Some remarks on subject positions and the architecture of the left periphery in Spanish

Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 55(3): 359–385, 2010

Some remarks on subject positions and the architecture of the left periphery in Spanish BERNHARD PÖLL

University of Salzburg

1.

I NTRODUCTION

There has been prolific discussion in recent years about the characteristics of null subject languages. One factor that has contributed to this is the idea that pro-drop stands for a cluster of interrelated properties. According to Rizzi (1982, 1986), a null subject language (henceforth NSL) is characterised by the availability of empty referential pronouns, the absence of overt expletives, the possibility of extracting the subject of an embedded clause, and the free availability of inverted subjects. Yet this characterisation is not universal in the sense that these properties do not always appear together in a language.1 For instance, Icelandic allows quasiargumental pronouns to be dropped, but it has no referential pro-drop. Brazilian Portuguese is on the way to becoming a non-NSL, with many overt referential pronouns and a clear preference for preverbal subjects, but it has only null expletives and still allows for the extraction of subjects from embedded positions. As for Spanish, Rizzi’s generalisation (based on Italian data) holds, though there are dialects which deviate from the pattern. One of them is Dominican Spanish, which displays restricted referential pro-drop and seems to have an overt expletive. Theoretical advances in the past two decades within the Government-Binding model and the Minimalist Program have provided considerable impetus to the discussions on the null-subject parameter but some related findings and assumptions have made the picture look even more puzzling. I am grateful to Anna Szabolcsi and two anonymous CJL reviewers for valuable remarks and suggestions on a previous version of this paper. Many thanks are also due to those who provided me with data: Marta Guzmán and her family and friends (Cuban Spanish), Marietta Calderón Tichy (Peruvian Spanish), Fernando Sánchez Miret and Rosa Ana Martín Vegas (Peninsular Spanish), Adelaide Fiocchi (Italian), and Ioannis Fykias (Greek). Needless to say, all remaining errors are mine. 1 Roberts (2007) has elaborated a tentative implicational scale for the defining characteristics of NSLs, which takes into account other features believed to be related to the null-subject parameter (amongst them clitic climbing, infinitive-clitic order, and the realisation of arbitrary subject clitics).

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In the present article, I will focus on word order phenomena in Spanish and evaluate recent proposals to account for the distribution of overt subjects and pro. The article is organised as follows: section 2 briefly outlines the main problems examined. Section 3 discusses three fundamental questions related to the topic: (i) Are subjects in an A0 - or an A-position? (ii) Does Spanish allow for non-DP elements in subject position? (iii) Is there V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ in Spanish? Section 4 summarises the results of the discussion; in addition, I address some further questions relevant to the topic. Section 5 presents a proposal concerning the position of lexical subjects and pro, which has fundamental consequences for both the preverbal subject field and the architecture of the CP-layer in Spanish. Specifically, I argue that preverbal subjects can, but need not, be left-dislocated and that focussed DPs, adverbs, and NEG2 constituents can be fronted (to a position above the inflectional layer) if the position for overt preverbal subjects — prototypically Spec,IP — is empty. This is the case with overt subjects remaining in their basegenerated position and with the (preverbal) null subject pro: since the empty category is a clitic, it adjoins to the head of the inflectional phrase, thus leaving Spec,IP empty. It turns out that the specifier of the inflectional layer need not (and should not) be considered to be the landing site for topics and focussed constituents (cf. Zubizarreta 1998). Section 6 presents the general conclusion. 2.

A SURVEY OF TOPICS UNDER RESEARCH

As simple as they may seem, the following examples contain some of the major problems related to the null-subject parameter in Spanish:3 (1) a. Compró Juan una casa.4 bought Juan a house ‘Juan bought a house.’ b. Juan compró una casa. Juan bought a house ‘Juan bought a house.’ (2) a. AYER /Ayer compró Juan una casa. YESTERDAY /yesterday bought Juan a house ‘Yesterday, Juan bought a house.’ 2

The following abbreviations are used: AGR CL COND CONJ

3

agreement clitic conditional conjunction

DAT DP INF

dative determiner phrase infinitive

NEG PREP

3 PL

negative/negation preposition third-person plural

Here, capitals indicate contrastive intonation and (,) indicates a possible pause. It should be noted that VSO order (in declarative matrix sentences) is very restricted in Spanish (see Contreras (1991:72) and Zagona (2002:202)), whereas XPVSO is unproblematic. 4

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b. AYER /Ayer compró una casa. YESTERDAY /yesterday he-bought a house ‘It was yesterday that s/he bought a house.’ c. ?AYER Juan compró una casa.5 YESTERDAY Juan bought a house ‘It was yesterday that Juan bought a house.’ d. Ayer(,) Juan compró una casa. yesterday(,) Juan bought a house ‘Yesterday Juan bought a house.’

With the VP-internal subject hypothesis, the VS-order of a sentence like (1a) can be accounted for by assuming that Case assignment is possible in a rightward direction to the DP in Spec,VP. The subject also receives its θ-role in this base-generated position. As is well known, more traditional analyses of (1a) postulate either an expletive-argument chain with the subject being adjoined to VP, or V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ movement similar to that of verb-second (V2) languages (Castillo 2002, 2003). The Minimalist Program proposed the idea that syntactic projections can be specifier-less (“bare phrase structure”, Chomsky 1994). In the context of (1a) this could mean that Spec,IP6 does not exist at all in a language like Spanish. Under the assumption of an IP with no Spec position, raising of V◦ to I◦ is supposed to fulfil the Extended Projection Principal (EPP) so that there is no need for expletive pro and possibly for referential pro (Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998). From this it naturally follows that (1b) involves a subject in an A0 -position, similar to an adjunct (Contreras 1991) or a Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) item (see Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998, Ordóñez and Treviño 1999, among others). In contrasting (2a) with (2c) and (2d) we see that a fronted focussed adverb is incompatible with a preverbal overt subject, whereas a topicalised adverb is fine with both a preverbal lexical subject and pro. These facts raise several questions. First, under the standard assumption that (2b) contains pro in preverbal position, we have to ask how the different behaviour of pro and overt subjects is to be explained. One solution would be to assume that (2b) has pro in Spec,VP, so that both types of subjects pattern identically. However, Cardinaletti (1997), using Italian data, has shown that pro is always preverbal. Second, the ban on preverbal overt subjects with a sentence-initial (focussed) adverb could be explained by assuming that these adverbs compete with the subject for 5

An anonymous reviewer considers this sentence to be possible. Although it generally received a downgraded grammaticality rating (in contrast to (2a)) from my informants, there might be some variation depending on the syntactic status of the fronted adverb. Some speakers accept such sentences with non-obligatory adverbs. Sentences with a preverbal overt subject and an obligatory adverb with (contrastive) focus intonation are out for all native speakers, as in the following example from Kovacci (1999:728): CORRECTAMENTE habla el niño. vs. *CORRECTAMENTE el niño habla (context: ?‘Cómo habla el niño?). 6 In what follows I will generally use Spec,IP to refer to the specifier of the inflectional layer. Spec,TP will be used when reviewing previous Minimalism analyses. For the problems under discussion here the distinction between Spec,IP and Spec,TP is merely terminological and has no empirical relevance.

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the same position (see Goodall 2001 and Piera 1987 for overt subjects of infinitivals). This means that not only “real” subject DPs appear in Spec,IP to satisfy the EPP, but that this position is also available for other categories with DP-like properties. Third, some of the clauses in (1) and (2) superficially resemble instances of verb movement as seen in interrogatives in English or German. Hence, the hypothesis of V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ movement can be proposed to account for the word order patterns. 3.

SUBJECT POSITIONS IN SPANISH

Here I will outline and critically discuss three major foci of research on subject positions in Spanish. 3.1 Are subjects in an A- or an A0 -position? A very common assumption in the literature is that preverbal subjects in Spanish are topics and as such do not move to Spec,IP. According to Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1998; henceforth A&A), this is possible because the way in which the EPP is satisfied is parameterised: some languages, for instance English or French, have to merge an XP (more precisely, a DP) in Spec,IP to satisfy the EPP; for others it is sufficient to raise the verb to I◦ . It is claimed that Greek and Spanish choose the latter option; thus when subjects are preverbal they appear in an A0 -position. Several arguments have been put forward in support of the A0 -hypothesis. According to A&A, one piece of evidence comes from a difference in scope relations with preverbal and postverbal subjects. In (3a), only the wide scope reading of the preverbal subject is available, while (3b) allows for both readings. (3) a. Kapios fititis stihiothetise kathe arthro. some student filed every article ‘There is one student who filed every article.’ *‘For every article there is one student such that the student filed it.’ b. Stihiothetise kapios fititis kathe arthro.

(A&A:505)

Spanish is claimed to pattern identically with Greek in this respect. Using primarily Catalan, Italian, and French data, Barbosa (1996) also claims that Spec,IP is not the position of preverbal non-focussed lexical subjects in NSLs. Barbosa assumes that only the null subject pro appears in this position; focussed lexical subjects occupy a position in the CP-layer. These assumptions are based mainly on the divergent behaviour of preverbal subjects in regard to ne/en-cliticisation. Furthermore, she claims that in Catalan sentences like (4) the bound reading of the pronoun is only possible if it appears in postverbal position. Supposedly in an A0 position, the preverbal pronoun cannot be A-bound by the trace of the matrix subject (Barbosa 1996:391): (4) a. Tots els estudiantsi es pensen que aprovaran ellsi. all the studentsi CL think that will-pass theyi ‘All the students think that they will pass.’

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b.*Tots els estudiantsi es pensen que ellsi aprovaran. all the studentsi CL think that theyi will-pass ‘All the students think that they will pass.’

For Barbosa (1996) and for A&A, these data are transposable to Spanish. The lack of adjacency between the preverbal subject and the verb in I◦ is another phenomenon that seems to confirm the A0 -hypothesis, according to A&A. Adverbs can intervene between the subject and the finite verb in Spanish. A non-NSL like French, on the other hand, does not allow for an intervening adverb. This could be interpreted as the absence of a Spec-Head relation in Spanish, so that the preverbal subject is presumably higher in the clause. The identical patterning of preverbal overt subjects and CLLD constituents in the context of IP-ellipsis is discussed by Ordóñez and Treviño (1999; henceforth, O&T). The sentences in (5) (from O&T:42) are supposed to show that the elliptic material is the IP: in (5a) the remnant contains only one constituent — the overt subject — whereas in (5b) and (5c) it contains the fronted DO and IO plus pro, according to O&T. Since pro cannot be replaced by an overt subject in clauses like (5b) and (5c), one must conclude that there are different positions for pro and overt subjects, or else abandon pro altogether: (5) a. Él le dio unos libros a Pía y Pepe también [le dio unos libros a Pía] he CL gave some books to Pía and Pepe also CL gave some books to Pía ‘He gave some books to Pía and Pepe did so too.’ b. Unos libros le dio a Pía y unos cuadros también [le dio a Pía] some books CL gave to Pía and some paintings also CL gave to Pía ‘He gave some books to Pía and some paintings too.’ c. A Pía le dio unos libros y a Sara también [le dio unos libros] to Pía CL gave some books and to Sara also CL gave some books ‘He gave some books to Pía and to Sara too.’

Building on the idea that the relationship between the verbal inflection and the “subject” DP is an instance of clitic doubling (with the verbal inflection being the clitic and the DP its optional double), O&T choose the latter option: pro does not exist; the verbal morphology bears the subject theta-role. The abandonment of pro leads to the claim that preverbal subjects and topics occupy the same position. Quantifier extraction is another problematic issue for the idea that Spanish preverbal subjects are in Spec,IP. Consider the following sentences (O&T:44sqq): (6) a. Nadie le debe la renta a María. nobody CL owes the rent to María ‘Nobody owes the rent to Maria.’ b. Nada le debe Juan a sus amigos. nothing CL owes Juan to his friends ‘Juan owes nothing to his friends.’ c.*Nada Juan le debe a sus amigos. nothing Juan CL owes to his friends ‘Juan owes nothing to his friends.’

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CJL/RCL 55(3), 2010 d. Nada le debe a sus amigos. nothing CL owes to his friends ‘He owes nothing to his friends.’ e. A nadie le debe Juan la renta. to nobody CL owes Juan the rent ‘Juan owes the rent to nobody.’ f.*A nadie Juan le debe la renta. to nobody Juan CL owes the rent ‘Juan owes the rent to nobody.’ g. A nadie le debe la renta. to nobody CL owes the rent ‘He owes the rent to nobody.’

Here a fronted negative quantifier is incompatible with an overt preverbal subject, while postverbal lexical subjects or pro are fine. O&T explain this asymmetry by postulating that the preverbal subject located in an A0 -position blocks fronting of a negative quantifier. The fact that pro (in preverbal position) does not block fronting is taken as another piece of evidence for its non-existence. For several authors, the incompatibility of fronted adverbs and a subject DP in preverbal position, as in (7) and the examples in section 2, is a core argument against the assumption that the overt subject is in Spec,IP: (7) a. Temprano salía Julia de la casa. early went out Julia of the house ‘Julia left the house early.’ b. *Temprano Julia salía de la casa. early Julia went out of the house ‘Julia left the house early.’

(both from A&A:503)

c. Temprano salía de la casa. early went out of the house ‘She left the house early.’

From the fact that only one constituent can appear in the preverbal (subject) position (which should be an A0 -position if it can host adverbs), it is concluded that preverbal overt subjects do not surface in the specifier of the inflectional layer. A proposal that in some way reconciles the two conflicting hypotheses (A0 vs. A) is discussed in Zagona (2002): if the dedicated subject position of NSLs is Spec,VP (or Spec,vP), the question is why subjects move out of this position. This kind of movement would be easy to account for if the normal word order in Spanish (for transitive and unergative verb constructions) was not SVO: subjects would move for the same reason as DOs or IOs — to check a topic feature. But SVO is basic in the sense that the subject is not always a topic. Since it is uneconomical to derive the basic word order via a movement that is not required by a fundamental principle of the grammar, it is proposed that a topic feature is located in I◦ , which must be checked, whether or not the subject that lands there is a topic (Zagona 2002:229). On closer inspection, not all of the data presented by the tenants of the A0 hypothesis conclusively prove that preverbal subjects are adjuncts or left-dislocated

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elements. Suñer (2003), addressing the difference in scope relations, has shown that Spanish does not behave like Greek. The sentences in (8) (Suñer 2003:344) are all ambiguous between a narrow and a wide scope reading: (8) a. En la biblioteca departamental, algún estudiante sacó prestado cada libro. in the library departmental some student borrowed every book ‘Different students borrowed each book in the department library.’ [preferred reading] ‘A student borrowed each book in the department library.’ b. En la biblioteca departamental, sacó prestado algún estudiante cada libro. ‘Different students borrowed each book in the department library.’ ‘A student borrowed each book in the department library.’ c. En la biblioteca departamental, sacó prestado cada libro algún estudiante. ‘Different students borrowed each book in the department library.’ ‘A student borrowed each book in the department library.’

Similarly, the Catalan pattern of binding in (4) is not found in Spanish, although it is true that the postverbal position of the pronoun favours the bound-variable reading (Suñer 2003:347). Moreover, an adverb between the subject and the verb does not necessarily entail a parenthetical reading — in other words, the adverb is possibly located in the IP-layer (see Zagona 2002:168–170, Suñer 2003:343), as may be the subject itself. The idea of a topic feature on I◦ seems to be an elegant way of accounting for preverbal subjects that are not topics: movement of the non-topic subject is more economical than moving other constituents, because the subject also checks the N(D)-features of I◦ . On closer inspection, though, a question arises: how is the N-feature of I◦ checked if a non-subject fronts to Spec,IP?7 Note also that we end up with two different topic positions for subjects under this analysis: one is Spec,IP and the other is in the left periphery of the sentence, in cases where there is a mismatch between the phi-features of the subject topic and the verbal morphology (see example (25) below) or when there is more than one topic. On the other hand, these data are not easy to explain under the assumption that subjects are not in a topic position. Thus, the picture remains puzzling. We will return to these data in section 5. 3.2 Does Spanish allow for non-DP elements in subject position? The idea that the preverbal subject position is available for non-subjects is tempting not only under the assumption that this position is an A0 -position. It also explains how Spanish satisfies the EPP or — to put it in Minimalist terms — checks/values the EPP-feature of T◦ . Of course, this means that the preverbal position is not a topic position, but SpecTP. Since it is claimed that there are no definiteness restrictions in VS(O) orders in Spanish (A&A, Goodall 2001:195) it is logical to think that there is no expletive pro (proexpl) in the preverbal position. If this is so, one might ask how the 7

I will address the idea that non-subjects can surface in Spec,IP in section 3.2.

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EPP-feature is checked with the preverbal position being radically empty. There are two possible answers to this question: either there is no EPP-feature in Spanish that

needs to be checked, or some other element in preverbal position checks it. Goodall (2001:204sqq.) suggests that the Spanish VS(O) order involves either a null locative or a null temporal adverb capable of satisfying the EPP-requirement. As for XPVS(O) (where XP is a locative adverb), the claim is that such adverbs display nominal properties and are thus capable of doing the same job. In fact, locative adverbs seem to behave in many respects like DPs, as in the following examples (Goodall 2001:207): (9) a. Aquí me da miedo. here me gives fear ‘This place frightens me.’ b. Allí no me gusta. there not me pleases ‘I don’t like that place.’ c. Aquí y allí me gustan. here and there me please-3-PL d. Aquí parece darle miedo. here seems give-INF-3SG. DAT fear ‘This place seems to frighten him.’

The crucial examples are (9c), which shows that these adverbs can be conjoined and trigger plural agreement, and (9d), which is an instance of raising: plural agreement points to the fact that these adverbs have phi-features, while raising suggests that a Case feature is involved. However, these sentences are marginally acceptable: with the exception of (9d) almost all of my informants clearly rejected them, and some explicitly stated that a subject was missing. This shows that speakers do not interpret the adverbs as being θ-marked; instead they consider them to be located in an adjunct position. It cannot be excluded that the examples in (9) are artefacts of elicitation, where informants implicitly completed the sentences with an elliptic subject. Furthermore, the nominal properties of these adverbs are quite restricted. It is true that they can be selected by prepositions, just like argumental DPs, but their syntactic behaviour is divergent from that of “real” DPs located in the subject position. This contrast is illustrated in (10): (10) a. Esta región fue repoblada por Asturianos. this region was repopulated by Asturians ‘This region was repopulated by Asturians.’ b. ??/*Aquí fue repoblado por Asturianos. here was repopulated by Asturians c. [Este lugar y las regiones meridionales] fueron repoblados por Asturianos. this spot and the regions southern were repopulated by Asturians ‘This spot as well as the southern regions were repopulated by Asturians.’ d. ??/*[Aquí y las regiones meridionales] fueron repoblados por Asturianos. here and the regions southern were repopulated by Asturians

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PÖLL e. Este lugari no nos gusta lo suficiente [para PROi ser elegido this spoti not us pleases enough for PROi to be chosen como terreno para construir.] as building site ‘We don’t like this spot enough to build on it. f.*Aquíi no nos gusta lo suficiente [para PROi ser elegido herei not us pleases enough for PROi to be chosen como terreno para construir.] as building site

In (10b) the adverb is forced into the preverbal position with no other interpretation possible than that it is the subject. This results in a rather deviant sentence compared to its equivalent with the DP esta región. If locative adverbs pattern with DPs it should be possible to construe coordinated structures. As (10d) shows, this is only marginally possible. Finally, one DP-property is control of the null subject of an infinitival: in (10f) the adverb aquí appears in what is claimed to be the subject position but is unable to control PRO, while the sentence is fine with a normal DP. 3.3 Is there V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ movement in Spanish? It has long been assumed that Spanish interrogatives must be derived by movement of the verb to C◦ , either in the presence of a wh-word (partial interrogatives) or not (yes/no questions): (11) a. ¿Dónde compró Juan el diccionario? where bought Juan the dictionary ‘Where did Juan buy the dictionary?’

(Castillo 2002:444)

b. ¿Compró Juan el diccionario? bought Juan the dictionary ‘Did Juan buy the dictionary?’

The assumption that the subject’s initial position is Spec,VP (or Spec,vP) and that it may remain in this position opened up an alternative: these sentences can be accounted for by postulating that Juan remains in its base-generated position, so there is no need for the verb to move beyond the inflectional layer of the clause. The following examples (from Suñer 1994:345) confirm this view: (12) a. ¿A quién jamás ofenderías tú con tus acciones? to whom never offend-COND you with your actions ‘Whom would you never offend with your actions?’ b. ¿Cuál propuesta ya casi le entregaron tus estudiantes al decano? which proposal already almost CL gave your students to-the dean ‘Which proposal did your students nearly hand over to the dean?’

If the verb were in C◦ in (12a) and (12b), one would expect to find the NEG item and the adverbs in postverbal position. Seemingly, while the wh-expressions are located in Spec,CP, C◦ is empty. In two recent contributions to this topic, Castillo (2002, 2003) goes back to the original assumption and claims that not only interrogatives, but also VSO and

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(XP)VSO orders represent instances of V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ movement in Spanish. Her account can be summarised as follows: in (XP)VSO orders (where XP stands for complements — DO and IO — or adverbs), the element which is fronted to a Spec position (within the CP-layer, cf. Rizzi’s (1997) SplitCP) attracts the verb, which enters into a Spec-Head-configuration with the topicalised constituent: (13) a. Ayer compró Juan el diccionario. yesterday bought Juan the dictionary ‘Yesterday Juan bought the dictionary.’ b. [SpecTop2 Ayeri [Top2compróv [Spec,IP Juan [I◦ tv . . . [el diccionario . . . ti] ] ] ] ] (Castillo 2002:458)

In VSO order, a null operator representing the topicalised event argument is assumed to trigger the same kind of movement. Since VSO order is unacceptable in neutral, out-of-the-blue contexts (that is, as an answer to questions like “What’s new?”) but fine as an answer to “What happened?”, the existence of this null operator is motivated by the presupposition that some kind of event actually took place: (14) ¿Qué [ocurriói]? what happened [SpecTOP [+event] Opi [Top compróv Juan . . . [VP tv un diccionario]]] (Castillo 2002:462)

Since VSO is also possible with a strong informational or contrastive focus on either the subject or the object, the null operator assigns a co-superscript to the focussed constituent — in (15a) the subject, in (15b) the complement: (15) a. Compró JUAN el diccionario. (contrastive focus) bought Juan the dictionary ‘JUAN bought the dictionary.’ [SpecTOP [+event] Opi [Top compróv [Spec,IP JUANi . . . [VP tv . . . ] ] ] ] b. Compraría Juan ALGUNOS DICCIONARIOS. (informational focus) would buy Juan some dictionaries ‘Juan would buy SOME DICTIONARIES.’ [SpecTOP [+event] Opi[Top compraríav [Spec,IP Juan . . . [VP ALGUNOS DICCIONARIOS] ] ] ] (Castillo 2002:462)

The above claim is based on the assumption that Spec,IP is the normal position of subjects in Spanish. According to Castillo, postverbal subjects are located in Spec,IP as well, with the exception of subjects of unaccusatives, which remain in their VPinternal position. Castillo justifies this approach by weakening Suñer’s (1994) core evidence for rejecting V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ : the position of adverbs and NEG constituents. Two facts need to be considered. First, adverbs can appear in several positions within a clause. This is shown in (16) with todavía ‘still’: (16) a. ¿Qué idioma todavía estudia Pepita en su tiempo libre? which language still studies Pepita in her spare time ‘Which language does Pepita still study in her spare time?’

(Suñer 1994:345)

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PÖLL b. ¿Qué idioma estudia todavía Pepita en su tiempo libre? c. ¿Qué idioma estudia Pepita todavía en su tiempo libre?

(Castillo 2003:443)

The examples (16b) and (16c) are fully compatible with V◦ -to-I◦-to-C◦ . (16a) and similar facts lead Castillo (2003) to posit that preverbal adverbs in interrogatives are located in a specifier position. The idea that CP has two specifiers allows the hypothesis that V◦ moves to C◦ to be maintained. By analogy, the adverb in (16c) is in the second specifier of IP, and not, as is usually assumed, in a position adjoined to IP. Second, with other adverbs and NEG items, the situation is quite different: (17) a. ¿A quién jamás ofenderías tú con tus acciones? b. ¿Cuál propuesta ya casi le entregaron tus estudiantes al decano?

(= (12a)) (= (12b))

Castillo argues that such items can never appear after the verb because they would not have scope over the verbal complex in this position.8 This is shown in (18) and (19): (18) a. Juan jamás ofendería a María. Juan never would offend to María ‘Juan would never offend María.’ b.*Juan ofendería jamás a María. (19) a. Los estudiantes ya casi le entregaron la propuesta al decano. the students almost already CL gave the proposal to-the dean b.*Los estudiantes le entregaron ya casi la propuesta al decano.

Again, a solution would be to postulate a position (in the CP-layer) where these elements are base-generated or to which they are moved. Castillo is silent on the exact technical implementation. The crucial question with respect to the above account is: are the data best explained by postulating V◦ -to-I◦-to-C◦ ? The answer is clearly no, and further evidence gives preference to Suñer’s (1994) account, whereby V◦ does not move higher than I◦ . Consider first the sentences in (20) (from Castillo 2002:459), instances of topicalisation: (20) a. Las cintas las comprará Juan hoy. the tapes them will buy Juan today ‘The tapes, Juan will buy them today. b. Las cintas, Juan las comprará hoy.

Castillo claims there are two different topic positions for las cintas: in (20a) the topic is in Spec,Top2 (in the Topic phrase that triggers verb movement), in (20b) in Spec,Top1, where no movement is triggered. Yet the presence of a clitic in (20a) strongly suggests that this clause is not an example of XPVS, but of CLLD, as is 8

As a reviewer remarked, the problem is not essentially the position of jamás, but the fact that preverbal no is required to license the postverbal NEG word.

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(20b).9 Thus, neither sentence requires V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ movement to be accounted for: the V moves to I◦ , and the subject remains in SpecVP (20a) or moves to Spec,IP (20b),10 depending on discourse-pragmatic factors. Furthermore, two facts are difficult to explain under Castillo’s assumptions: if Suñer’s ban on V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ is refuted, the +argumental/−argumental asymmetry in interrogatives is left unexplained. In fact, certain wh-phrases corresponding to non-arguments optionally co-occur with a preverbal subject: (21) a. ¿Con qué recursos decidió Juliana emprender semejante viaje? with which money decided Juliana to undertake such a trip ‘With which money did Juliana decide to undertake such a trip? b. ¿Con qué recursos Juliana decidió emprender semejante viaje? (Suñer 1994:349)

Embedded interrogatives with si ‘whether’ also have preverbal subjects: (22) Me preguntaron (que) si tus amigos ya te visitaron en Granada. me they-asked (that) if your friends already you they-visited in Granada ‘They asked me if your friends already visited you in Granada.’ (Suñer 1994:349)

This would mean that V◦ -to-I◦-to-C◦ need not occur in all cases to license the whphrases, which is clearly an unwelcome result. For Suñer (1994:349), the conclusion to be drawn from these data is simple: “the null hypothesis is for V to occupy I◦ but not C◦ with argument Wh-phrases as well” (Suñer 1994:349). IP-ellipsis is the second problematic context. In a sentence like (23), the whword is licensed by the [+Wh] feature in C◦ . The only possible source for this feature is the matrix predicate, since C◦ is empty. If V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ applies in (embedded) interrogatives, we would not expect C◦ to be empty, thus the sentence should be ungrammatical: (23) Este verano leí varias novelas, pero no recuerdo cuántas. this summer I-read several novels but not I-remember how many ‘This summer, I read several novels, but I don’t remember how many.’ (Suñer 1994:349)

4.

INTERIM SUMMARY AND PERSPECTIVES

In sections 3.1 through 3.3 I have shown that some of the more recent speculations on subject positions and their characteristics do not withstand closer inspection: (i) Preverbal subjects cannot always be considered to be topics located in an A0 position (adjunct or Topic Phrase in the left periphery). In fact, they pattern with topics in some contexts, while they must be assumed to be in Spec,IP in others. 9

Note that DO-V-S is quite restricted in Spanish; even with contrastive focus on the fronted complement. Many native speakers are uncomfortable with this word order and prefer clefting instead. Some scholars, such as Contreras (1991:66), even claim that this order is impossible. 10 Depending on context, Juan could also be thought of as a CLLD subject in (20b). For details see section 5.1.

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(ii) The idea that the specifier position of the inflectional layer is the landing site for locative and temporal adverbs (null and overt) has been questioned on empirical grounds: many speakers refuse to interpret these constituents as theta-marked and feel the need for a “real” subject. Moreover, fronted adverbs differ from subjects as they cannot control the null subject of an infinitival and do not appear in coordinate structures with DPs. (iii) In light of the findings on verb movement in Spanish (V◦ does not move higher than I◦ ), V◦ -to-I◦-to◦ -C◦ loses its explanatory power when it comes to providing an explanation for (XP)VS(O)-orders in Spanish. While there is no doubt that (iii) is the weakest account for the distribution of overt subjects (and can thus be discarded without further discussion), (ii) and (iii) raise several questions. The assumption that adverbs can show up in Spec,IP is usually part of approaches claiming that this position can accommodate different types of constituents, in particular adverbial expressions and dative experiencers (Masullo 1992, FernándezSoriano 1999, Gutiérrez-Bravo 2006, Franco and Huidobro 2007, among others). The idea that the EPP-requirement of I◦ must be satisfied in some way serves as a rationale for postulating movement of dative objects (as well as adverbials) to the preverbal subject position. However, the picture is much less clear than some authors claim. For instance, with respect to the experiencers of psych verbs, two facts are problematic for the assumption that they are fronted for EPP-checking purposes and occupy Spec,IP. For (24a) and (24b), it could be argued that the experiencer and the grammatical subject respectively have moved to a specifier position of the inflectional layer, but the same context also allows the experiencer to remain in its VP-internal position (24c) or both the grammatical subject and the experiencer to front (24d), even though this is not the preferred word order: (24) a. A Juan le gusta LA CERVEZA. to Juan CL pleases the beer ‘John likes beer.’

(context: ¿Qué le gusta a Juan?)

b. LA CERVEZA le gusta a Juan. the beer CL pleases to Juan c. Le gusta a Juan LA CERVEZA. CL pleases to Juan the beer d. LA CERVEZA a Juan le gusta. The beer to Juan CL pleases

In (24c) it is unclear how the EPP is satisfied, if it is a feature on I◦ . As for (24d) one might ask where the grammatical subject is located: following Zubizarreta (1998), who holds that subjects, topics or focussed constituents are in Spec,TP, there would be two competing constituents for this position. As for adverbs/adverbial expressions in Spec,IP, Gutiérrez-Bravo (2006) has shown that the adverbial expressions in some of Fernández-Soriano’s (1999) examples behave like topics, both from a pragmatic viewpoint and with respect to standard

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syntactic tests for topic-hood.11 Moreover, a problem arises with the alleged subjecthood of preverbal adverbs in arbitrary-se constructions, as Aquí solamente se come bien ‘One can eat well only here’ (Masullo 1992:96). Since the subject of impersonal se-constructions is PROarb,12 an adverb cannot be in Spec,IP. Thus, taking into account the above data together with those discussed in section 3.2, I believe that the issue of adverbial “subjects” can be closed. For dative/quirky “subjects”, it is still worthwhile to look for another solution (a task beyond the scope of this article). The divergent behaviour of subjects shown in section 3.1 suggests that in principle both positions (A or A0 ) are possible. Note that Camacho (2006) reached a similar conclusion and identified specific constraints that prevent subjects from moving to a topic position. Using data from ellipsis, he showed that with modals, subjects go beyond the IP-layer and are hosted by the specifier position of the Modal Phrase. In the absence of a modal verb, they can appear as left-dislocated (Camacho 2006:62, his example (27)).13 What we have to strive for now is a comprehensive explanation that is able to capture the obvious ban on fronted focussed constituents and sentence-initial NEG expressions14 while being compatible with the assumption that subjects can, but 11 For example, a sentence like En Barcelona está nevando ‘In Barcelona it is snowing’ is not fine in an out-of-the-blue context, which points to en Barcelona being a topic. This analysis is confirmed by the impossibility of long wh-extraction: *¿Quéi dices [que en Barcelona pasó ti la semana pasada]? ‘What did you say happened in Barcelona last week?’ A subject in preverbal position would not block extraction. 12 In these constructions, arbitrary se absorbs nominative, so the subject cannot be proarb. Evidence for this analysis comes from embedded constructions; see Mendikoetxea (1994) for details. 13 Another interesting finding relevant to our topic is that NEG quantifiers in subject function require a Spec-Head relationship (i.e., local agree with the verb) with the neg operator (that is, they are supposed to be located in a NegP):

(i) Nadie pudo avanzar 3 metros. no-one could advance 3 meters ‘No-one could advance 3 meters.’ (i)*Nadie casi pudo avanzar 3 metros. no-one almost could advance 3 meters ‘No one could almost advance 3 meters.’ No such problem arises with other quantifiers (e.g., Todos ellos casi pudieron avanzar 3 metros ‘All of them could almost advance 3 meters’) and lexical subjects (e.g., La tortuga casi pudo avanzar 3 metros ‘The turtle could almost advance 3 meters’). Besides, the contrast betweeen Ello (*a mi parecer) no sería malo estudiar and Ninguno, a mi parecer, pudo avanzar 3 metros (Camacho’s 8b and 17) suggests that NEG quantifiers and the Dominican expletive ello do not occupy the same structural position. 14 A reviewer asks why negative quantifiers pattern with fronted adverbs or DPs. They behave like other fronted constituents with respect to this ban because they are generally focussed as well. The wish to put special emphasis on these constituents is precisely what makes speakers front them to a sentence-initial position.

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need not be, left-dislocated. Some other problems resulting from rejection of the approaches discussed so far must be dealt with as well. 5.

PROPOSAL

Rejection of the approaches summarised in sections 3 and 4 leaves us with open questions of a different nature: first, how is the EPP fulfilled in Spanish if no element with DP-properties is merged in or moved to Spec,IP? Second, what is the exact licensing mechanism for postverbal subjects? Third, and perhaps most importantly, why is there a ban on XPSV(O) but apparently not on XPproV(O)?15 My proposal for the distributional facts of preverbal subjects, which sheds light on these questions, combines three ideas that will be substantiated in the following subsections: (i) Pro exists; it is a strictly preverbal null pronominal and allows subjects to appear as left-dislocated topics; (ii) Postverbal subjects of unergatives and transitives as well as pro are licensed by the same mechanism: Case-government; (iii) Overt subjects and pro have a different distribution owing to the clitic status of the empty category. As will be shown at the end of this section, the statement in (iii), together with the fact that preverbal subjects can but need not be left-dislocated, has important consequences for the architecture of both the subject field and the left periphery in Spanish. 5.1 Status of pro Section 3.1 showed that it is still not clear why preverbal subjects seem to pattern with fronted topics in some contexts but behave like arguments in others. The most conclusive evidence for the argument-like behaviour of preverbal subjects comes from Suñer (2003). Among those who claim that preverbal subjects are in an A0 position, O&T provide strong but perhaps not irrefutable evidence. Recall from section 3.1 that O&T conclude from data concerning IP-ellipsis and negative quantifier extraction that overt preverbal subjects pattern with topics and that pro, assumed to have the same distribution as overt subjects, does not exist in Spanish. It is this latter assumption that I will question in this section. For O&T, finite clauses with overt subjects are instances of clitic doubling, with AGR as the clitic and the DP as its double. The behaviour of DPs with “logical” agreement — in which the speaker is included in a third-person DP — shows that the lexical DP by itself is not responsible for the binding properties of a coreferential pronoun (examples from O&T:59): (25) a. Los estudiantesi salimos de la reunión después de que nosi/*losi acusaran. the students we-left of the meeting after of that us/them they-accused ‘We, the students, left the meeting after they had accused us/*them.’ 15

With XP being a focussed constituent.

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CJL/RCL 55(3), 2010 b. Acusaron a los estudiantesi después de que se peleasen con they-accused the students after of that CL they-fought with *nosotrosi/ellosi. us/them ‘They accused the students, after they had fought with us /*them.’

(26) *(Nos) acusaron a los estudiantesi después de que hablasen de nosotrosi. (us) they-accused the students after of that they-spoke about us ‘They accused *(us,) the students, after they had talked about us.’

Example (25a) shows that in case of a mismatch between the phi-features of the DP and the inflected verb, the verb determines binding. If the verb is not inflected for the appropriate person, as in (25b), only a third-person pronoun in the embedded clause can be bound. The ungrammaticality of (26) shows that the crucial factor is in fact the presence of a clitic. Although the correctness of the above data is beyond doubt, this account has two shortcomings: first, there is strong evidence that pro exists and second, the above pattern of grammatical vs. ungrammatical binding possibilities also obtains with pro. Consider example (27): it is used by Suñer (2003:350) to illustrate the divergent behaviour of CLLD elements and preverbal subjects in reconstruction. While the former reconstruct (to the clitic position), the latter never do so. (27) a. *[La primera obra de un escritor]i, siempre lai escribe con placer. the first work of a writer always it he-writes with pleasure ‘The first work of a writer, he always writes it with pleasure.’ [Clitic agr: ?] b. *[La primera obra de un escritor]i, siempre pro lai escribe con placer. [Preverbal pro: 3] c. *[La primera obra de un escritor]i, siempre lai escribe pro con placer. [Postverbal pro: ?]

The ungrammaticality of (27) can only be explained if we assume that this sentence contains pro. With pro in preverbal position, the ungrammaticality is easy to explain: the topicalised CLLD constituent reconstructs to the clitic position so that the R-expression un escritor is deeper in the structure than the null pronominal. The result is a Principle C-effect. Without pro — that is, assuming that clitic AGR is the argument — the ungrammaticality is mysterious: since the R-expression un escritor would precede clitic AGR, no problem with respect to binding should arise. Additionally, this sentence rules out the possibility of pro remaining in its base-generated position (Spec,VP). Why should the sentence be ungrammatical if there was a pro in this position?16 Now, the challenge is to reconcile the distribution of pro with O&T’s findings concerning the similar patterning of preverbal subjects and topics. Recall from section 3.1 that initially the remnants of IP-ellipsis were supposed to have different 16

A reviewer believes that Arregi’s (2006) findings concerning the absence of Principle C-effects with overt pronouns are problematic for this diagnostic. Arregi shows that both (i) and (ii) are grammatical, although the pronoun c-commands the DP after reconstruction (while replacing él with pro in (i) leads to ungrammaticality):

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content according to the nature of the preverbal constituent. In example (5a), partially repeated here as (28a), the remnant was thought to contain only the preverbal subject, whereas in the other clauses the remnant would contain the dislocated topic plus pro: (28) a.

. . . y Pepe también (le dio unos libros a Pía)

b. . . . y unos cuadros pro también

(le dio a Pía)

c.

(le dio unos libros)

. . . y a Sara pro también

(O&T:42)

I think that the preverbal subject in (28a) could in fact indeed be a dislocated topic, but diverge from O&T’s view as far as the putative position of pro is concerned: pro is not part of the remnant but belongs to the elided constituent, which is the entire IP-projection. Note that, at this juncture, I do not take a stand on the exact position of pro inside the IP-layer. Hence, the question of whether or not (preverbal) overt subjects and pro have a different distribution is not at stake at the moment, even though the assumption that they do is highly plausible. Under my analysis the sentences of (28) have the structures in (29): (29) a.

. . . y Pepe también

(pro le dio unos libros a Pía)

b. . . . y unos cuadros también

(pro le dio a Pía)

c.

(pro le dio unos libros)

. . . y a Sara también

The proposed structure is fully compatible with the idea that preverbal subjects can but need not be left-dislocated. Uncontroversial cases of left-dislocated subjects are sentences like (25a), where the only way of explaining the mismatch between the “subject” and the finite verb is to assume that the former is outside the clause, or at least outside the IP-layer. Another clear case is the subject of a passive sentence when it appears to the left of a wh-phrase: (30) Ese libro, ¿cuándo fue comprado?17 this book when was bought ‘This book, when was it bought?’

(Goodall 2001:200)

(i) [El libro de Juani], éli lo leyó t ayer. the book of Juani hei CL read t yesterday. ‘Juan’s booki, hei read yesterday.’ (ii) [El libro de Juani], lo leyó éli t ayer. the book of Juani CL read hei t yesterday. ‘Juan’s booki, hei read yesterday.’

(Arregi 2006:3)

This asymmetry is unexpected both on theoretical grounds and in light of similar Italian examples where postverbal (but not preverbal) overt pronouns are ungrammatical. Arregi attributes the different behaviour of pro and overt pronouns to the possibility of Vehicle Change: with an overt subject pronoun the name behaves like a pronoun in the lower copy of the CLLD phrase. (A similar pattern is found with IP-ellipsis.) Note that these data and Arregi’s explanation do not undermine the diagnostic validity of my test, since Principle C and its violations in the presence of pro are not questioned. 16 Goodall (2001:200) explicitly rejects this analysis, arguing that the “intonation and discourse context” of this sentence cast doubt on the topic-hood of ese libro. It is unclear to me

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In general, the “subject” in SVO-orders may be either in Spec,IP or left-dislocated. In the latter case, the topic is often separated from the rest of the clause by a pause so that there are (at least) two intonational phrases.18 The different structures can be illustrated by the following examples; an additional DO-topic appears in examples (31d–f): (31) a. Juan ha comprado el libro. b. [IP Juan ha comprado el libro.] Juan has bought the book ‘Juan has bought the book.’ c. Juan | [IP pro ha comprado el libro.] Juan he-has bought the book d. Juan, el libro, pro lo ha comprado. Juan, the book, CL he-has bought e. El libro, Juan lo ha comprado. the book Juan CL has bought f. El libro, Juan | pro lo ha comprado. the book Juan CL he-has bought

Example (31a) can have the structures given in (31b) (Juan is in Spec,IP) and (31c) (Juan is left-dislocated, symbolised by the vertical bar). In (31d), a Topic phrase is the only plausible position for the DP Juan, since the object DP is an instance of CLLD. The examples in (31e) and (31f) show again the two possibilities for the “subject”: in (31c) there is one CLLD element (el libro); in (31d) there are two, the direct object and the DP Juan.19 A preverbal subject must be considered a left-dislocated topic if it represents information already conveyed or present in the discourse context (i.e. non-focal/previously mentioned); in such a case, it is more than just a sentence topic and can be omitted just like any other CLLD phrase if it appears in an appropriate context.20 5.2 Licensing My approach is based on some of the refinements of Rizzi’s pro-drop-parameter as proposed by Toribio (1996). In her framework, General Spanish is characterised by why this should be so. Moreover, the fact that a negative quantifier like nadie cannot appear in this position does not prove anything with respect to the possible topic-hood of ese libro. 18 A constituent entailing a parenthetical reading may be inserted as well. 19 As pointed out by a reviewer, an alternative analysis would be to assume that CLLD subjects do not involve pro, but a trace (or copy) of the subject. This assumption is not plausible, however: applied to (25a), it means that the trace/copy of the moved DP los estudiantes is responsible for the binding nos. But this entails that the DP has phi-features different from those of its trace/copy. 20 An appropriate context would be a question–answer pair, where the subject of the second turn has been mentioned in the first turn. Due to the existence of the empty category (pro), omission of the “subject” is then the unmarked choice in Spanish (in contrast to, say, German or English Topic Drop, which is confined to informal speech and neutral only in special context types).

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an I◦ that is lexical and pronominal: a lexical I◦ Case-governs (= c-commands) the subject in Spec,VP, which permits (XP)VSO orders;21 a pronominal I◦ possesses phifeatures, and is therefore able to identify referential pro. This means that a language that has a lexical I◦ allows null expletives, since they do not need to be identified. The fact that not all of the characteristics of NSLs (as Rizzi described them) are present in some varieties of Caribbean Spanish is thus accounted for: most varieties of Caribbean Spanish continue to have Case-government, so that null expletives and VSO-orders are possible, but display a strong tendency to ban referential pro. This is due to the weakening of AGR: the reduced verbal morphology is unable to identify a referential null subject, so the only way of licensing is identifying its content under coindexation with an antecedent NP. The special case of Dominican Spanish, which has ello as an overt expletive,22 is explained by assuming that some speakers of this dialect have a grammar with an I◦ that is neither pronominal nor lexical. According to Toribio, all distributional facts concerning subjects in this dialect follow from this idea.23 Under the Minimalist assumption that the EPP involves a feature that needs to be checked (or valued), movement of the subject — be it overt or null — to the preverbal position is related to this process. Toribio follows this view and explains the possibility of VS (with transitives and unergatives) in General Spanish by differences in the strength of the nominal features of T and AGR, so that movement need not occur.24 For constructions with unaccusative verbs, she implicitly suggests that a proexpl is involved. The two assumptions together preserve the EPP as a feature checking process (see Toribio 1996:425ssq). Recall that the existence of proexpl is controversial, since it would be an expletive with characteristics differing from those of its overt counterparts in languages like German or French. Note that in Spanish definiteness restrictions are in fact weak, if 21

That I◦ in NSLs like Italian or Spanish can assign Nominative to its right is an idea that goes back to Koopman and Sportiche (1991). For Old French, Adams (1987:12) proposed a similar link between the possibility of licensing null subjects and “canonical government in a head first language”. 22 Ello appears both as an it-type and a there-type expletive (Ello no sería malo estudiar vs. Ello hay muchos mangos este año). Note that recently the traditional, widespread idea that ello is a pronoun has been questioned. Among others, Hinzelin and Kaiser (2007) claim instead that it is a discourse marker, but the data they present still allow interpretation of ello as a pronoun in many instances. It cannot be excluded that there are two homonymous items ello, one a discourse marker and the other a pronoun. 23 It should be noted that this is not the case: not all speakers use ello as an expletive, and those who do also produce utterances with null expletives. These facts are reminiscent of the situation in Brazilian Portuguese where a typological change from pro-drop to partial pro-drop can be observed too (almost complete absence of VSO orders; decline of referential null subjects). The proposals made to account for Brazilian Portuguese, in particular that competing grammars or ongoing replacement of a NS-grammar by a non-NS-grammar are responsible for individual and social variation (cf. Kato 2000 for an overview), could be further explored for Dominican Spanish as well. 24 This comes close to saying that Spanish is a “no/weak EPP language” (A&A:500).

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they exist at all, while in French the overt expletive prevents the postverbal DP from being definite: (32) Spanish: a. Salió el estudiante. went out the student ‘The student went out.’ b. Llegó el estudiante. arrived the student ‘The student arrived.’ (33) French: a. *Il est sorti l’étudiant. there is gone out the student b. *Il est arrivé l’étudiant. there is arrived the student

For fulfilling the Case requirements of the postverbal subject of an unaccusative, it is not necessary to assume the existence of proexpl, as the directionality of Case assignment allows for other implementations: I◦ may assign nominative Case to the DP in object position (the DP remains in its base-generated position) or in Spec,VP, where the underlying object DP could have moved since this position is non-thematic with unaccusatives. Both scenarios capture the fact that the canonical position of subjects of unaccusatives is postverbal, but they have obvious weaknesses. In the first scenario, Case assignment would be realised in two different ways, locally with unergatives and transitives and non-locally with unaccusatives. In the second, the principle of locality of Case assignment is respected, but it must be claimed that the DP undergoes movement. With the caveats mentioned above, I therefore defend the approach under which Case is transmitted via a Chain headed by a null expletive licensed in Spec,VP which moves to a preverbal position to fulfil the EPP.25 It should be noted that within a Minimalist framework, the licensing of postverbal subjects would be captured by the operation AGREE, by which a probe values the subject DP’s Case feature. Under this assumption, the purpose of expletive pro is to satisfy the EPP.26 Note, however, that there is another way of viewing the EPP: it may be fundamentally a semantic issue. This position, derived from the original Principles and Parameters version of the EPP, can be formulated as follows: “every clause must 25

This conforms to the recent proposal that the licensing of overt subject with Spanish infinitives is due to a proexpl which is the result of a reinterpretation process involving what is initially PRO (cf. Pöll 2007). 26 A reviewer believes that if the EPP is said to be satisfied by a null expletive it could be that either proexpl (lacking a phonological matrix, morphology, and semantics) or the EPP are empty notions. The status of the EPP is indeed open to doubt, as the concept has undergone substantial modification and is now simply a rationale for movement, devoid of its initial semantics-related content (predication).

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have a subject of predication”. This means that the EPP is fulfilled by the lexical DP in (31a) and (31e), and by pro in (31c), (31d), and (31f). This idea may also apply to unaccusative constructions; according to this “semantic version”, it is not the expletive that fulfils the EPP but rather the postverbal subject.27 5.3 Distribution The question of why fronted constituents (focussed adverbs, negative quantifiers, DPs) are incompatible with preverbal overt subjects is probably one of the most difficult problems of Spanish word order. Recall that the proposals discussed in section 3 did not prove convincing: in O&T’s system, the ban on preverbal subjects with negative quantifiers like nadie was explained by assuming that the preverbal subject in topic position blocks the fronting of a quantifier. Since these subjects need not appear in this position, this explanation is insufficient. The same holds for A&A’s account, which postulates that subjects and topics compete for a left-peripheral A0 position. Goodall’s (2001) alternative account, suggesting a conflict between subjects and constituents with DP-like properties (temporal and locative adverbs) in SpecTP is problematic since many speakers do not interpret adverbs as being located in the subject slot. Moreover, the behaviour of these adverbs suggests that they do not occupy the same position as subjects. Finally, Castillo’s (2002) proposal, which makes Spanish look like a genuine V2 language, loses much of its plausibility with a closer examination of the evidence against V◦ -to-I◦ -to-C◦ (Suñer 1994). Without explicitly addressing this issue, Suñer (2003) proposes that this restriction, (strict VS order with fronted focussed constituents) is essentially a prosodic phenomenon, in the sense that these constituents obligatorily form “a single breath group with the rest of the sentence” (p. 353). This appears to be a correct descriptive generalisation, but the question arises of why a preverbal subject is a problem for this prosodic requirement. I would like to suggest that this restriction is mirrored in syntax; it can be captured by the following rule: (34) No fronting of focussed constituents when Spec,IP28 is filled.

For this rule to be plausible,29 some explicit comments on the nature of pro are necessary. Thus far, I have assumed that pro is always preverbal, as in (27), but this does not mean that its landing site is Spec,IP. The distribution of pro (as well as proexpl) is not parallel to that of Dominican ello, which is a weak pronoun.30 To my 27

The fact that unaccusative constructions with postverbal subjects are usually thetic judgements, so that predication is (at least primarily) over an event, is problematic for this view. I leave this issue for further research. 28 Note that Spec,IP is the prototypical case; other Spec positions (below the CP-layer) that can host overt constituents with subject function are concerned as well (see Camacho’s 2006 findings on different preverbal subject positions according to subject type). 29 As it stands, this rule does not seem to follow from a deeper principle of grammar and must therefore be considered to be an idiosyncrasy of Spanish syntax. 30 See Suñer (2003:352), who claims that their distribution is identical, but does not adopt a clear position on the exact nature of pro (weak pronoun or true null subject clitic).

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knowledge, Haider (1994) was the first to flesh out the idea, implicit in Rizzi (1982), that pro is a subject clitic. According to Haider (1994:378sqq), the two prerequisites for pro-drop are verbal morphology capable of identifying the content of a null pronoun and the existence of a subject clitic (which must be cliticised syntactically, i.e., adjoin to I◦ ). More precisely, pro-drop obtains only in those cases where the empty category can cliticise to an inflectional head with which it shares a common set of phi-features. This assumption can account for some intricate aspects of the syntax of pro-drop in Italian and Portuguese (examples originally from Rizzi 1982 and Raposo 1989; see Haider 1994:380): (35) Italian: A proposito di Mario, ritengo . . . as for PREP Mario, I-think ‘As for Mario, I think . . . a. . . . [poter [lui/*pro disporre di fondi considerevoli] ] can he/*pro dispose PREP funds considerable . . . that he can dispose of considerable funds.’ b. . . . [che [lui/pro possa disporre di fondi considerevoli] ] CONJ he/pro can dispose of funds considerable . . . that he can dispose of considerable funds.’ (36) Portuguese: a.*Eu vi [pro a robarem o automóvel] I saw PREP steal-INF-3PL the car ‘I saw that they stole a car.’ b. Eu vi-osi [ei a trabalharem] I saw-them PREP work-INF-3PL ‘I saw them working.’ c. Eu vi [pro robarem o automóvel] I saw steal-INF-3PL the car ‘I saw them stealing a car.’ d. Eu vi [eles trabalharem] I saw they to-work-3PL ‘I saw them working.’

Though nominative Case is available in (35a), a null subject is out because the infinitive has no phi-features to share with pro; in (35b) pro and the finite verb possa have a common matrix of phi-features, so pro-drop is possible. The Portuguese sentences in (36) are additional evidence for this mechanism. Since the overt pronoun in the ECM-construction in (36b) is marked with accusative, a null subject is not licit in (36a), because pro would be accusative and cliticise to the matrix verb. But this verb has phi-features different from those of pro, hence pro-drop must not occur. In (36d), the overt pronoun is marked with nominative Case; the prediction that pro is licit in the same context is borne out (see (35c), where pro has the required phi-features to cliticise to robarem).31 31

The following facts (see Haider 1994:381) confirm this view:

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By virtue of its status, pro behaves exactly like other clitics and adjoins to I◦ . Thus Spec,IP is empty in the above examples (2b), (6d), or (7c), repeated here as (37a–c): (37) a. AYER/Ayer compró una casa. b. Nada le debe a sus amigos. c. Temprano salía de la casa.

It is thus clear that pro and overt subjects have a different distribution,32 but we need not deconstruct the subject field in the way Cardinaletti and Starke (1999) and Cardinaletti (2004) propose to do. Note that their account offers no direct evidence as to the exact structural position of pro, and the surface order does not force us to assume that pro occupies the same position as weak pronouns. This holds for Spanish as well: assuming (with Suñer 2003) that Dominican ello is a weak pronoun, the “parenthetical test” does not yield reliable data for this language. Under the assumption that pro (as a deficient pronoun) is more likely to pattern with weak pronouns than with strong ones or overt subjects, the contrast between (38a) and (38b) only points to the conclusion that pro is adjacent to the inflected verb in (38c); this result is compatible with our proposal (examples from Suñer 2003:351): (38) a. Juan/Él, a mi parecer, es muy simpático. Juan/He in my view is very nice ‘I think that Juan/he is very nice.’ b. *Ello, a mi parecer, no sería malo estudiar. it in my view not would-be bad to study ‘I think it wouldn’t be bad to study more.’ c. ???(pro) a mi parecer, (pro) es muy simpático. in my view is very nice

The above account nicely captures the asymmetry between sentences with: (i) *O Luis viu [pro a aparecer um camelo no horizonte] the Luis saw PREP appear a camel in-the horizon (ii) proi Continua [ei a ser difícil que a guerra acabe] it-continues PREP to be difficult that the war ends Since there is a postverbal lexical subject in (i), the preverbal subject position must have been licensed by the matrix verb. Nevertheless, the empty category, which can only be expletive in this context, is illicit because it has no host (and violates the θ-criterion, according to Raposo 1989:299). As for (ii), the null expletive is fine because it can cliticise to the matrix I◦ of the raising construction. In short, proexpl, in addition to the requirement that it be formally licensed, must cliticise in the same way as argumental pro. 32 A reviewer believes that other explanations for the different distribution of pro and lexical subjects are possible and points to Pesetsky’s account for the absence of wanna-contraction effects with PRO. The problem of extending these assumptions (PRO is postverbal, therefore it does not block contraction) to our question is that pro cannot be postverbal, as has been clearly shown above.

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(i) overt preverbal subjects (focussed constituents, etc. illegitimate; Spec,IP filled) (ii) overt postverbal subjects (focussed constituents, etc. legitimate; Spec,IP empty; proexpl adjoined to I◦ if the verb is unaccusative), and (iii) pro (focussed constituents, adverbs etc. legitimate; Spec,IP empty; pro adjoined to I◦ ). One advantage of this account is that it dispenses with the need to posit that Spec,IP accommodates even more types of non-subject constituents. Zubizarreta (1998) and others claim that not only preverbal subjects but also topics and focussed constituents appear in this position, which is assumed to be idiosyncratic in the sense that it bears discourse-based features attracting different kinds of constituents for feature-checking purposes. Rejecting this assumption is consistent with our data concerning the impossibility of locative and temporal adverbs in Spec,IP. As a consequence, Spanish can be described along the lines of Rizzi (1997): it does not differ from Italian with respect to the existence of a focus phrase33 in the CP-layer, but simply displays a different ordering of focus and topic constituents. While Italian allows for both [(TopP*) [FocP [TopP* [IP . . . ] ] ] ] and [TopP* [FocP [IP . . . ] ] ], Spanish has only [(TopP*) [FocP [IP . . . ] ] ]. The architecture of the left periphery in Spanish can be illustrated by the following examples: (39) a. [FocP FLORES [IP – [I0 nunca pro lei ha regalado a su mujeri] ] ] flowers never CL has given to his wife ‘Flowers, he has never given to his wife.’ [one focus constituent] b. [TopP A su mujeri [FocP FLORES [IP – [I0 nunca pro lei ha regalado] ] ] ] to his wife flowers never CL has given ‘To his wife he has never given flowers.’ [one topic + one focus constituent] c. [TopP Pedroi [TopP a su mujerj [FocP FLORES [IP – [I’ nunca proi lej Pedro to his wife flowers never CL d. ha regalado] ] ] ] ] has given

[recursive topic phrase + one focus constituent]

Together with the requirement that Spec,IP must be empty for fronting of focussed constituents to occur, we now have the complete syntactic background of Suñer’s (2003: 353) intuition concerning the prosodic characteristics of focussed phrases in sentence-initial position. A welcome corollary of this idea is that we need not postulate that topics appear in several distinct positions in Spanish. Note that this is inevitable under Zubizarreta’s (1998) framework: Spec,TP would host a topic if no focussed constituents 33

In Zubizarreta’s (1998) framework, a preverbal subject is out in the presence of a fronted focussed constituent precisely because the two would compete for the same position. It is thus assumed that there is no focus phrase in the left periphery and that Spec,TP hosts either a focus constituent or a preverbal subject. For a different account, see Uriagereka (1995), who proposes a focus phrase but argues that not only focussed constituents can land there.

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or preverbal overt subject is present; otherwise (or if another topic appears), it must be assumed that a TopP in the left periphery is projected. 6.

CONCLUSION

The exact nature of the pro-drop phenomenon is still far from being fully understood. Numerous accounts have been proposed since the 1990s to account for one of the principal issues related to the null-subject parameter: the position of overt and null subjects. In these discussions the fundamental dividing line was shown to be between those who claim that preverbal subjects occur in a specifier position of the inflectional layer and those who hold that this position is empty (or non-existent) in NSLs, so that subjects appear instead in a clause-peripheral position akin to that hosting CLLD items. Castillo’s (2002, 2003) alternative account postulating a movement of V◦ beyond I◦ has proven unconvincing on empirical grounds. The same holds for Goodall’s (2001) proposal that the preverbal subject position is a specifier of the inflectional layer, but that this position is also available for a null and overt temporal or locative adverbs fulfilling the EPP (when there is no preverbal subject). The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that preverbal subjects do not have a designated position and may appear either as CLLD items (with pro as the resumptive element) or in Spec,IP, according to discourse-pragmatic factors. VS orders with transitives and unergatives are possibly due to Case-governing of I◦ ; VS orders with unaccusative verbs can be explained by a non-local Case assignment/checking process (or AGREE, within recent versions of Minimalism), by a local process (movement of the underlying object to Spec,VP, so that I◦ Case-governs it), or — as I assume — in a way close to the classic account of the GB era, viz. by postulating an expletive pro (formally licensed in Spec,VP and raising to preverbal position) that transmits Case to the postverbal DP. In any case, the EPP is fulfilled by pro/proexpl or an overt subject. As an alternative, the EPP could be conceived of as a semantic principle, so that it would be fulfilled by a theta-role bearing subject constituent (pro or an overt subject), regardless of its surface-structure position. This idea needs further research. Based on Suñer’s (2003) reconstruction test for CLLD items, a closer examination of Ordóñez and Treviño’s (1999) diagnostic tool for the topic-hood of subjects has led to the conclusion that the verbal morphology does not bear the subject thetarole; instead, a preverbal pro does. But this null subject does not occur in the same position as overt subjects nor is it a weak pronoun patterning identically with the expletive pronoun ello of Dominican Spanish; instead, pro is a subject clitic that adjoins to I◦ . This explains why in cases of IP ellipsis pro is not contained in the remnant. Furthermore, pro’s clitic status allows for a novel explanation of the impossibility of fronting focussed DPs, adverbs or NEG items: the preverbal subject position must be empty to allow the movement of such constituents to sentence initial position. This is clearly the case with postverbal lexical subjects, but also with preverbal pro. With respect to the architecture of the left periphery, the difference between Spanish and other NSLs such as Italian or Greek can therefore be reduced to this constraint as well as the fact that Spanish lacks a topic position below the focus phrase.

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