Event Entry
What and Who
DECOMPOSING ITALIAN CLITICS
Date, Time and Location
Abstract
literature, however their definition is still a topic of much debate.
A crucial question is whether it is possible to reach a
coherent and unified concept of clitics, thus a clear definition of
what clitics are, or if there is no unified category of clitics.
I will argue that the behavior of Italian clitics shows that they
do not constitute a uniform class. Therefore, instead of assuming
the existence of a special class ``clitics'', where elements exhibit
different behavior, I will try to decompose the properties of clitics
and to assimilate them to those of other well established categories.
In this talk, I will take into consideration Italian monosyllabic
object clitics and the dative clitic ``loro''. I will suggest
that Italian object clitics exhibit properties of inflectional
affixes and I will provide motivations to argue in favor of their
affixal status. Under this view, Italian monosyllabic clitics will
not be considered lexical items, but featural information which
is provided in the lexicon and used in morphology and phonology
for the realization of the cliticized verb form. Differently for
what concerns the clitic ``loro''; I will show that this element
exhibits word like properties and I will consider it a lexical item.
In this way, it will be possible to account for the differences in
distribution between monosyllabic clitics and ``loro'' while being
able to derive the common properties.
Italian clitics, both monosyllabic clitics and ``loro'', can undergo
``clitic climbing'', namely they can appear on a verbal head of
which they are not an argument, if certain verbs are present. I will
propose a lexical analysis of this construction, cast within the HPSG
framework, which is based on the idea of ``argument composition'',
according to which the subcategorization requirements of the embedded
verb are passed up to the clitic climbing trigger verb. I will show
that the affix vs. word distinction proposed for monosyllabic clitics
and ``loro'', respectively, interacts in the desired way with
the argument composition analysis, accounting in an appropriate way
for the similarities and differences of these clitics with respect
to climbing.
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