LINGUIST List 2.317

Sunday 23 June 1991

Disc: IO-agreement

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Directory

1. Montserrat Sanz, Re: Responses: Indirect Objects, Mood
2. bert peeters, Indirect objects

In response to Alexis Manaster Ramer's question about Spanish IO:
Although I don't know of any dialects of Spanish in which the
phenomenon about IO agreement as you state it does not
happen, I can certainly mention two of them in which it
does: Castilian and Andalusian. Although the Spanish constitution
refers to Castilian as a general term for the official language
of Spain, I'm using it to refer strictly to the language spoken
in Castilla (the central part of the country, which includes
the regions of Castilla-Leon, Castilla-La Mancha and Comunidad de
Madrid, roughly speaking.) In this dialect, as well as in Andalusian
(Southern part of the country), a sentence like
 (1) Le di a Juan un regalo ( to him I gave John a present)
 is acceptable, whereas
 (2) *Di a Juan un regalo ( I gave John a present)
is not, as an answer to a question like "Que le diste a Juan? (What
did you give John?) or "A quien le diste el regalo?"(Whom did you
give the present to?).
 However, it seems to me that a sentence like
 (3) Di un regalo a Juan (I gave a present to John)
is possible, when answering a question such as "Que hiciste?" (What
did you do?), in which no allusion is made to a possible IO. (Note
that the order of the elements is different, though: DO-IO).
 Let me add something to this answer to your message. When talking
about the OD, ("Vi a Juan" I saw John), you say that it is not possible
to add the clitic le (*Le vi a Juan- to him I saw John). The phenomenon
is correct, but the * in this example should be there for a different
reason: the clitic for OD is not "le", but "lo", and, if someone
uttered this sentence, (s)he would be incurring in a case of
"leismo", which is another problem I assume you know of. Therefore,
your example should read "* Lo vi a Juan".
 I will be happy to discuss this issue further with you, or any other
topics related to Spanish.

In reply to Hoskuldur Thrainsson's query about how one recognizes indirect
objects, I might refer interested colleagues to Michael Herslund's *Le datif
en francais* (Louvain: Peeters, 1988) (for a review, see Canadian journal of
linguistics 36:1, 1991).
Bert Peeters <peeterstasman.cc.utas.edu.au>