

    That no linear order parameter is at stake here is reinforced by the following example, which shows that the base object (los ladrones) can indeed appear before the infinitival, as the same reviewer observes:

    1. (iii)
      figure bk

  26. Interestingly, Mexican Spanish precludes VSO sentences, as noted by Gutiérrez-Bravo (2007). This author argues that VSO may also be slightly marginal in other non-European varieties of Spanish, like Puerto Rico’s. I thank an anonymous reviewer for informing me about this micro-parametric datum.

  27. A reviewer points out that the correlation has been previously noted in the literature. Although I agree that the observation that Case-marked direct objects and the availability of VSO are somehow connected has been made (see Belletti 2004; López 2009a and references therein), I believe that the present account offers a novel picture. Here is why. As we have seen, proposals differ with respect to whether VOS is derived through object shift or VP fronting, but they never consider the possibility that both derivations are available, and key to the licensing of the VSO pattern—and thus explain parametric cuts. I see it as a genuine contribution of the present proposal that both routes to generate VOS are presented as possible and crucially responsible for the possibility to license subjects in VSO sentences. The connection is actually made stronger the moment the position of objects (in VOS) and subjects (in VOS) is the same, as I contend here.

  28. Both views should ideally converge, which will require a better understanding of features, and how they may become independent lexical items in some languages but not in others (see Cinque and Rizzi 2008; Van Craenenbroeck 2009 and references therein).

  29. Louise McNally asks a very relevant question: How is DOM licensed in a VSO sentence (since both dependents presumably compete for the same position)? The system I am advocating for here forces me to assume that the subject and the Case-marked object would occupy outer specifiers of the vP, roughly as indicated in (i):

    1. (i)
      figure bv

    For an alternative analysis, where the Case-marked object could occupy a lower position, see López (2012).

  30. See Gallego (2007, 2010) for an alternative approach, assuming that the external argument is generated below v, following ideas that go back to Fukui and Speas (1986), Kitagawa (1986), Koopman and Sportiche (1991), Sportiche (1988), and Hale and Keyser (1993). In such approach, the subject in VSO sentences is in SpecvP, after it moves from its base-generated position.

  31. Though legitimate in and of itself, this approach is not forced upon us, unless we take notions like “focus”, “topic”, and the like to be akin to lexical items. For problems with this approach, see López (2009a), Fanselow and Lenertová (2010), and references therein.

  32. Of course, future investigation may show that (75b) is the correct analysis (perhaps because arguments must always leave their theta positions in the surface structure). If this is so, then the present account will not require dramatic changes. It would be crucial, though, that the XP projection is not related to object shift and DOM, for otherwise the connection between VOS (via object shift) and VSO would be undone.

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Acknowledgements

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Going Romance XX (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, December 7–8 2006), the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages XXXVII (University of Pittsburgh, March 15–18 2007), the West Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics 26 (University of California, April 27–29 2007), and the 41st Annual Meeting of North East Linguistic Society (University of Pennsylvania, October 22–24 2010), whose audiences I thank for questions and comments. This paper has benefited from discussion with Cedric Boeckx, Noam Chomsky, Ricardo Etxepare, Josep M. Fontana, Tomohiro Fujii, M.Lluïsa Hernanz, Luis López, Francisco Ordóñez, Gemma Rigau, Jaume Solà, Xavier Vilallba, and Masaya Yoshida. Thanks especially to José M. Brucart and Juan Uriagereka for discussion, constant support, and encouragement. I am also very grateful to three anonymous reviewers, whose observations and suggestions were very useful, and contributed to considerably improve different aspects of the present piece. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to John Moore and Louise McNally for thorough comments, suggestions, and editorial help. All errors are my own. This research has been partially supported by grants from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (FFI2011-29440-C03-01) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2009SGR-1079).

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    Ángel J. Gallego

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Gallego, Á.J. Object shift in Romance. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 31, 409–451 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-013-9188-6

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