LINGUIST List 23.554 Thu Feb 02 2012 Diss: Text/Corpus Ling/Spanish: Aranovich: 'Optional Agreement and ...' Editor for this issue: Xiyan Wang <xiyanlinguistlist.org> To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     Roberto Aranovich , Optional Agreement and Grammatical Functions: A corpus study of dative clitic doubling in Spanish Message 1: Optional Agreement and Grammatical Functions: A corpus study of dative clitic doubling in Spanish Date: 02-Feb-2012 From: Roberto Aranovich <roberto.aranovichgmail.com> Subject: Optional Agreement and Grammatical Functions: A corpus study of dative clitic doubling in Spanish E-mail this message to a friend Institution: University of Pittsburgh Program: Department of Linguistics Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2011 Author: Roberto Aranovich Dissertation Title: Optional Agreement and Grammatical Functions: A corpus study of dative clitic doubling in Spanish Dissertation URL: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/6209/ Linguistic Field(s): Text/Corpus Linguistics Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa) Language Family(ies): Romance Dissertation Director(s): Alan Juffs Lori Levin Dissertation Abstract: Spanish ditransitive constructions are characterized by the optionality of dative clitic doubling (DCLD), the co- occurrence of an unstressed dative pronoun with a co-referential indirect object (IO). This fact has not received a satisfactory account in the literature, which has largely overlooked the optionality of the phenomenon or tried to reduce it to syntactic or lexical considerations (Strozer, 1976; Demonte, 1995). Our goal is to describe and explain the distribution of Dative Clitic Doubling in ditransitive sentences, as well as to study the implications of this phenomenon to the overall grammar of Spanish, in particular its interaction with word order. We argue that the optionality of DCLD is an instance of optional object agreement, a widespread phenomenon in the languages of the world (Comrie, 1989; Woolford, 1999), which is favored by the pragmatic salience of the IO (high degree of animacy and givenness). We also argue that the distribution of DCLD is independent of word order, a claim that follows from the fact that Spanish encodes grammatical functions through agreement rather than word order. We support our claims with the results of a quantitative study of ditransitive sentences. The study of Spanish ditransitive constructions is complemented by a quantitative study of another dative construction in Spanish, the possessive construction. The conclusion of this comparison is that dative case is favored by pragmatic prominence across different construction types. From a cross-linguistic perspective, the dissertation compares Spanish DCLD and English dative-shift, two constructions that have been considered analogous in the literature (Demonte, 1995). In this respect, our conclusion is that the two constructions are essentially different as a result of an important typological difference between Spanish and English: Spanish is a Direct/Indirect Object language and English is a Primary/Secondary Object language (Dryer, 1986; Raúl Aranovich, 2007). Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 02-Feb-2012       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.