The Development of Exceptional Case Marking in Romance with a Particular Focus on French

This paper traces the development of so-called Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) under perception, permissive and causative verbs in Romance. Synchronically, we can observe various patterns in the distribution of ECM complements under these verbs. In Portuguese and Spanish, ECM is often possible under all permissive and causative verbs, whereas in French, Catalan and Italian it is usually restricted to perception and permissive verbs. A detail that has not been much discussed is the fact that, for many speakers, ECM with a given verb is often restricted to contexts in which the embedded ‘subject’ is a clitic. Some speakers of Modern French display this pattern with the verb faire ‘make’, for example (Abeillé, Anne, Danièle Godard & Philip Miller. 1997. Les causatives en français : Un cas de compétition syntaxique. Langue Française 115. 62–74. https://doi.org/10.3406/lfr.1997.6222). In this paper, I claim that laisser ‘let’ probably also displayed this pattern in Middle French. In Old French, however, what appears to be the opposite pattern is observed. Following (Pearce, Elizabeth. 1990. Parameters in Old French syntax: Infinitival complements. Dordrecht: Kluwer), I attribute this to the morphological variability of dative case in Old French. I propose a case-based analysis of the clitic ECM pattern, whereby ECM complements in Romance are phases unlike clause union complements (see Sheehan, Michelle & Sonia Cyrino. 2018. Why do some ECM verbs resist passivisation? A phase-based explanation. In Sherry Hucklebridge & Max Nelson (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 48 (vol 3), 81–90. University of Massachusetts). Where such complements are embedded under light verbs, the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) prevents accusative case from being assigned to the lower subject except in instances of cliticization. When the matrix verb is reanalysed as a full verb, however, v becomes the case-assigning head and so ECM becomes generally available, regardless of the clitic/non-clitic status of the causee.

Rečenice s iznimnim padežnim označivanjem i rečenice s implicitnom kontrolom subjekta u hrvatskom jeziku

U filološkoj analizi latinskog i grčkog jezika konstrukcije tzv. akuzativa s infinitivom (ACI – lat. accusativus cum infinitivo) i nominativa s infinitivom (NCI – lat. nominativus cum infinitivo) zauzimaju jasno mjesto i obilno su prisutne u korpusima rimske i starogrčke književnosti. Spomenute konstrukcije pojavljuju se i u drugim jezicima, npr. njemačkom i engleskom. Hrvatske (i crkvenoslavenske) konstrukcije ACI i DCI (prema lat. dativus cum infinitivo – dativ s infinitivom) spominju se u radovima Mihaljevića (Mihaljević 2011) i Belaja (Belaj 2015). U ovom se radu istražuju ovjereni tipovi konstrukcija ECM (prema engl. exceptional case marking – iznimno padežno označivanje) i njihova formalna struktura u suvremenom hrvatskom jeziku te prisutnost konstrukcija ECM primarno u tekstovima Hrvatske jezične riznice, tipovi glagola uz koje se u hrvatskom jeziku pojavljuju konstrukcije ACI, NCI i DCI te se uspoređuju razredi glagola uz koje se pojavljuju konstrukcije ACI i NCI u latinskom i hrvatskom jeziku.

Explorer la structure interne des constructions causatives du français

RésuméLe présent article porte sur la structure interne des constructions causatives du français. Son argumentation se base sur deux idées essentielles : que l'interprétation de respectivement révélerait l'effet d'intervention dans les constructions bi-propositionnelles, et que la montée du quantifieur serait soumise à la minimalité et à la Condition d'impénétrabilité des phases. J'utiliserai ces deux phénomènes comme tests pour justifier d'une part la relation morpho-syntaxique entre le verbe causatif faire et le verbe causativisé, et d'autre part la dérivation de l'ordre VOS (verbe-objet-sujet) du complément de faire. Je compte démontrer que les constructions causatives du français sont analogues aux constructions ECM (Exceptional Case Marking), qui impliquent un TP défectif enchâssé; et que l'ordre VOS du complément de faire, dans la construction faire-à et dans la construction faire-par, impliquent deux dérivations différentes. Le premier est dérivé par Object Shift, tandis que le deuxième est dérivé par Smuggling.

Case and Licensing: Evidence from ECM+DOC

This remark argues for the Case-theoretic concept of Case as a syntactic licensing requirement of DPs related to their case morphology, against alternatives where DPs need no syntactic licensing, or where their case morphology is unrelated to it. The argument is made from constraints on combining exceptional Case marking (ECM) and the double object construction, where there is a single object Agree/Case locus for two DPs. The mechanisms and nature of Case are briefly examined. The appendix sketches an extension to wager-class ECM.

A estrutura interna da small clause complemento de verbos ECM

The present work analyzes the syntax of small clause (SC) complement of ECM (Exceptional Case Marking) verbs within the framework of the Minimalist Program, specifically in the model of Phases (Chomsky, 1999). The hypothesis that guides this study is that the SCs that complements ECM verbs constitutes a xP phase. From the analysis-xP of the SC complement of verb ECM it is possible to establish a narrow relation between the SC and the xP phase (vP, aP, nP, pP) and, still, to stand out a parallelism between a full sentence/SC and the CP/vP phases.