According to the standard theory, overt nominative subjects and referentially null subjects of the *pro*-type are licensed by finite INFL/T. As such, they are excluded from non-finite clauses, and thus not expected to alternate with PRO in this position (Williams 1980, Chomsky 1981, Rizzi 1986, Lasnik & Uriagereka 1988, Miller 2002). This set of standard assumptions is stated in (1), adapted from Szabolcsi (2009). See also Rigau (1995), Mensching (2000), Barbosa (2019), Livitz (2011), Corbalán (2018), a.o. and references therein for extensive discussion.

Kryzzya Gómez, Maia Duguine & Hamida Demirdache. 2023. Overt vs. null subjects in infinitival constructions in Colombian Spanish. In Barbara E. Bullock, Cinzia Russi & Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.), *A half century of Romance linguistics: Selected proceedings of the 50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages*, 131–156. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7525104

	- (i) Overt (nominative) subjects.
	- (ii) Referentially free null subjects (*pro*).
	- (iii) Overt controlled subjects.1

However, as has been reported in the literature, the predictions of the standard theory in (1) are empirically falsified. In particular, overt subjects alternating with controlled null (PRO-type) subjects have been shown to be allowed in many languages. The pioneering work by Piera (1987) and Lipski (1994) for instance shows that complement and adjunct infinitives allow overt subjects in different varieties of Spanish (2)–(3):2

Even more strikingly, although it is theoretically impossible for an infinitival subject that exhibits all the diagnostics of Obligatory Control (OC) to be overt, overt obligatory-controlled pronominal subjects are attested cross-linguistically. Following Livitz (2011), we henceforth refer to the latter as "overt PRO" (see also Szabolcsi 2009).

The novel contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it extends the empirical domain of overt PRO discussed in the literature solely in the context of complement clauses to adjunct clauses. Second, it applies a battery of diagnostic tests to establish whether overt pronominals in infinitival subject positions instantiate (or not) OC (in line with Duguine 2013).

The focus of this paper is on non-finite adjunct clauses which allow overt preverbal subjects. We show that overt and null subjects in infinitival adjunct clauses

1We borrow this terminology from Szabolcsi (2009) and Livitz (2011) respectively.

2 For discussion of this pattern in Spanish, see also Rigau (1995), Torrego (1998), Mensching (2000), Zagona (2002), Perez Tattam (2007), Schulte (2007), Herbeck (2011), Corbalán (2018), González (2020). See also Szabolcsi (2009) on Hungarian, Italian, European Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Modern Hebrew, Sundaresan & McFadden (2009) on Tamil, Borer (1989) on Korean and Duguine (2013) on Basque.

in (Andean) Colombian Spanish (henceforth CS) exemplify three systematic patterns of exception to the standard generalizations in (1).3

The first pattern can be observed in infinitives introduced by the temporalcausal preposition *al*. It allows both overt DPs (pronouns or R-expressions) and null subjects of the PRO-type, which as we shall establish in §2.1, meet all the diagnostics of OC.4 This pattern is illustrated in (4). Overt subjects (also) allowed in *al*-infinitives violate the ban on overt subjects in (1(i)).

(4) Juan Juan sería be.cond feliz happy [al in.the José / José él/ / he.nom PRO/∗ dejar leave.inf la the casa]. house 'Juan would be happy on leaving the house.'

The second pattern is instantiated in infinitive adjunct clauses headed by the preposition *sin* 'without'. The latter allow for both overt subjects (pronouns or R-expressions) and *pro*-type subjects, as illustrated below.5

(5) María María dejó stopped de of trabajar work.inf [sin without Rosa / Rosa ella/ / she.nom pro/ decir say.inf nada]. nothing 'María stopped working without (Rosa/her) saying anything.'

The reference of the null infinitival subject in (5) is free and (5), as such, violates the ban on referentially free null subjects (1(ii)), in addition to the ban on overt subjects (1(i)). As discussed in §2.2, we follow Hornstein (1999) in assuming null subjects in Non-Obligatory Control (NOC) constructions to be *pro* rather than PRO. Importantly, however, we provide an argument from the distribution of sloppy readings for generalizing Duguine's (2013, 2014) DP-ellipsis analysis of *pro* to NOC contexts. The last pattern is that of infinitive complements selected by the preposition *para* 'for', illustrated below:

3CS infinitival adjuncts allow overt subjects in preverbal position, a pattern commonly found across Caribbean varieties of Spanish (Suñer 1986, Dauphinais Civitello & Ortiz López 2016, González 2020). In Contemporary European varieties, overt subjects are typically restricted to the postverbal position (RAE-ASALE 2009). In Old Spanish, however, they were accepted in preverbal position (Mensching 2000, Corbalán 2018), while in other colloquial varieties, there appears to be no preference for the pre/postverbal position (Mensching 2000, Gallego 2010, Herbeck 2011). Scholars moreover agree that the overt subject appearing in nonfinite contexts in Spanish bears nominative case regardless of its pre/postverbal position (Piera 1987, Schütze 1997, Mensching 2000).

4 See Rico (2016) on the temporal-causal properties of the complementizer *al*.

5Here we use PRO and *pro* as descriptive terms to conventionally refer to referentially dependent vs. free null subjects.

(6) Juan Juan se cl.3 fue left [para for \*María / María él/∗/ he.nom PRO/∗ estar be.inf feliz]. happy 'Juan left in order to be happy.'

Besides the expected PRO-like null subject, *para*-infinitives also allow overt subjects. But unlike in the two previous cases, the reference of the overt subject is not free – that is, only pronominal subjects anaphorically dependent on a local c-commanding antecedent are allowed to be overt. *Para*-infinitives thus violate the ban on overt controlled subjects (1(iii)), and as a consequence, the ban on overt subjects (1(i)), too. Following Livitz (2011), we call the overt controlled subject pronoun in (6) "overt PRO". Although overt PRO in complement clauses has drawn pointed attention in the literature (Piera 1987, Mensching 2000, Szabolcsi 2009, Livitz 2011, Livitz 2014), this is to our knowledge the first discussion of overt PRO in adjunct clauses (though see Duguine 2013 for a first approach in Basque).

The present paper explores the distribution and interpretation of subjects across these three patterns of infinitival adjunct clauses. We provide novel arguments showing that null and overt PRO do not pattern alike according to the standard tests for pronominal interpretation, namely, the ellipsis and association-withfocus tests. As is well-known, while the relation holding between a pronoun and its antecedent comes out as either Bound Variable Anaphora (BVA) or coreference under these tests, the relation between null PRO and its antecedent/controller comes out as BVA exclusively, as illustrated by the paradigm in (7) from Fodor (1975: 133–134).6 The contrast in the interpretation of (7a) with a PRO subject in the gerund and (7b) with a possessive pronominal subject instead is fleshed out in (8)–(9) adapted from Fodor (1975: 135). Note that gerundive complements are OC constructions (Hornstein 1999).

	- b. Only Churchill remembers [his giving the speech about blood, toil, tears, and sweat].
	- a. and no other ( x (x remembers x giving the speech)). *BVA*

6Here we present this contrast as it is observed in the association-with-focus test. §4 presents the same contrast in the VP-ellipsis test.

	- a. and no other ( x(x remembers x giving the speech)). *BVA*
	- b. and no other ( x(x remembers Churchill giving the speech))

*Coreference* (his=Churchill)7

Example (8a) can only be understood to mean that no individual other than Churchill remembers himself giving the speech. This is captured by assuming that the VP property attributed to Churchill (and asserted to hold of no other individual) is that of remembering *oneself* giving the speech, where PRO is interpreted at LF as a variable bound by its antecedent (via -abstraction), that is, as semantically bound (cf. Heim & Kratzer 1998, Büring 2005).

Now, (7b) with the possessive pronoun allows the very same BV reading as in (9a), but can also be construed as in (9b). Here, the VP property attributed to Churchill (and asserted to hold of no other individual) is that of remembering *Churchill* giving the speech. This construal arises because the overt pronoun can be understood as coreference with the NP Churchill rather than being semantically bound. That the reading in (9b) is unavailable with PRO is taken to show that the relation that holds between (OC) PRO and its antecedent can only be BVA, not coreference anaphora.

Importantly, however, as we shall see in §2.3, overt PRO, unlike null PRO, patterns like a standard pronoun on the association-with-focus test, in allowing for both coreferential and BV construals, but just like null PRO on the ellipsis test, in allowing solely BV construals. There is therefore an unexpected and seemingly paradoxical distribution of interpretations. We show that these facts follow straightforwardly from the Anaphor Generalizations that we state in (10):

	- (i) Both null and overt anaphors need to be syntactically bound.
	- (ii) Overt anaphors can be semantically bound, null anaphors *must* be semantically bound.

This paper is organized as follows. §2 establishes the properties of both overt and null subjects in light of the tests distinguishing OC from NOC across the three types of adjunct infinitival clauses introduced above. §3 provides an analysis of NOC, as instantiated by the *sin*-pattern. Taking as point of departure Hornstein's (1999) characterization of NOC null subjects as *pro*, we extend Duguine's (2013, 2014) DP-ellipsis analysis of *pro* to NOC contexts, providing a compelling argument from the distribution of sloppy readings of null subjects. §4 discusses

7The notation here indicates that 'his' and 'Churchill' have the same referent.

what we call the Overt vs. Covert PRO paradox and develops an account in terms of the Anaphor Generalization in (10). §5 concludes the paper.

#### **2 Diagnostics for (Non) Obligatory Control**

This section seeks to establish a more fine-grained description of the interpretive properties of the null subject across our three classes of adjunct clauses. A battery of tests has been put forth in the literature to diagnose whether control is obligatory or not (Williams 1980, Hornstein 1999, Landau 2000, 2013, Baltin et al. 2015). OC and NOC can be distinguished as follows. Obligatorily controlled PRO requires a local and c-commanding antecedent for the null subject and, moreover, only allows BV readings under the two tests for pronominal interpretation (ellipsis and association-with-focus). In contrast, the null subject of NOC constructions does not require an antecedent (and if there is one, it need not be local or c-commanding), and allows both BV and coreferential construals under the ellipsis and association-with-focus tests.

Crucially, we apply these tests not only to the null subject of our three nonfinite adjunct clauses but also to the overt pronominal subject appearing in *para*infinitives which, recall from (6), displays restrictions on its interpretation similar to that of (null) PRO. The picture that emerges is quite an intricate one, with three levels of variation: (i) adjuncts differ from one another with respect to whether they enforce OC or not (cf. also Landau 2013); (ii) while besides null PRO, certain OC adjuncts allow overt subjects (pronouns or R-expressions) (e.g. *al*-infinitives), others only allow overt PRO (e.g. *para*-infinitives); and (iii) overt and null PRO yield conflicting results with respect to the tests for pronominal interpretation (and as such with respect to the diagnostics for OC vs. NOC) (e.g. *para*-infinitives).

#### **2.1** *Al***-infinitives**

Example (4) above shows clearly that while the overt subject of an *al*-infinitive is referentially free, its null subject is referentially dependent. The diagnostic tests teasing apart OC vs. NOC, applied in (11) to (14), show that *al*-infinitives with silent subjects involve OC.8

8The judgments for sloppy/strict readings in Colombian Spanish reported in this paper are taken from an experimental protocol carried out with 36 native speakers and using a Truth Value Judgment task (Gómez In progress). This protocol showed that both *al*-infinitives, and *para*infinitives in §2.3, were systematically rejected on a strict reading, but accepted on a sloppy reading – in contrast to *sin*-infinitives (§2.2, Footnote 10).

7 Overt vs. null subjects in infinitival constructions in Colombian Spanish

	- a. ✓Sloppy reading *(BVA)* María will be happy when María leaves the house.
	- b. ✗Strict reading *(Coreference)* María will be happy when Juan leaves the house.
	- a. ✓*BVA*

No, Karla also fell when she herself was taking the train. Karla ( x(x also fell when x was taking the train))

b. ✗*Coreference*

No, Karla also fell when Léa was taking the train. Karla ( x(x also fell when she was taking the train)) (she=Léa)

Example (11) shows that the null infinitival subject needs to be c-commanded by its antecedent, and (12) shows that long-distance antecedents are not allowed. The ellipsis test in (13) shows that the null subject allows a sloppy (that is, BV) reading, but crucially not a strict (coreferential) reading. The association-withfocus test in (14) confirms that it only allows a BV construal.9 In sum, *al*-infinitives with null subjects display all the diagnostic properties of OC PRO.

9 Spanish doesn't admit VP-ellipsis, but allows ellipsis of larger structures (Dagnac 2010, Saab 2010).

#### **2.2** *Sin***-infinitives**

Whereas *sin* and *al*-infinitives pattern alike in allowing overt subjects (be it Rexpressions or pronouns (5)), *sin*-infinitives with null subjects differ radically from *al*-infinitives in allowing null subjects that need not be controlled, leading us to characterize the latter as *pro*. Applying the diagnostics for OC vs. NOC in (15) to (18) allows us to confirm this characterization.

'María stopped working without her saying anything and Rosa did too.'

	- a. ✓*BVA* No, Daniela also stopped working without her own signed authorization. Daniela (λx(x stopped working without x's signed authorization)).

b. ✓*Coreference*

No, Daniela also stopped working without María's signed authorization. (In a context where María was the only person that could sign the authorization). Daniela (λy(y stopped working without her authorization))

(her=María).

*Sin*-infinitives exhibit all the properties of NOC. (15) shows that their null subject need not be c-commanded by its antecedent, and (16) that it need not be locally bound since long-distance antecedents are permitted. The ellipsis and association-with-focus tests in (17) and (18) show that their null subject allows for both BV and coreferential readings. These findings confirm that these silent subjects are of the *pro*-type, not of the (OC) PRO type.10

#### **2.3** *Para***-infinitives**

Just as in *al*-infinitives, the null subject in *para*-infinitives is referentially dependent, which we took to suggest it should also be PRO (see (4)/(6)).11 Unlike in *al*-infinitives, however, and as indicated in example (6), the overt subject in these constructions is also referentially dependent, leading us to characterize it as overt PRO. We apply below the diagnostic tests for OC vs. NOC to both overt PRO and covert PRO:

	- a. ✓Sloppy reading *(BVA)* María left in order for María to be happy.

10The experiment (Gómez In progress) (see Footnote 8) showed that in contrast to both *para*infinitives and *al*-infinitives, strict readings in *sin*-infinitives, just like sloppy readings, were accepted systematically by speakers.

11See Footnote 8.

b. ✗Strict reading *(Coreference)* María left in order for Juan to be happy.

Overt and covert controlled subjects pattern exactly the same under these three tests. They need to be c-commanded by their antecedent (19), locally bound (20), and only allow BV readings under ellipsis (21). In sum, both types of subjects uniformly exhibit OC properties. These results confirm that the null subject is OC PRO, and that the overt subject is its overtly realized counterpart "Overt PRO" (Piera 1987, Mensching 2000, Livitz 2011, Livitz 2014). Crucially, however, the association-with-focus test in (22)/(23) yields dissonant results:

	- a. ✓*BVA* No, Daniela also cheated in order for herself to win. Daniela ( y (y also cheated in order for y to win)).
	- b. ✗*Coreference*

No, Daniela also cheated in order for María to win. Daniela ( y (y also cheated in order for her to win)) (her= María)

The statement in (22) with a null (by hypothesis, PRO) subject can only be denied in one way – that is, on its BVA construal, as expected. This result converges with those from the three previous tests in signaling OC. In contrast, the statement in (23) with an overt (by hypothesis, PRO) subject can be denied in either of two ways – that is, on either its BVA or coreferential construal.

	- a. ✓*BVA*

No, Daniela also cheated in order for herself to win. Daniela ( y (y also cheated in order for y to win))

b. ✓*Coreference*

No, Daniela also cheated in order for María to win. Daniela ( y (y also cheated in order for her to win)) (her= María)

The availability of both readings here for overt PRO is surprising, given that it is characteristic of NOC – and more generally of pronouns, see discussion of Fodor's examples (7)–(9) – and that the results of all the previous tests converge on an OC diagnostic.

#### **2.4 Interim summary**

The results obtained in this section are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: Null vs. overt subjects in CS infinitival adjuncts.

A complex picture emerges from these findings. First, nonfinite adjuncts divide up into three classes. The first class, instantiated by *al*-infinitives, displays OC properties with null subjects while allowing for overt subjects. The second class, instantiated by *sin*-infinitives, displays the properties of NOC, systematically allowing for referentially free subjects – be they silent or lexical. And the third class, instantiated by *para*-infinitives, exhibits the properties of OC fully with null PRO, but not overt PRO. Second, overt subjects do not display homogeneous behavior across OC adjuncts. In particular, while *al*-infinitives allow either overt pronouns or R-expressions in subject position (alongside null PRO), *para*-infinitives only allow overt PRO (alongside null PRO). Finally, regarding the results of the OC/NOC tests in *para*-infinitives, a surprising contrast has emerged. On the one hand, null PRO displays all the characteristic properties of OC since it must be locally c-commanded by its antecedent, and it only yields BV readings under the ellipsis and association-with-focus tests. On the other hand, overt PRO displays most, but not all the characteristics of OC. It must be locally c-commanded by its antecedent, and it only yields BV readings under the ellipsis test. Crucially, however, it yields both coreference and BV readings under the association-with-focus test, patterning this time like a non-obligatorily controlled subject. These unexpected findings are recapitulated in (24):

	- (i) Both null and overt PRO only allow BV interpretations under the ellipsis test.
	- (ii) Overt PRO, unlike null PRO, also allows coreferential interpretations under the association-with-focus test.

Why do null PRO and overt PRO pattern differently (yield conflicting results) with respect to the two standard tests for pronominal interpretation? In particular, why does overt PRO, unlike null PRO, also allow co-reference interpretations, and why so only under the association-with-focus test, but not under the ellipsis test?

We address this paradox in §4 below. First, however, we turn to the analysis of NOC as instantiated in *sin*-infinitives.

### **3 Non Obligatory Control in** *sin***-infinitives**

*Sin*-infinitives exhibit a uniform NOC pattern. Assuming with Hornstein (1999) that a NOC null subject is not PRO, but *pro*, we develop here an analysis that not only explains why overt DPs and *pro* subjects alternate in these constructions, but also correctly predicts that they yield sloppy readings otherwise unavailable with (overt) pronouns. We put forth an analysis of NOC in terms of DP-ellipsis, in line with ellipsis approaches to null arguments in *pro*-drop languages (cf. a.o. Oku 1998, Saito 2007, Duguine 2013, 2014, Takahashi 2014). *Sin*-infinitives are thus constructions in which DPs (R-expressions or pronouns) surface in subject position and, under the right conditions, can also undergo ellipsis.

#### **3.1 A DP-ellipsis analysis of NOC subjects**

This section shows that the *pro*-like null subjects of *sin*-infinitives can behave as complex R-expressions, displaying non-pronominal readings. Consequently, they are better analyzed as elided DPs than as null pronouns. The crucial piece of data is given below. Consider a conversation like (25) where the subject of the *sin*-infinitive in (25b) is null:

(25) a. María María dejó stopped de of trabajar work.inf [sin without [su poss jefa] boss decirle say.inf.3sg nada]. nothing 'María stopped working without her boss saying anything to her.'

b. Y and Ana Ana también also dejó stopped de of trabajar work.inf [sin without [Ø] decirle say.inf.3sg nada]. nothing 'And Ana also stopped working without saying anything to her.'

The sentence in (25b) is ambiguous. The null subject can refer either to María's boss or to Ana's boss and the sentence can thus be interpreted as in (26a) or (26b) respectively:

	- a. ✓Strict-like reading And Ana also stopped working without María's boss saying anything to her.
	- b. ✓Sloppy-like reading And Ana also stopped working without her own boss saying anything to her.

The strict reading in (26a) can be explained if the null subject in (25b) is a covert pronominal expression, corefering with the DP *su jefa* 'her boss' introduced in the previous discourse in (26). However, since Ana's boss has not been introduced in the prior discourse context, a pronominal expression can logically not give rise to the sloppy interpretation in (26b). This is confirmed by (27): substituting an overt pronoun for the silent subject in (25b) can give rise to the strict interpretation in (26a), but not to the sloppy one in (26b):

	- b. Y and Ana Ana también also dejó stopped de of trabajar work.inf [sin without ella she.nom decirle say.inf.3sg nada]. nothing

'And Ana also stopped working without her saying nothing to her.'

The sloppy reading for the sentence in (25b) can however be accounted for if we postulate that, rather than a pronoun, the null subject is the covert complex R-expression *su jefa* 'her boss'. This analysis would make it possible for the possessive pronoun *su* inside the (covert) R-expression to be bound by the higher

subject *Ana*, giving rise to the targeted sloppy reading in (26b). The ambiguity of (28), where the null subject has been overtly spelled out as the DP *su jefa*, and which allow both the sloppy reading in (26b) and the strict reading in (26a), corroborates our analysis:

	- b. Y and Ana Ana también also dejó stopped de of trabajar work.inf [sin without [su poss jefa] boss decirle say.inf.3sg nada]. nothing 'And Ana also stopped working without her boss saying nothing to her.'

That (28b) with an overt R-expression in subject position and (25b) with a silent subject yielding the same sloppy reading suggests that, rather than a null pronominal, the null subject of (25b) is a syntactically null complex R-expression embedding the pronoun *su*. Interestingly, these data parallel some data pointed out by Duguine (2013, 2014) in the realm of pro-drop in finite clauses in Spanish. Duguine shows that (29b), with a null subject in a finite context, allows the two interpretations in (30):

(29) a. María María cree believes [que that [su poss jefa] boss le cl.3sg.dat exigirá require.fut.3sg mucho much trabajo]. work (adapted from Duguine 2014:520)

'María believes that her boss will require a lot of work from her.'

b. Y and Ana Ana espera hopes [que that [Ø] le cl.3sg.dat dejará leave.fut.3sg los the fines ends de of semana week libre]. free

'And Ana hopes [Ø] will leave her the weekends free.'

#### (30) a. ✓Strict reading And Ana hopes that María's boss will leave her the weekends free.

b. ✓Sloppy reading And Ana hopes that her (own) boss will leave her the weekends free.

#### 7 Overt vs. null subjects in infinitival constructions in Colombian Spanish

As already mentioned with regards to (25), postulating that the silent embedded subject is a pronominal incorrectly predicts that (29) should be unambiguous, allowing only the strict reading in (30a), exactly as is the case for (31) where an overt pronoun has been substituted for the silent subject.

	- a. ✓Strict reading
	- b. ✗Sloppy reading

The lack of ambiguity in (31) has the same logical explanation as above: There is no prior discourse antecedent with which the pronoun could corefer that would allow the sloppy interpretation in (30b). In contrast, substituting the full R-expression *su jefa* for the silent subject does give rise to the intended sloppy reading, as illustrated in (32):

(32) Y and Ana Ana espera hopes [que that [su poss jefa] boss le cl.3sg.dat dejará leave.fut.3sg los the fines ends de of semana week libre]. free

'And Ana hopes her (own) boss will leave her the weekends free.'

As already pointed out with respect to (25b), the ambiguity of (29b), on a par with that of (32), suggests that null arguments can be null complex R-expressions. Based on this observation, Duguine (2013, 2014) proposes that null (finite) subjects in Spanish (and other languages such as Basque) are elided DPs. Under this view, the interpretations in (30a) and (30b) come out as strict and sloppy readings (respectively), arising under ellipsis. Duguine's analysis builds on previous literature on null arguments in East-Asian languages such as Korean or Japanese. As is indeed well-known, null arguments in these languages allow non-pronominal interpretations (cf. Oku 1998, Kim 1999, Saito 2007, Takahashi 2014). This is illustrated in Japanese (33), where the null object in the second conjunct can yield not only a pronominal/strict, but also an anaphoric/sloppy reading:

	- a. ✓Strict reading Ken defended Taroo.
	- b. ✓Sloppy reading Ken defended himself.

The sloppy reading in (33b) indicates that the null object has the properties of a locally bound anaphor. Sloppy readings represent a major challenge for analyses of null arguments assuming *pro* as a primitive – e.g. Chomsky (1982), Rizzi (1986) – since in the configuration in (33b), the null pronominal would be locally bound, violating Binding Condition A (see (34a)). This problem disappears, however, with an analysis in terms of ellipsis – here ellipsis of an anaphor, as indicated in (34b) (cf. Oku 1998, Kim 1999, Saito 2007, Takahashi 2014):

	- b. ✓Strict reading *Ken -wa* Ken-top zibun-o self-acc *kabatta*. defended

In sum, the availability of sloppy readings for the null subjects of *sin*-infinitives provides a compelling argument for a DP-ellipsis analysis of NOC.

#### **3.2 Parallelism conditions on DP-ellipsis**

Building on Fox's (2000) Conditions on NP-Parallelism, Duguine (2013, 2014) develops an analysis of argument ellipsis which accounts for the varieties of readings null arguments give rise to. Under this account, an elided DP must satisfy either of the conditions in (35):

	- a. have the same referential value (Referential Parallelism), or
	- b. be linked by identical dependencies (Structural Parallelism).

#### 7 Overt vs. null subjects in infinitival constructions in Colombian Spanish

The Conditions on DP-Parallelism will provide a formal account of the strict and sloppy readings that NOC null subjects display. The relevant piece of data in (25) and its possible interpretations in (26) are repeated in (36)–(37):

	- b. Y and Ana Ana también also dejó stopped de of trabajar work.inf [sin without [Ø] decirle say.inf.3sg nada]. nothing

'And Ana also stopped working without saying nothing to her.'

	- b. ✓Sloppy-like reading And Ana also stopped working without her own boss saying nothing to her.

Now, to derive the strict reading in (37a), the condition on Referential Parallelism must be satisfied. The latter requires the null subject in (36b) to share the same referential value as its discourse antecedent, *su jefa* in (36a). We can achieve this by postulating the representation in (38b) where the pronoun *ella* 'her', corefering with its discourse antecedent *su jefe*, undergoes ellipsis:

	- b. Y Ana también dejó de trabajar [sin ella decirle nada].

On the other hand, to derive the sloppy reading in (37b), the condition on Structural Parallelism must be satisfied. The latter requires identical binding dependencies across both (36a) and (36b). We can achieve this by postulating the derivation in (39b): the complex DP *su jeja* occupying the embedded subject position and containing a pronoun bound by the matrix subject undergoes ellipsis, yielding the surface structure in (36b) under the reading in (37b).

	- b. Y Ana también dejó de trabajar [sin [su jefa] decirle nada].

(39a) an (39b) display identical anaphoric dependencies between the matrix subject, the possessive pronoun and the (dative) clitic, thus satisfying the condition on Structural Parallelism and licensing ellipsis in (39b).

#### **3.3 Interim conclusion**

The DP-ellipsis analysis of non-obligatorily controlled null subjects in *sin*-infinitives elegantly predicts that they allow sloppy readings otherwise unavailable with overt pronouns. It also automatically explains why overt subjects in *sin*infinitives freely alternate with referentially free null subjects. That is to say, ellipsis presumes this alternation to be possible in the first place: DP-ellipsis targets overt DPs and, as such, can only occur where overt DPs can surface, in the same way that VP-ellipsis can only occur where overt VPs can surface.

### **4 Obligatory Control: the overt vs. covert PRO puzzle** *(para***-infinitives)**

§2.3 showed that null vs. overt PRO in *para*-infinitives converge in all but one of their properties: While under both the ellipsis and focus particle tests the former only allows BV interpretations, the latter also allows coreferential readings but under the association-with-focus test only. This is summarized in Table 2.

Table 2: Null vs. overt PRO in para-infinitives.

We now tackle the questions raised in §2.4, regarding how to reconcile our contradictory findings and solve the paradox that these unexpected results give rise to, repeated in (40) (see also (24)):

	- (i) Both null and overt PRO only allow BV interpretations under the ellipsis test.
	- (ii) Overt PRO, unlike null PRO, also allows coreferential interpretations under the association-with-focus test.

Why do null PRO and overt PRO pattern differently (yield conflicting results) with respect to the two standard tests for pronominal interpretation? In particular, why does overt PRO, unlike null PRO, also allow coreference interpretations, 7 Overt vs. null subjects in infinitival constructions in Colombian Spanish

and why so only under the association-with-focus test, but not under the ellipsis test?

First of all, it should be pointed out that the conflicting patterns of interpretation that arise with overt PRO also arise with overt anaphors such as *himself* in English or *se* in French. Indeed, both have also been reported to allow coreferential readings alongside BVA under the association-with-focus test. This state of affairs is illustrated in (41) through (44), taken from Sportiche (2014) (based on a remark due to M. Prinzhorn about German).12

	- b. Seul only Pierre Pierre se cl.3 rase. shave 'Only Pierre shaves himself.'

That both statements are ambiguous between a BV and a coreferential reading is shown by the fact they can be denied in two different ways:

(42) a. No, I shave myself too. b. Non, no moi I aussi also je I me cl.1sgacc rase. shave 'No, I shave myself too.' →VP property: x(x shave x) *BVA* (43) a. No, I shave him too. b. Non, no moi I aussi also je I le cl.3sgacc rase. shave

→VP property: x(x shave y) with y = Pierre *Coreference*

Furthermore, Sportiche (2014) points out that VP-ellipsis does not give the same result as association with *only* since it does not allow a coreferential interpretation for anaphors. For instance, the second conjunct in (44a) or (44b) below cannot be interpreted as meaning "Pierre shaved Jean":

(44) a. Jean s'est rasé et Pierre aussi. Jean cl.3.is shaved and Pierre also 'Jean shave himself and Pierre did too.'

'No, I shave him too.'

b. Jean shaved himself and Pierre did, too.

12For discussion of these issues, see Büring (2005) and references therein, as well as Footnote 13.

The contrast above suggests that the conflicting patterns of interpretation that overt PRO yields is not a surprising state of affairs, but rather appears to reflect a more general property of overt anaphors, be it self-anaphors or overt PRO. We thus put forth the following generalizations to account for the Overt vs. Covert PRO paradox in (45):13

	- (i) Both null and overt anaphors need to be syntactically bound.
	- (ii) Overt anaphors can be semantically bound, null anaphors *must* be semantically bound.

Example (45) requires null anaphoric expressions such as PRO to be both syntactically bound (that is, coindexed with a c-commanding DP) and semantically bound (that is, interpreted at LF as a variable bound by a predicate abstractor/ operator), while only enforcing syntactic binding for overt anaphors, which include self-anaphors like *se* and *himself*, as well as overt PRO. Consider first the ellipsis context in (21), repeated here as (46):

	- a. ✓Sloppy reading *(BVA)* María left in order for María to be happy.

(ii) John defended himself better than Peter. (strict or sloppy)

As Hestvik points out, the crucial factor at play in subordinated ellipsis –but lacking in coordinated ellipsis– is that the matrix antecedent of the reflexive on the strict reading c-commands the ellipsis site and, as such, can bind the anaphor in the elided VP.

This contrast is in keeping with the generalization in (45(i)) since the anaphor in the ellipsis site can satisfy the syntactic binding requirement in (ii) but not in (i).

13Büring (2005: 141) discusses the wrong prediction made for reflexives in association-with-focus constructions (namely, that they should only allow BV construals, contrary to fact), concluding with a suggestion similar in spirit to ours: "As far as I know, this wrong prediction has not been addressed in the pertinent literature. The only immediate way to capture this behavior would seem to be to reformulate Binding Condition A so as to require that reflexives be *either* semantically or syntactically bound within their local domain, accepting the fact that Binding Conditions A and B are simply not on a par". This suggestion, however, does not carry over straightforwardly to ellipsis contexts where, as discussed by Büring, the pattern is more complex. Roughly, strict readings are generally impossible in coordinated ellipsis (i), but possible in subordinated ellipsis (ii), a generalization advocated by Hestvik (1992):

b. ✗Strict reading *(Coreference)* María left in order for Juan to be happy.

Both overt and null PRO only allow the BV construal in (46a). This is accounted for by the syntactic binding requirement in (45(i)) which anaphors, whether they are overt or not, are required to satisfy. The sloppy/BV reading is available because the representation in (47a) satisfies (45(i)) since in each conjunct, the matrix subject locally binds (c-commands) the embedded overt/null PRO.

	- b. ✗Juan se fue [para él /[Ø] estar feliz] y María también <se fue [para él /[Ø] estar feliz]>.

In contrast, the strict/coreference reading in (46b) is unavailable because the representation in (47b) fails to satisfy (45(i)) since the overt/null PRO embedded in the second conjunct is not bound (c-commanded) by the matrix antecedent in the first conjunct.

We turn next to the association-with-focus paradigm in (22)–(23), repeated below. This time, (45(i)) does not filter out the coreferential reading in (48) since both overt and null PRO can be bound by the matrix antecedent, thus satisfying (45(i)):

(48) Sólo only María María hizo made trampa trap [para for ella /[Ø] she ganar win.inf el the primer first lugar]. place 'Only María cheated in order for herself to win the first place'.

(45(ii)), however, is at play here, explaining why null and overt PRO cannot be interpreted alike in this context:

	- a. ✓*BVA*

No, Daniela also cheated in order for herself to win. Daniela (λy (y also cheated in order for y to win)).

b. ✗*Coreference*

No, Daniela also cheated in order for María to win. Daniela (λy (y also cheated in order for her to win)) (her= María)

	- a. ✓*BVA* No, Daniela also cheated in order for herself to win. Daniela (λy (y also cheated in order for y to win)).
	- b. ✓*Coreference*

No, Daniela also cheated in order for María to win. Daniela (λy (y also cheated in order for her to win)) (her= María)

Example (50) with an overt PRO subject in the *para*-clause can be denied either on its BV construal in (50a) or on its coreferential construal in (50b). In contrast, (49) with a null PRO instead can only be denied on its BV construal in (49a) but not on its coreferential construal in (49b). This contrast establishes that the coreferential reading is available for overt PRO but not for null PRO. It follows, moreover, automatically under (45(ii)): null PRO, unlike its overt counterpart, must be semantically bound, and thus obligatorily interpreted as a BV. In contrast, overt PRO can but need not be semantically bound and, as such, is free to corefer with its DP antecedent *María*.

### **5 Conclusion**

We started off by exemplifying how adjunct clauses in CS instantiate three different but systematic patterns of exception to the generalizations commonly assumed to hold of infinitival subjects (as stated in (1)):

We explored a novel DP-ellipsis analysis of NOC (*sin*-infinitives), providing compelling arguments in favor of ellipsis over the alternative silent pronoun (*pro*) analysis (advocated by Hornstein 1999 for NOC). In particular, DP-ellipsis elegantly predicts that non-obligatorily controlled subjects allow sloppy readings otherwise unavailable with overt pronouns and automatically explains why overt subjects in *sin*-infinitives freely alternate with referentially free null subjects.

The null subjects of *para*-infinitives display all the signature properties of OC PRO. Interestingly, overt pronouns in the same position, while also displaying diagnostic properties of OC, yield dissonant results with respect to the tests for pronominal interpretation. Under the association-with-focus test (but not the ellipsis test), a NOC-like pattern emerges, with overt PRO (but not null PRO) allowing coreferential readings, alongside BV readings. We suggested that this state of affairs appears to reflect a more general property of overt anaphors, be it overt PRO or self-anaphors. We argued that the conflicting patterns of interpretation that covert vs. overt PRO yield in *para*-infinitives follow from the *Anaphor Generalizations* in (45), which require null anaphors to be syntactically and semantically bound while enforcing only syntactic binding for overt anaphors.

### **Acknowledgements**

We would like to thank María Arche, the audiences at LSRL50, WOSSP16, BLINC3, Spadlsyn, and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. This work was partially funded by the following projects: AThEME (Advancing the European Multilingual Experience) funded by the European Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration grant agreement no. 613465, Région des Pays de la Loire; UV2 ANR18-FRAL0006 (ANR-DFG); PGC2018-096870-B-I00 (MICINN & EAI); IT769-13 (Eusko Jaurlaritza); BIM ANR17-CE27-0011 (ANR).

### **References**

Büring, Daniel. 2005. *Binding theory*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1981. *Lectures on Government and Binding*. Dordrecht: Foris.

7 Overt vs. null subjects in infinitival constructions in Colombian Spanish

Livitz, Inna. 2011. Incorporating PRO: A defective goal analysis. *NYU Working Papers in Linguistics* 3. 95–119.

Torrego, Esther. 1998. Nominative subjects and pro-drop INFL. *Syntax* 1. 206–219. Williams, Edwin. 1980. Predication. *Linguistic Inquiry* 11. 203–238.

Zagona, Karen. 2002. *The syntax of Spanish*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

## **Chapter 8**

## **Oblique DOM and co-occurrence restrictions: How many types?**

Monica Alexandrina Irimiaa

aUniversity of Modena and Reggio Emilia

This paper examines co-occurrence restrictions involving oblique dom in (standard and leísta) Spanish and Romanian. Even a limited set of data reveals at least six puzzles, some of which are novel, ranging from differences in the syntactic behavior of oblique dom on clitics as opposed to full DPs to unsystematicity of repair strategies. It is shown that the *narrow local* domain where the relevant ([person]) features are licensed plays a role in these patterns, beyond the split Agree/Case.

#### **1 Oblique DOM and co-occurrence restrictions**

A defining trait of several Romance languages is the presence of object splits, under the broader phenomenon known as *differential object marking* (dom). The particular dom subtype we are concerned with here uses oblique morphology (henceforth *oblique* dom).1 For example, in (standard) Spanish (1) or Romanian (3) a human D(irect) O(bject) DP needs to be introduced by a preposition, as opposed to the inanimate DOs in (2) or (4). The split extends to DO clitics too, as documented for leísta Spanish, with the contrast in (5) vs. (6) from Ormazabal & Romero (2007; ex. 15a, b, adapted).

(1) Vi see.pst.1sg **\*(a)** dat=dom la the niña. girl

1 See Bossong (1991, 1998), Torrego (1998), Cornilescu (2000), Aissen (2003), Rodríguez-Mondoñedo (2007), Tigău (2011), López (2012), Ormazabal & Romero (2013a), Manzini & Franco (2016), Hill & Mardale (2021), a.o. We assume an accusative syntax for oblique dom.

'I saw the girl.'

(2) Vi see.pst.1sg **(\*a)** dat=dom el the libro. book (Spanish) 'I saw the book.' (3) Nu neg văd see.1sg **\*(pe)** loc=dom nimeni. nobody 'I can't see anybody.' (4) Nu neg văd see.1sg **(\*pe)** loc=dom copaci. trees (Romanian) 'I can't see trees.' (5) Lo cl.3m.sg.acc vi. see.pst.1sg 'I saw it/him.' (6) **Le** cl.3m.sg.dat=dom vi. see.pst.1sg (Leísta Spanish) 'I saw him.'

A salient, although less discussed, property of oblique dom are the co-occurrence restrictions it gives rise to. For example, Ormazabal & Romero (2007)2 have shown that Clobl=dom 3 bans the presence of an I(ndirect) O(bject) dative clitic, as in (7b).

(7) Leísta Spanish (Ormazabal & Romero 2007; ex. 16a, b, glosses adapted)

2 See also Bleam (2000), Zdrojewki (2008), Ormazabal & Romero (2013a, 2013b, 2013c) among others.

3 In order to individuate oblique dom on clitics (as in (6)) from oblique dom on full nominals (as in (1) or (3)), we encode the former as Clobl=dom and the latter as DPobl=dom. We also collapse the locative and the dative under the broader category 'oblique'.

Co-occurrence restrictions provide important insights into the nature of dom. However, even in the initial, pioneering observations, it became immediately clear that they are not uniform. This paper touches on precisely this issue. The contribution is two-fold; on the empirical side, it is interested in the landscape of these phenomena, using (standard and leísta) Spanish and standard Romanian.4 Even a limited set of data reveals at least six puzzles, some of which are novel. Besides the differences between (leísta) Spanish Clobl=dom and DPobl=dom (Ormazabal & Romero 2007, §2 and §3), we touch on other problems such as: i) differences in the behavior of possessor vs. goal dative clitics with Romanian dom (§3); ii) splits between DPobl=dom and dom negative quantifiers (§4); iii) lack of systematicity of accusative clitic doubling as a repair strategy on Romanian dom (§4). On the theoretical side, §3 and §4 also show that the split Agree/Case is not sufficient to derive the data. §5 explores the proposal that the *narrow local* domain where the relevant ([person]) features need to be licensed plays a role in these types of co-occurrence restrictions. §6 contains the conclusions.

#### **2 Oblique DOM and the PCC**

In a pioneering analysis of co-occurrence restrictions triggered by oblique dom, Ormazabal & Romero (2007) reduced the ungrammaticality of examples such as (7b) to principles behind the better known P(erson) C(ase) C(onstraint) or *Me-Lui* phenomena. Across Romance, the latter have been extensively discussed for clitic clusters, following seminal work by Perlmutter (1971) and Bonet (1991).5

The standard Spanish examples below illustrate the so-called *strong* PCC. The ungrammaticality of (9a) is triggered by the DO (direct object) clitic that has a person feature (1st) which is hierarchically higher than the person feature of the IO clitic (3rd), as schematically summarized in (8). The ungrammaticality is avoided in (9b), as this time the DO is 3rd person, while the IO is 1st person.

	- a. \* Pedro Pedro **le/se** cl.3sg.dat **me** cl.1sg.acc envía. send.3sg.subj Intended: 'Pedro sends me to him.'

4The data come from native speaker judgments, and from 20 native speaker consultants each for Spanish and Romanian, and 3 for leísta Spanish.

5 See also Albizu (1997), Anagnostopoulou (2003), Béjar & Rezac (2003), among others.

b. Pedro Pedro **me** cl.1sg.dat **lo** cl.3sg.acc envía. send.3sg.subj 'Pedro sends him/it to me.'

Although initial accounts investigated a morphological explanation for the (strong) PCC, subsequent research (Albizu 1997, Anagnostopoulou 2003, Béjar & Rezac 2003, Preminger 2019, among others.) underpinned its clear *syntactic* source. A general idea in syntactic accounts has been that the PCC involves more than one category which requires *licensing* in the syntax, in a local configuration containing just one relevant licenser. To briefly cite two analyses, for Anagnostopoulou (2003) 1st and 2nd persons contain a [person] feature, which requires licensing just like the [person] feature introduced by all (inflectional) datives. Béjar & Rezac (2003) similarly assume an obligatory person licensing condition affecting speaker and hearer-related categories.

Ormazabal & Romero (2007, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c) follow the premises of intervention based syntactic accounts for PCC to explain co-occurrence restrictions induced by Clobl=dom as in (7b). The reasoning goes as follows: Differential morphology on the DO clitic in (7b) signals grammaticalized animacy, which requires *obligatory licensing* via object agreement. A constraint is active which prohibits the verb from entering into other agreement operations, besides object agreement. This is formalized as the O(bject) A(greement) C(onstraint) in (10):

(10) OAC (Ormazabal & Romero 2007:50): If the verbal complex encodes object agreement, no other argument can be licensed through verbal agreement.

In fact, for Ormazabal & Romero (2007, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c), the OAC is the unifying factor behind all types of PCC. In oblique dom, grammaticalized animacy requires obligatory licensing but is relevant on all persons (including 3rd person), and thus will block *any* type of inflectional dative (clitic), which equally requires licensing. Moreover, the hypothesis that grammaticalized animacy, signalled by oblique dom, requires special syntactic licensing appears to find support elsewhere. For example, in Romanian a DPobl=dom results in ungrammaticality (for all the consultants in this study) in a context which also contains a Cldat interpreted as a possessor, irrespective of the person specification of the latter, as in (11a). Grammaticality is restored if oblique dom is removed (11b).

(11) Romanian: \*Cldat=poss DPobl=dom (dom blocked under possessor Cldat)

#### **3 Some problems**

However, several problems immediately became apparent. If grammaticalized animacy, which requires obligatory licensing, is what triggers oblique dom, one reasonable assumption is that DPobl=dom in (1) (from standard or leísta Spanish) should also trigger PCC effects. But this expectation is *not* (fully) borne out.

In (12a) we see that DPobl=dom is well formed with Cldat (irrespectively of the latter's person feature). This contrasts with examples like (7b), repeated in (12b).

(12) Spanish: Oblique dom PCC on full nominals vs. clitics

a. !* * Te/me
     2/1cl.dat
                 le
                cl.3m.sg.dat=dom
                                     di.
                                     give.pst.1sg
                                                                       (Leísta)
     7
```
Intended: 'I gave him to you/me.'

DPobl=dom is also possible with an IO DP introduced by the (dative/locative) preposition *a*, 8 as in (13a) from Ormazabal & Romero (2013a). Crucially, in both leísta and standard Spanish, DPobl=dom becomes *ungrammatical* with an IO DP which is also *doubled* by a dative clitic. Thus, the example in (13b) is grammatical (to the speakers tested here) only if the differential marker is removed.

(13) a. ! Enviaron send.pst.3pl **a** dat=dom todos all los the enfermos sick people.m.pl *a* dat *la* the *doctora* doctor 'They have sent all the sick people to the doctor.'

6Clacc (*-l)* doubling the DPobl=dom in (11a) triggers alternation in the shape of Cldat=poss in (11). 7 In standard Spanish (and Romanian) 3rd person DO clitics only allow accusative morphology; thus, they do not grammaticalize animacy. Leísta varieties allow both DPobl=dom and Clobl=dom. 8Thus, indicating that the effect is not due to haplology (the need to avoid two *a-* sequences).

b.

Complex problems are the norm in Romanian, too. In (11a) DPobl=dom is ungrammatical with a Cldat=poss. But there are (at least) two twists in the data. On the one hand, other types of dative clitics are tolerated by DPobl=dom. The sentence in (14) contains a *goal* dative clitic and a DPobl=dom and is *grammatical*, irrespectively of the person of the former:

(14) Romanian – !oblique DOM with goal dative clitic !*Mi/ţi/i* cl.1/2/3sg.dat (l)-au cl.3msg.acc-have prezentat introduced **pe** loc=dom student. student 'They have introduced the student to me/yousg/him.'9 (cf. 11a)

On the other hand, there are also configurations where a Cldat-doubled IOdat *outputs ungrammaticality* with DPobl=dom, even if the former is interpreted as a goal. In (15) we present a relevant example from Cornilescu (2020). In a sense, such sentences mirror the Spanish one in (13b), with *a difference*: In Romanian, "PCC effects" arise when DPobl=dom *binds into* the Cldat doubled IO (cf. 14/fn.9).

(15) Romanian (Cornilescu 2020, ex. 4; glosses adapted) Comisia board.def.f.sg (\**le*)-a cl.3pl.dat-has repartizat assigned **pe** loc=dom mai more mulţii many.m medici medical rezidenţi residents *unor* some.dat.pl foşti former.m profesori professors de-ai of lori . theirs Intended: 'The board assigned several medical residents to some former professors of theirs.'

Besides the removal of dom (a repair strategy equally available in standard and/or leísta Spanish), Romanian provides a second repair strategy for examples such as (15), namely accusative clitic doubling of DPdom. 10 This is seen in the *grammatical* sentence (16a), which contains a Cldat-doubled IO, and a DPobl=dom which is *clitic doubled* using the accusative form of the clitic (cf. 15). A puzzle, however, is that Clacc-doubling of DPobl=dom is *not* a repair strategy in contexts

9 In these contexts a DPdat is also possible: *Ii (l)-au prezentat pe student profesoruluii[professor.dat]).*

10Not all varieties of Spanish allow clitic doubling of DPobl=dom. See further remarks in §5.

that contain a dative clitic interpreted as a possessor, no matter whether a possesor dative DP is also present or not. Example (11a) is adapted here as (16b).

	- a. ! Cldat DPdati … Clacc DPobl=domi (Cornilescu 2020, ex. 6; adapted) Comisia board.def.f.sg *i* cl.3sg.dat *l*-a cl.3sg.m.acc-has repartizat assigned **pe** loc=dom fiecarei each rezident resident *unei* some.dat.sg.f foste former.f.dat profesoare professor.f.dat a lk luii . his 'The board assigned each resident to a former professor of his.'
	- b. \* Cldat=poss (DPdat) … Clacc DPobl=dom *\* I*-*l* cl.3sg.dat-cl.3m.sg.acc ajută help.3sg **pe** loc=dom prieten friend (lui dat.3sg.m Ion). Ion Intended: 'He helps his/Ion's friend.'

In general, as we can see from these limited sets of data, the co-occurrence restrictions on oblique dom are extremely complex and still uncharted. A modest goal here is, first of all, empirical - trying to map which domains are relevant, and where the cross-linguistic similarities and differences are to be found. Let us first summarize the five (related) puzzles we have identified (see also Table 1):

	- Puzzle1 : Assuming that DPobl=dom grammaticalizes animacy, it should trigger a PCC effect with dative clitics, similarly to Clobl=dom. Why is this prediction not borne out? What is the reason for this contrast, which we repeat in (18)?
	- Puzzle2 : Why does Spanish DPobl=dom produce a PCC effect with an IO which is doubled by a dative clitic, as represented in (19)?
	- Puzzle3 : Why does the restriction under Puzzle2 obtain in Romanian (only) when DPobl=dom binds into a Cldat-doubled IOio, as summarized in (20)?

$$\begin{array}{c} \text{(20)} \quad \text{Puzzle}\_3 \text{:} \, ^\star \text{Cl}\_{\text{DATA}} \, \text{DP}\_{\text{DATA}} \dots \, \text{DP}\_{\text{OBL=DOM\_i}} \text{ (Romanian 15)} \,\text{vs.}\\ \qquad \Big\prime \text{Cl}\_{\text{DAT}} \, \text{DP}\_{\text{DATA}} \dots \, \text{DP}\_{\text{OBL=DOM}} \text{ (Romanian 14)} \end{array}$$

• Puzzle4 : Why is Cldat=poss distinct from other dative clitics in that it triggers PCC effects in interaction with DPobl=dom in Romanian?

$$\begin{array}{c} \text{(21)} \quad \text{Puzzle}\_4 \text{:} \, ^\ast \text{Cl}\_{\text{DATA}=\text{POSS}} \dots \, \text{DP}\_{\text{OBL=\text{DOM}}} \text{ (Romanian 11a, 16b) vs.}\\ \bigvee \text{Cl}\_{\text{DATA}=\text{GOAL}} \dots \, \text{DP}\_{\text{OBL=\text{DOM}}} \text{ (Romanian 14)} \end{array}$$

#### **4 Agree vs. Case**

Previous work has mostly been concerned with Puzzle1 , namely the contrast between Clobl=dom which gives rise to PCC effects with Cldat in 7b (12b), and DPobl=dom, which does not (12a, 14). As mentioned in §2 and §3, Ormazabal & Romero (2007, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, et subseq.) attribute the ungrammaticality of examples like 7b (12b) to the OAC in (10). Grammaticalized animacy spelled out by Clobl=dom in 7b (12b) requires obligatory object agreement on the verb, blocking the licensing of any other argument through verbal agreement. Thus, Cldat, which equally needs licensing, remains unlicensed causing ungrammaticality.

But, then, what is the status of grammaticalized animacy on full nominal dom (DPobl=dom), which is equally signaled via oblique morphology? Ormazabal & Romero (2007: 338) provide the following explanation for this contrast: "whatever rule or principle is involved in A-insertion (*in DPobl=dom, our note*) it has to be independent of object agreement." In later works, Ormazabal & Romero (2013a) associate Clobl=dom in (12b) with licensing in terms of Agree, while DPobl=dom (i.e., prepositional *a-*DOM, as in 1 or 12a) involves licensing in terms of Case.

The Agree/Case divide can also, potentially, explain why examples such as (13a) are *grammatical*. The intuition is that the IO DP introduced by the preposition *a* ('a la doctora') does not have a Case feature (it is a lexical dative, instead). Thus, it cannot compete for Case licensing with the Case feature in oblique dom on full nominals. In (13b), instead, the IO DPdat is doubled by a dative clitic. The latter contains a Case feature, which competes for licensing with the Case feature in DPobl=dom, introduced by the *a*-preposition. This is puzzle2 .

#### 8 Oblique DOM and co-occurrence restrictions: How many types?

In §2 and §3 we have also seen the data are truly complex and refined. The question is whether we can extend the split Agree/Case to all the patterns examined here. One problem is Puzzle4 from Romanian, which sets aside the dative possessor clitic from other types of dative clitics, as repeated in (23).

$$\begin{array}{c} \text{(23)} \quad \text{Puzzle}\_4 \text{:} \, ^\ast \text{Cl}\_{\text{DATA}=\text{POSS}} \dots \, \text{DP}\_{\text{OBL=DOM}} \text{ (Romanian 11a, 16b) vs.}\\ \bigvee \text{Cl}\_{\text{DATA}=\text{GOAL}} \dots \, \text{DP}\_{\text{OBL=DOM}} \text{ (Romanian 14)} \end{array}$$

Here, the explanation would have to be that Cldat=poss needs licensing in terms of Agree, while other dative clitics either stay unlicensed or require licensing in terms of Case (or the other way around). The non-trivial question is what independent evidence would motivate this assumption. Similarly problematic is the contrast between (14) and (15). In what sense is this a matter of Case vs. Agree?

There is yet another complex issue regarding the licensing of DPobl=dom in terms of Case. A less discussed fact is that not all types of DPobl=dom trigger co-occurrence restrictions. For example, dom-ed *Neg(ative) Q(uantifier)s* (more easily) escape them. This is clearly seen in the contrast in (24) from Spanish. In Romanian, the data are even more subtle. If NegQobl=dom might be problematic to some speakers with *assign/distribute*-type predicates (Class A), irrespectively of binding, as in (25b), *introduce*-type predicates (Class B) seem to be fine in (25c), as expected. But then, if oblique dom and clitic doubled datives compete for Case, leading to PCC in (24a) and (25a), why is the PCC avoided in (24b)?

	- b. No neg *le* cl.3sg.dat enviaron send.pst.3pl **a** dat=dom nadie nobody *a* dat *la* the *doctora*. doctor 'They haven't sent anybody to the doctor.' (Spanish)

11As Cornilescu (2020) also notices, the problem is not the putative absence of clitic doubling on DPdom. DPdom is grammatical without clitic doubling for all the speakers consulted here.

b. ? Comisia board.def nu neg *i*-a cl.3sg.dat-has repartizat assigned **pe** loc=dom nimeni nobody *profesorului*. professor.def.dat 'The board hasn't assigned anybody to the professor.'12 c. Comisia board.def nu neg *i*-a cl.3sg.dat-has prezentat introduced **pe** loc=dom nimeni nobody *profesorului*. professor.def.dat 'The board hasn't introduced anybody to the professor.' (Romanian)

Assuming that differential marking on NegQs is not active syntactically is a non-starter. NegQobl=dom *is* blocked under other configurations which do *not* permit differential marking. One such case is the medio-passive se. The two examples below are ungrammatical in both Spanish (26a) and Romanian (26b).

(26) DOM under medio-passive *se*: Spanish and Romanian

Moreover, in Romanian, NegQobl=dom is still ungrammatical in a structure which contains a dative clitic interpreted as a possessor. In (27), we have forced a possessor reading of the dative clitic (i.e., *he didn't help anybody of his*). The consultants judge this example ungrammatical/degraded, contrary to (25c).

12As dom is obligatory on *nimeni*, the only repair here is the removal of Cldat double (-*i*). Also, (25a) and (25b) show that these co-occurrence restrictions are not simply a matter of DPobl=dom binding into Cldat-doubled IO; NegQobl=dom is not involved in such operation in (25b).

In order to explain such examples, NegQobl=dom will need to be Case licensed in some contexts (26, etc.), but caseless in others (24b, etc.). We thus have yet another problem, as summarized under Puzzle6 :

• Puzzle6 : Why does NegQobl=dom (more easily) escape the PCC in configurations involving clitic doubled IOdat, as summarized in (28)?

$$\begin{array}{c} \text{(28)} \quad \text{Puzzle}\_6 \text{:} \sqrt{\text{Cl}\_{\text{DATA}} \text{DP}\_{\text{DATA}} \dots \text{Neg Q}\_{\text{DOM}}} \text{ (24b, 25c)}\\ \text{\*} \text{Cl}\_{\text{DATA}} \text{DP}\_{\text{DATA}} \dots \text{DP}\_{\text{DOM}} \text{ (13b, 25a)} \end{array}$$

In Table 1 we summarize the six puzzles. In §5 we explore a solution which (also) takes into account the *position* in which a certain category needs licensing.

Table 1: Six puzzles

#### **5 Oblique DOM and licensing positions**

#### **5.1 Oblique DOM and the possessor dative**

As the facts are clearer, let's start with the problems involving the possessor clitic. Puzzle4 showed that oblique DPobl=dom is ungrammatical in configurations which contain a Cldat=poss, as in (11a), repeated in (29a). However, there are further quirks in the data. For all speakers, such structures significantly improve or are perfectly grammatical if DPobl=dom is dislocated to the left periphery, as in (29b). Moreover, if Cldat is not interpreted as a possessor on DPobl=dom, the structure is again grammatical. This is illustrated in (29c), where the possessor is interpreted on the PP-adjunct.14 In fact, a possessor reading on DPobl=dom would be ungrammatical, as already shown in (27).

	- a. \**Şii /\*mii* -(l) cl.3sg.refl.dat/1sg.dat-cl.3m.sg.acc ajută help.3sg **pe** loc=dom prieten*i* . friend

Intended: 'He is helping his own/my friend.'

This also implies that local, narrow domains *do* matter. As mentioned, we follow accounts which link oblique dom to a specification beyond Case. For simplicity, we encode it as a [person] feature (Cornilescu 2000, Rodríguez-Mondoñedo 2007, Richards 2008), which needs obligatory licensing in the syntax. The dative possessor clitic also encodes a [person] feature, which equally needs licensing. The data also indicate that this is a type of dative possessor clitic which is generated DP-internally and then raises to its spell-out position.15

14For lack of a more adequate notation, we indicate this connectedness via a subscript index. 15Landau (1999), Diaconescu (2004), a.o.

The more specific problem with examples such as (29a) is that the two [person] features are *too local* in the same KP, as represented in Figure 1. Additionally, in the local domain that contains these two [person] features, there is only one [person] licenser, on the functional projection we label here (following López 2012). Crash can be avoided, if one of the [person] features can be removed from this local domain, for example via dislocation to/direct merge in the left periphery, as in (29b). Here, the [person] feature can be licensed by a [person]-related functional projection in the C0 domain, while the [person]-related specification in the possessor clitic is licensed by 1 head. Another possibility is to have the two [person] features on different categories, as in (29c); here, as schematically shown in Figure 2, the *Possessor*-related [person] feature is generated inside the PP, while the object DP contains a separate [person] feature. As we show in §5.3 and §5.4, depending on the narrow domain in which each of these [person] features is checked, crash can be avoided.16

Figure 1: [person] categories too local

16Onea & Hole (2017) and Onea (2018) derive ungrammaticality in examples like (29a) on the hypothesis that both oblique dom and the possessor clitic need licensing in a position above VP. As we see in this paper, this seems to be too coarse; there are instances (e.g., 29c in the relevant interpretation) where these two categories do not produce ungrammaticality, indicating that some other factor is at play too.

Figure 2: [person] categories in separate domains

#### **5.2 Puzzle1 : Oblique dom on clitics and interaction with IO clitics**

Thus, the *position* in which [person] features are licensed is relevant. But this begs the question about possible [person]-licensing positions. The literature contains a variety of proposals. As already mentioned above, López (2012) assumes that (oblique) dom is licensed17 in an intermediate position between VP and 0 , 18 which we denote by 1 0 . Yet, Belletti (2005), Ciucivara (2009), and Stegovec (2020), among others, have identified a [person] (animacy) licensing field above P, which is especially relevant for clitics. A third explicit proposal is that oblique dom on DPs has 0 as a licenser (Rodríguez-Mondoñedo 2007, a.o.).19 The three [person] licensers are illustrated in Figure 3. Importantly, what the data at hand show is that *all* these positions and licensers are relevant in their own way.

Let's turn now to the [person] field above P. We assume that this area is involved in the licensing of oblique dom on clitics, as seen in leísta varieties of Spanish. Puzzle1 is precisely concerned with the ungrammaticality of an oblique dom clitic in the context of an IO clitic. Crucially, this effect does not arise when a full nominal is differentially marked. We repeat the relevant examples in (30):

17Note that for López (2012), oblique dom involves licensing in terms of Case. As we have outlined some shortcomings of this hypothesis, we take dom to involve the licensing of a ([person]) feature beyond Case. This way we obtain better results both empirically and formally.

18One important piece of evidence for a licensing position below 0 comes from the absence of binding effects into the EA from DPobl=dom (see López 2012: 41–46 for exemplification).

19Of course, a [person]-licensing field is also available in the CP. In fact, there are Romance varieties where DPdom is only possible on XPs that are overtly dislocated to the left periphery. See especially Belletti (2018) for Italian or Escandell-Vidal (2009, et subseq.) for Balearic Catalan.

(30) \quad \text{PuzzleLie}\_{1}: \text{"{C}}\_{\text{DAT}} \dots \text{Cl}\_{\text{OBL}=\text{DOM}} \text{ (Leista Spanish 7b, 12b) vs} \\ \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \qquad \text{LP}\_{\text{DAT}=\text{DOM}} \text{ (Spanish, Romanian 12a, 14)}
$$\text{a. \* } \text{Te/me} \quad \underbrace{\boxed{\text{le}}}\_{2/1 \text{CL.DA7 \text{ CL.3M.SG.DAT}=\text{DOM}}} \text{ di.} $$

$$\begin{array}{llll} \text{Intendded: 'I gave him to you/me'} \\ \text{b. } \text{'Te/me} & \text{envianon} \quad \underbrace{\boxed{\text{a}}}\_{\text{}} \qquad \text{todos los emfermos.} \\ \text{c. 2/1 \text{s}} \text{/cs.nart send.} \text{\_TDA.\_ 'T=\text{DOM} \text{ all} \quad \text{the sick people.m.p.} \\ \text{'They have sent all the sick people to you/me'} \end{array} $$

As the PCC effects induced by Clobl=dom are different from those of DPobl=dom and given the problems with an analysis under the split Case/Agree, let's see what we obtain as a result of licensing position. As DPobl=dom gets licensed in 1 , it must be the case that Clobl=dom is licensed in a different position. We propose that this is the [person] domain above P, what we abbreviate as 2 0 (see the tree in Figure 3).20 The problem with (30a) is that the same local 2 domain also hosts the dative clitic encoding a [person] feature equally needing licensing. As there is only one [person] licenser available, namely 2 0 , the derivation will crash, as in Figure 6. On the other hand, the two [person] features in (30b) can be licensed by two licensers found in different domains, as in Figure 4: 2 for the [person] feature in the dative clitic, and 1 for the [person] feature in DPobl=dom. This latter structure is also seen with Romanian ditransitives as in (14) (remember that these are either Class B verbs or configurations in which DPobl=dom does not bind into the IOdat).21 Therefore, we also have part of the answer to Puzzle3 .

#### **5.3 Oblique dom and clitic doubled datives**

Let's see now the explanation to Puzzle2 which involves ungrammaticality of DPobl=dom with a dative IO which is clitic doubled by dative clitic (in Spanish and in Romanian configurations where DPobl=dom binds into the clitic doubled dative, see Table 1). In these structures Figure 8, DPobl=dom contains a [person] feature needing licensing. Dative clitic doubling involves the introduction of a [person] feature on the (low) Appl head,22 which equally needs licensing. As there is only one licenser available, namely 1 0 , the derivation will crash.

20Tests similar to the ones alluded to in fn. (16) actually show that Clobl=dom can be found above the EA, as opposed to DPobl=dom, which is found below 0 .

21As expected, binding from the IO into DPobl=dom *is* possible, indicating that in these configurations the IO is higher (and if containing a [person] feature, it has an independent licenser for it, which does not interact with oblique dom).

22The evidence discussed by López (2012: 41–46) indicates that DPobl=dom binds into the IO, and not the other way around. Thus here the DPobl=dom is (interpreted) higher than the IO.

Figure 3: [person] licensing positions

In Romanian such configurations have a repair strategy which consists in accusative clitic doubling of DPdom, as in (16a), part of Puzzle5 . The PCC effect is avoided as accusative clitic doubling, which involves the licensing of a [person] feature in 2 , removes oblique dom from the domain of 1 (see also Cornilescu 2020).23 Thus 1 0 can license the [person] feature on the clitic doubled dative,

23Clitic doubled dom allows binding into the EA (as opposed to DPdom which is not clitic doubled),

Figure 4: [person] licensing above *v*P

as shown in Figure 5. As in dative possessor contexts, nominal dom and the dative clitic are *too* local in the KP on first merge,24 accusative clitic is not a repair strategy, and examples like (16b) are ungrammatical.

#### **5.4 DOM on negative quantifiers**

Let's turn now to Puzzle6 . The question is why NegQobl=dom can avoid a PCC effect with clitic doubled datives as opposed to DPobl=dom in examples like (31):

(31) Puzzle6 : !Cldat DPdat … Neg Qdom (24b, 25c) vs \*Cldat DPdat(i) … DPdom(i) (13b, 15) No neg *le* cl.3sg.dat enviaron send.pst.3pl **a** dat=dom nadie nobody *a* dat *la* def.f.sg *doctora*. doctor (Spanish)

'They haven't sent anybody to the doctor.'

indicating a position above P. See also Hill & Mardale (2021), a.o., for discussion.

24Only movement/direct merge in the CP (29b) can break this too local relationship. This indicates that C0 introduces its own [person] zone, separate from the [person] zone below it.

Figure 5: DOM doubling by accusative clitic above *v*P

Figure 6: Two [person] categories to be licensed by α2 – clash

Figure 7: Licensing of DOM animate negative quantifiers

Although the explanation is more tentative, one possibility is to relate this to intrinsic properties of NegQobl=dom, which trigger raising higher than 0 . For one, NegQobl=dom carries emphatic accent, related to a focus feature,25 which forces raising. Therefore, animate NegQ has its accusative Case (and subsequently its [person] feature) licensed by 0 ; [person] on clitic-doubled datives is licensed by 1 0 , as shown in Figure 7. This, however, would predict that examples like (25b) should always be grammatical. Although none of the consultants judged (25b) as ungrammatical as (25a), for some speakers these examples were not fully perfect either. Therefore, further research is clearly needed into this point, as well as into the more precise difference between Class A and Class B verbs (25b vs. 25c) and the effect of binding.

25See Giannakidou (2020), a.o., for discussion.

Figure 8: Two [person] categories to be licensed by α1 – clash

Finally, raising to Spec, 0 is not a repair strategy in contexts such as (27) for the same reasons mentioned above. And it does not work under medio-passive se in (24a) or (24b) either; semp involves the removal of structural *accusative* case.

In Table 2 we summarize the results obtained in this section.

#### **6 Conclusions**

This short paper has examined co-occurrence restrictions with oblique dom from (leísta and standard) Spanish and Romanian. The complexity and richness of an otherwise rather limited set of data give rise to six puzzles, which prove hard to reduce just to the split Agree/Case. We have found that an important factor behind these patterns is also the *narrow local* domain where the relevant [person] features are licensed. Obviously, oblique dom is part of many other co-occurrence restrictions, for example with variants of the Pan-Romance se, begging the question of how all these effects can be further unified.

#### 8 Oblique DOM and co-occurrence restrictions: How many types?

#### Table 2: Six puzzles and their explanations

#### **Abbreviations**

### **Acknowledgements**

We would like to thank Ion Giurgea as well as the audiences at LSRL 50 and SLE 2021 for the discussion and very useful feedback. All errors are our own.

#### **References**

Monica Alexandrina Irimia

## **Chapter 9**

## **A superlative challenge for a syntactic account of connectivity sentences**

Nicoletta Loccionia

aUniversity of California Los Angeles

In this paper, I present two sets of data that challenge the "question plus deletion"(Q+D) approach to connectivity. The first set of data comes from Romance data where superlative import requires relativization, whereas the second set has more generally to do with relative clauses in subject position of specificational sentences. The problem comes down to what follows. Under Q+D, a conflict emerges between the assumed syntax of the post-copular clause and its interpretation. That is, the structural configuration required to satisfy Binding or NPI licensing cannot generate the desired (superlative) interpretation, at least not without relying on mysterious implicatures. The same problem does not arise for revisionist accounts, which maintain that variable binding does not require c-command and can therefore straightforwardly derive the correct meaning.

#### **1 Introduction**

Higgins 1973 convincingly showed that copular sentences like (1) are not the same as the ones in (2). Whereas the former clearly involve predication (the property of being really long is predicated of the subject referent in (1)), the latter do not. Rather, (2) seem to involve valuing of a variable introduced by the pre-copular subject. That is, the subject expression sets up a variable, and the post-copular expression *My Brilliant Friend* provides the value for such variable, in a similar fashion to the question/answer pair in (3). These cases are normally referred to as specificational sentences, and they can consist of a pseudo-cleft (as in 2a), or the pre-copular phrase can be a relative clause (shown in 2b).

Nicoletta Loccioni. 2023. A superlative challenge for a syntactic account of connectivity sentences. In Barbara E. Bullock, Cinzia Russi & Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.), *A half century of Romance linguistics: Selected proceedings of the 50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages*, 181–194. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7525108

	- a. What Betta read is *My Brilliant Friend*.
	- b. The book that Betta read is *My Brilliant Friend*.
	- b. *My Brilliant Friend*.

A well-established fact about specificational sentences like (2) is that they exhibit connectivity effects (see Akmajian 1970, Higgins 1973 and many others since). That is, they behave like their connected counterparts (the (b)-examples below) with respect to a variety of syntactic tests including principle A, B and C of Binding Theory, Pronominal binding, NPI licensing and opacity. The same connectivity effects do not hold if the post-copular element is read as predicational.

	- a. [The only person Narcissus likes] is himself .
	- b. Narcissus only likes himself .
	- a. [The only person he/∗ likes] is Narcissus .
	- b. He only likes Narcissus .
	- a. [The only person every Italian cares about] is his mother.
	- b. Every Italian only cares about his mother.

The (a)-examples above are puzzling because Binding is normally taken to require syntactic c-command between the binder and the bindee. However, one can clearly see that in each of the (a)-examples the post-copular DP is not superficially c-commanded by the relevant DP. Yet, in (4a) the anaphor is bound by *Narcissus*, in (6) co-reference between the pronoun and *Narcissus* is impossible, and in (5) the quantified expression binds the post-copular pronoun.

The examples (7)–(9) show that question-answer pairs exhibit the same type of connectivity. Nothing overtly c-commands the anaphor in (7) for example. Yet, Principle A is somehow satisfied.

9 A superlative challenge for a syntactic account of connectivity sentences

Two main lines of analyses have been proposed to account for connectivity effects: a conservative/syntactic line (see Ross 1972, den Dikken et al. 2000, Schlenker 2003, Romero 2007, 2018 among others) and a revisionist/semantic one (see Jacobson 1994, Sharvit 1999, Cecchetto 2000 among others).

Among the syntactic approaches, the one I will focus on is the *Question plus deletion (Q+D)* account as developed by Schlenker (2003) and Romero (2007, 2018). According to the proponents of this approach, the specificational sentence (10a) displays the same behavior as (10b) simply because at some level of representation, (10a) contains a connected clause like (10b), which is then partially elided, as informally shown in (11).

	- b. Narcissus/everybody likes himself

It is in the syntax of this partially elided clause that binding is satisfied. Thus, once one takes into account the reconstructed clause, connectivity is straightforwardly accounted for. What about the interpretation? How is the meaning of a connectivity sentence derived under Q+D?

Under this account as presented by Schlenker (2003) & Romero (2007), the specificational subject is analyzed as a concealed question, the post-copular constituent is treated as a partially elided answer, and *be* simply denotes the identity function between the two.

Specificational subjects are analyzed as concealed questions whether or not they superficially look like questions. That is, not only are English pseudoclefts taken to denote questions, but so are other specificational subjects that do not resemble questions at all. This includes nominal relative clauses like (12), which will be the main focus of this paper.

(12) The person Narcissus loves is himself.

#### Nicoletta Loccioni

For these nominal subjects, Schlenker (2003) suggests that *the* spells out the definiteness feature of a concealed *wh-word* in a similar fashion to the object of *know* in (13).

#### (13) John knows the capital of Italy. (Schlenker 2003)

The relevant reading of (13) does not say that John knows Rome. It asserts that John knows *what the capital of Italy is*. That is, he knows the answer to the question *What is the capital of Rome?* Similarly, the pre-copular element in (12) is taken to have the same denotation as the question *who is the person Narcissus loves?*, where – crucially – the definite description is read as predicational.

Here is how the meaning of (12) is derived by the Q+D as it currently stands in the literature. Schlenker (2003) adopts Groenendijk & Stokhof's (1984) semantics for the meaning of the specificational subject. In Groenendijk & Stokhof's (1984) semantics, the denotation of a question is its exhaustive true answer in the world w. In order to implement that, Romero (2007) assumes that the specificational subject is equipped with a silent answer operator ans, defined in (14). ans's job is to turn the intension of the nominal into a question meaning.

$$\text{(14)}\quad \left[\text{Ans}\right] = \lambda\\\text{y}\_{<\text{s},e>} \lambda\\\text{w.}\lambda\\\text{w.'}\\\text{y}\\(\text{w}') = \text{y}\\(\text{w})$$

Thus, (12) has the LF in (16a). The question denoted by the pre-copular phrase is equated to the *strengthened* value of the partially elided answer. The strengthened value of the answer is equal to its normal semantic value *plus* its implicature of exhaustivity arising from focal stress. In this case, the right-hand side of the equation includes the value in (15b), as well as the implicature triggered by focal stress on *himself*, shown in (15c). The implicature's contribution is that all the other alternatives to *himself* in (15a) are negated and – as a results – we interpret (15a) to mean that Narcissus only likes *himself*. (12) then has the meaning in (16b), which has the rough paraphrase in (17).

	- b. Assertion:w.like(n,n,w)
	- c. Implicature: w.∀x:x≠n → ¬like(n,x,w)
	- b. w [ w'. x [like(n,x,w')] = x [like(n,x,w)] = w'. like(n,n,w') & *Narcissus likes nobody else in w'* ]

(17) Paraphrase of (16a)

'We are in a world w such that: the exhaustive answer to the question "who is (the) person Narcissus like" in w is the proposition "that Narcissus likes himself (and nobody else)"'.

I will now turn to the other main line of analysis, the *semantic or revisionist accounts* (Jacobson 1994, Sharvit 1999, Cecchetto 2000 among others). Revisionists do not take Binding (Scope or NPI licensing) to require a structural condition like c-command, at least not in specificational sentences. For this reason, they do not need to posit elided structure in the post-copular constituents. Connectivity instead results from a higher-order semantics (supplemented with rule I of Reinhart (1983)). Sharvit (1999) for example appeals to quantification over functions and analyzes the reflexive as an identity function. Under her approach, the example in (12) has the LF in (18a) and the semantics in (18b). It denotes the equation between the unique function that maps Narcissus to the person he likes and the function that maps everyone to themselves.

(18) a. J[The person Narcissus likes] is [himself]K b. w.f<,> [∃x.like(n,f(x),w)] = x.x

In this paper, I will show that certain specificational subjects pose a challenge to proponents of the syntactic *Q+D* account. In §2, this problem is first illustrated using Romance data where superlative import requires relativization. The issue boils down to what follows. Under a syntactic account, a conflict emerges between the required syntax of the post-copular clause and its desired interpretation. That is, the structural configuration that *Q+D* requires to satisfy Binding (or more generally to explain connectivity) cannot generate the intended superlative interpretation. A similar problem does not arise for semantic accounts, which maintain that variable binding does not require c-command and can, therefore, straightforwardly derive the correct meaning. In §3, I then show that the challenging Romance data is part of a larger and more general problem with specificational subjects that contain relative clauses. It has to do with the fact that – under Q+D – the information in the head of the relative clause get lost in the reconstructed post-copular clause.

The goal of this paper is merely to highlight the existence of this challenge for a Q+A analysis and spell out what the desiderata of a promising syntactic account are. §4 includes a short discussion of those desiderata. The proposal of a new syntactic account is left to future research.

#### **2 Superlatives in Romance**

In this section, I show how Romance data involving superlative phrases present a novel interesting challenge for Q+D accounts. The problem clearly arises in cases like (19) where the pre-copular phrase is a definite relative clause that embeds a superlative, and it boils down to what follows. The level of representation that satisfies binding does not yield superlative import and vice versa.

(19) La the persona person con with cui whom Lenuccia Lenuccia è is più more gentile kind è is se stessa. herself 'The person Lenuccia is the kindest to is herself.'

Appreciating that there is a puzzle here requires some background on relative readings of superlatives and how those readings are obtained in Italian (and other Romance languages). For the purpose of this paper, discussion of one specific example will be enough. For a more detailed investigation of the phenomenon in Romance, I refer the interested reader to Loccioni (2018).

First, Romance lacks the morphological distinction between *more* and *most*. In both comparatives and superlatives, Italian makes use of the morpheme *più* that I will gloss as 'more' throughout the paper. In addition to this comparative morpheme, superlative import requires the presence of some definite marker. In the absence of a definite marker, the only available interpretation is a comparative one, as shown by (20).

It will not be surprising then that (22) and (23) can only have a comparative interpretation.

#### 9 A superlative challenge for a syntactic account of connectivity sentences

However, in Italian and other Iberico-Romance languages, embedding the comparative phrases above inside a definite relative clause can generate superlative import.

What the contrast between (22) and (24) shows is that relativization is necessary to get the desired superlative interpretation in these examples.1

With these facts about Romance at hand, I can now go back to the problem of connectivity in specificational sentences. The crucial data point for my argument will be one where a relative clauses like (24) is plugged in the pre-copular position of a specificational sentence which exhibits connectivity.

Below are the relevant examples which show connectivity effects with respect to (i) Principle A, (ii) Principle C and (iii) Pronominal binding.2

(26) [ La the persona person con with cui whom Maria Maria è is più more esigente demanding ] è is se stessa herself 'The person with whom Maria is the most demanding is herself'

	- a. Maria is more demanding with Lucia/herself than anybody else is.
	- b. \* Maria is more demanding with Lucia/herself than she is with anybody else.

Adding a definite determiner to (23) results in a sharply ungrammatical sentence.

(ii) \* Piero Piero ha has letto read i the più more libri books

2Whereas (26) and (27) are fully acceptable, pronominal binding sentences such as (28) are subject to a greater extent of speaker variation. I personally find them less than perfect.

1Adding a local definite determiner adjacent to *più* instead of embedding the comparative inside a definite relative clause would not work. It would either provide the wrong interpretation or it would be ungrammatical. In the case of (i), the resulting sentence could only have the absolute (a)-interpretation, which is different from the one I am after in (24).

Let's turn to how a *Q+D* account explain these cases. Take (26) for example.3 If the post-copular phrase is a partially elided clause, binding is easily accounted for. As shown in (29), Maria c-commands the anaphor *se stessa*.

(29) [ la persona con cui Maria è più esigente ] [ the person with whom Maria is most demanding ] è is [ Maria è più esigente con se stessa ] [ Maria is more demanding with herself ]

However, the syntactic configuration that is able to satisfy Condition A of Binding Theory fails to generate the right superlative meaning. As discussed above, superlative import in the specificational subject rests on the fact that the superlative is embedded in a definite relative clause. It is only in that environment that *more esigente* (lit. "more demanding") can have a superlative interpretation. Once relativization is undone in the partially elided post-copular constituent, the superlative interpretation becomes unavailable, and the only possible reading for

(i) La the persona person con with la the que which María María es is más more exigente demanding es is ella misma herself 'The person with whom Maria is the most demanding is herself'

French superlatives do not have the same properties as Iberico-Romance languages such as Italian and Spanish. For this reason, French does not have the exact counterpart of (26). In order to construct the relevant example, one could use what I called *de*-free relatives. As far as I know they are the only French predicative constructions where a superlative interpretation can arise without determiner doubling (see Loccioni 2018 for discussion):

(ii) Ce this que that Jean Jean a has de *di* plus more précieux, valuable c'est it.is lui-même himself 'The most valuable thing Jean has is himself'

3A very similar example (with virtually the same properties) can be built for Spanish:

*more esigente* is a comparative one. The contrast between the meaning of the precopular and post-copular phrases is illustrated by the translation in (29).

What a defender of the Q+D account would have say is that the correct truthconditions result from the computation of the relevant implicature (that arises from focal stress). That is, once the implicature is factored in, the desired interpretation is obtained. In order for it to work, they would have to maintain that in (29) not only does the answer assert that Maria is more demanding with herself but also *implicates* that there is nobody else she is more demanding with (than she is with herself). (30) shows the semantics of the assertion and the implicature, using the degree-based lexical entries of *demanding with*, *er* and *est* provided in (31).

	- b. Assertion: w.∃[demanding(m,m,d,w) ∧ ¬demanding(m,g(1),d,w)]
	- c. Implicature: w.∃d (demanding(m,m,d,w) & ∀y∈ Y [y≠x → ¬(demanding(m,y,d,w)])

$$\text{(31)}\quad \text{a. } \left\[ \text{demanding-with} \right\] = \lambda \mathbf{w}. \lambda \mathbf{d}. \lambda \mathbf{x}. \lambda \mathbf{y}. \text{demanding(y,x,d,w)}$$

$$\text{b.} \quad \left[\text{-er}\right] = \lambda \text{P}\_{}. \lambda \text{Q}\_{}. \exists d[\text{Q}(d) \land \neg \text{P}(d)] \qquad \text{(Bhatt \& Takahashi 2011)}$$

c. J-estK = Y<,>.P<,>.x<>.∃d (P(x,d) & ∀y∈ Y [y≠x → ¬P(y,d)]) (Heim 1999)

Examaples (30b) show that the normal value of the answer to the question *Who is Maria the most demanding with?* is that Maria is more demanding with herself than she is with some relevant other (g(1) in (30b)) refers to this contextually relevant standard of comparison). The strengthened value of (30a), however, is that Maria is more demanding with herself than she is with anybody else. It is unclear how this implicature would work. How can focal stress on the anaphor be responsible for gap between a simple *than*-clause and a quantified one (more than anybody else)?

A revisionist account *à la* Sharvit (1999) would not run into the same problem. (26) would have the LF in (32a) and would denote the equation between the unique function that maps Maria to the person she is the most demanding with and the function that maps everyone to themselves, as shown in (32b).

	- b. w.f<,> [∃d.∃x.demanding(m,f(x),d,w) & ∀y∈ Y [y≠x → ¬(demanding(m,y,d,w)]] = x.x

In the next section, I will show that this problem is not limited to relative clauses containing superlatives. Rather, it is part of a larger issue that a Q+A account runs into when dealing with relative clauses in subject position.

#### **3 A larger problem with relativization**

The problem discussed in the previous section was somewhat language-specific. It had specifically to do with the fact that in languages like Italian, relativization can be a necessary element to get superlative import in certain environments. In specificational sentences then, a tension emerged between the desired structure needed to account for connectivity and the meaning of the construction.

In this section, I want to show that a similar challenge for Q+D accounts arises when relative clauses are specificational subjects more generally. It has to do with the fact that the two clauses that are equated do not contain the same level of information. Since the right-hand side of the equation has the syntax of a connected clause, it only contains part of the pre-copular phrase meaning. In particular, the information included in the head of the relative clause is absent in the post-copular clause.4

To show that, take the English sentences in (33). Under the Q+D account as it currently stands in the literature, these sentences are analyzed as in (34). One can easily notice that despite the different meanings of the subjects, they all share the very same connected sentence on the right-hand side, *he cared about John's mother*.

	- b. The oldest woman he cared about is John's mother
	- c. The youngest woman he cared about is John's mother
	- d.  [The oldest woman he cared about] is [he cared about John's mother]
	- c. [The youngest woman he cared about] is [he cared about John's mother]
	- d. [The last sick person he cared about] is [he cared about John's mother]

4The same applies to elements in the left-periphery of the DP, such as demonstratives and ordinal numbers.

#### 9 A superlative challenge for a syntactic account of connectivity sentences

In order to make the computation work and derive the correct interpretation, the meaning gap between the specificational subject and the post-copular clause has to be filled. According to the Q+D account, this role is played by the implicature triggered by focus on *John's mother*. Thus, the meaning of 'he cared about John's mother' has to be strengthened differently in each case to derive the corresponding exhaustive answers, as shown in (35)

	- b. He cared about John's mother *and no woman older than* that
	- c. He cared about John's mother and *no woman younger than that*
	- d. He cared about John's mother and *no other sick person after her*

Again, it is unclear how these implicatures work. In (35a), focus on *John's mother* would trigger the implicature that there is nobody else he cared about. However, the implicature triggered in the other examples are fairly different. In theses cases, the presupposition of the superlative requires that there are other people he cared about. But they have to fit a certain description which is provided by the head of specificational subject. (33b) for example triggers the implicature that he did not care about any woman who is older than John's mother whereas the implicature in (33c) has quite the opposite effect. The fact that this information is "retrieved" by an implicature seems quite undesirable. It would be much preferable if the postcopular phrase contained this information. Yet, we don't want to end up with something like (36), where in the right-hand side we obtain the connectivity sentence we started with.

(36) The oldest woman he cares about is [ his mother is the oldest woman John cares about ]

In the discussion of a similar case, Schlenker (2003) recognized that the precise way in which the implicature is calculated is unclear. His analysis of (37) is that *(He worries about) himself* triggers the implicature that there is no problem that John worries about more.

(37) The worst problem that John worries about is himself

He writes: "How the implicature comes about is unclear (focus seems to be crucial); but once it is assumed that such an implicature exists in (37), the mechanism developed [...] to equate the value of the pre-copular element with the strengthened value of the post-copular element will presumably yield the desired results." But where does the degree scale come from in this example? Why would the assertion *John worries about himself* generate the implicature that he is his worst problem?

#### **4 Desiderata for a syntactic account and conclusion**

I am afraid that this paper is going to disappoint the reader who is looking for a solution to rescue a syntactic account of connectivity sentences. Even though I am not able to offer a solution at this point, I would like to spell out what (some of) the desiderata of a more promising syntactic account are, given what we have learned.

A good syntactic account that does not want to abandon the c-command tests needs to have a good story for what a "connected" elliptical structure with the right interpretation looks like.

For fragment sentences, Merchant (2004) suggests that ellipsis is preceded by an A'-movement to a clause-peripheral position.

	- b. FP [DP John i [.F' F < [TP she saw t ] > ]] (adapted from Merchant (2004))

Given the similarities between specificational sentences and question/answer pairs, one could explore whether a similar account would work in the case of post-copular phrases of specificational sentences. It would translate into moving [ himself ] to some focus position – either the high left periphery position posited by Rizzi (1997) or the low left periphery argued for by Belletti (2001).

(39) What Narcissus likes is [ himself [ Narcissus likes t ] ]

If the post-copular phrase is moving from a connected sentence, connectivity effects are easily accounted for. However, other issues arise. First, Italian strongly disallows preposition stranding, which would result from such derivation. (40) provides an example of it.

(40) L'unica persona con cui Maria è esigente è [ se stessa [ Maria è esigente con t ] ]

Second, the data I presented in §2 showed that the post-copular phrase should have some (form of) maximalization as part of the derivation to derive the correct superlative interpretation. Even though topicalization has very obvious effects on the information structure, it is not enough to get superlative import in Italian. This is illustrated in (41), which can only have the (a)-interpretation.

9 A superlative challenge for a syntactic account of connectivity sentences

	- a. WITH HERSELF MARY is more demanding.
	- b. \* WITH HERSELF MARY is the most demanding.

Third, §3 showed that the derivation should have some mechanism to "remember" the content of the head of the relative clause in the specificational subject. This means that, even though (42b) accounts for binding, it cannot be the full story for (42a).

(42) a. The oldest person John cares about is himself

b. [The oldest person John cares about] is [himself John cares about t ]

It seems therefore unlikely that a simple movement akin to topicalization could be extended from fragment answers to post-copular phrases of specificational sentences.

Lastly, any satisfactory syntactic approaches should also make sure to avoid the circularity of obtaining another specificational sentence on the right-hand side.

(43) The oldest person John cares about is [ himself is the oldest person John care about ]

#### **References**

## **Chapter 10**

## **Revisiting sociophonetic competence: Variable spectral moments in phrase-final fricative epithesis for L1 & L2 speakers of French**

### Amanda Dalolaa & Keiko Bridwellb

aUniversity of Minnesota bUniversity of Georgia

Phrase-final fricative epithesis (PFFE) is a phenomenon in Continental French in which utterance-final vowels lose their voicing and yield fricative-like whistles corresponding to the identity of the host vowel. PFFE is also well attested among L2 speakers; differences in its production across speaker groups have been reported in several domains: vowel type, speech rate, register, constituent location, fricativevowel ratio (FVR), and measures of center of gravity (COG). Participants completed a reading task targeting 98 tokens of /i,y,u/ in phrase-final position. 4569 PFFE segments were examined via 7 frames of 8 ms in length with 2 ms in overlap across their trajectories. Results suggest categorical speaker group differences for /y/ in terms of skewness, as well as for kurtosis and for intensity at higher FVRs. This suggests that L1/L2 sociophonetic realizations contain nuanced differences far beyond the presence/absence paradigm still common to many variationist inquiries.

### **1 Introduction**

Phrase-final fricative epithesis (PFFE), a phenomenon also known in the literature as phrase-final vowel devoicing (PFVD), refers to a well-attested phenomenon in Continental French (CF) in which breath group-final vowels lose their voicing and produce a short burst of high-frequency aperiodic energy akin to a

fricative, e.g. *mais oui-hhh* [mεwiç], *merci beaucoup-hhh* [mεKsibokux] (see Figure 1). The first linguistic description of this phenomenon described it as the emergence of "sharp, phrase-final whistles" (Fónagy 1989); subsequent research witnessed a split in nomenclature, with North American researchers often opting for a name focusing on voicing loss—"vowel devoicing / *dévoisement vocalique*" (Fagyal & Moisset 1999, Smith 2002, 2003, 2006, Martin 2004) and most European researchers preferring a name focusing on the emergence of the downstream fricative – "fricative epithesis / *épithèse (consonantique) fricative*" (Fagyal 2010, Candea 2012, Candea et al. 2013). Because the present study will focus on characterizing the spectral and durational qualities of the emergent fricative, we, the (North American) authors, have explicitly chosen to heed the call of our European predecessors in adopting the term "fricative epithesis" for this discussion, a precedent we first established in Dalola & Bridwell (2020).

Figure 1: PFFE on the spectrogram: *venu* 'came'. The PFFE corresponds to the final, highlighted segment, which is characterized by the lack of a voicing band on the spectrogram and the presence of aperiodic energy in the waveform. The PFFE is immediately following the articulation of the vowel [y], which is characterized by full formant structure on the spectrogram and periodic energy in the waveform.

In the first description of PFFE in the literature, Fónagy (1989) hypothesized that not only do the characteristic phrase-final fricatives appear immediately following vowels that have lost a portion of their voicing band, but they themselves might also correspond to their host vowel phonetically in terms of their backness

dimension. Citing the *ich-Laut / ach-Laut* harmony phenomenon in standard German, in which the backness value of a voiceless fricative is selected by the backness value of its preceding vowel, he hypothesized that the fricatives epithesized after the high front vowels /i/ and /y/ in French should be more [ç]-like, i.e. front, than those appearing after high back [u], which should be more [x]-like, i.e. back. This observation was corroborated by Dalola (2015a) who examined measures of center of gravity (COG: average peak frequency) taken at the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 timepoints of PFFE fricatives produced by L1 CF speakers and found evidence to suggest a three-way distinction in spectral energy at the first two timepoints. These spectral differences, however, could not be characterized in terms of sheer [+/- back] and did not persist into the second half of the segment.

#### **1.1 Phonological Predictors of PFFE**

The best-studied dimension of PFFE is undoubtedly its phonological distribution. Originally described as occurring in high vowels (Fónagy 1989), PFFE has been documented in the full inventory of French vowels, including nasals (Smith 2006), but has been reported at the highest rates following the high vowels /i,y,u/ (Fagyal & Moisset 1999, Martin 2004, Smith 2003, 2006). When comparing reading passages, role-plays and impromptu conversation, PFFE has been found to occur at significantly higher rates in types of reading, i.e. planned, speech (Fagyal & Moisset 1999, Dalola 2014). This finding is perhaps explained by its higher rates of occurrence at the ends of both the intonation phrase and the declarative phrase (Fagyal & Moisset 1999, Smith 2003) where French sees the emergence of a low tone. Studies have also found an effect for the manner type of the preceding consonant, such that preceding stops condition PFFE at a significantly higher rate than more sonorous manner types, in addition to lexical frequency effects, which report more frequent lexical items as more likely to exhibit the phenomenon than less frequent ones (Dalola 2015b). Dalola & Bridwell (2019, 2020) also found that PFFE varies with the proportional duration of the fricative relative to the full vowel (i.e. FVR, as described in §2.4), such that among high front vowels, longer fricatives are produced with higher COGs, indicating that epithesized fricatives may be conditioned by the same principles of hypo- and hyperarticulation (Lindblom 1990) as other phonological segments.

#### **1.2 Social Predictors of PFFE**

The social distribution of PFFE presents a complex series of macro- and microgroup associations. Early work often described PFFE as occurring in the speech

of women (Fónagy 1989, Fagyal & Moisset 1999, Smith 2006); however, later work has reported the variable to be used at similar rates among both men and women (Candea 2012, Candea et al. 2013, Dalola 2014). Fagyal & Moisset (1999), who took a categorical approach to age, found the variable at its highest rates among their youngest (16–35) and oldest (61–85) groups; Dalola (2014), who operationalized age continuously (testing ages 13–83), reported participants as more likely to use PFFE the older they were. From a socioeconomic standpoint, PFFE is often associated with the French middle class (*la bourgeoisie*) (Paternostro 2008, Fagyal 2010). Originally, the variable was associated with Parisians (Fagyal & Moisset 1999, Smith 2006, Fagyal 2010), though in recent years, it has also been documented in the speech of francophones from other metropolitan centers in France, namely Lyon and Strasbourg (Dalola 2014). Further afield, the variable has also been described in the speech of French, Belgian, and Canadian news anchors (Paternostro 2008, Candea et al. 2013); one study introduced intersectionality into this association by reporting it as a characteristic of young, i.e. inexperienced, news anchors (Candea 2012). The disagreement among social predictors may be reflective of the rapidly changing landscape of PFFE users and/or the generalization of the variable from specialized demographics to less specialized ones. Despite the inconclusive findings among social predictors, it is important to recognize them in pursuing research on the characterization of the PFFE variable.

#### **1.3 Perception of PFFE**

Differences in L1 versus L2 production of PFFE ushered in a rigorous examination of potential speaker group differences in the variable's perception. Dalola (2016) reported significant differences in L1 and L2 perceptions of the PFFE, namely that L2 speakers perceived it as a marker of "formality" and "trustworthiness," whereas L1 speakers perceived it variably, sometimes as a marker of "admirability" and other times as a marker of "intense emotional affect." Using a matchedguise design and exploratory factor analysis, a related form of principal component analysis that partitions out the shared variance of each variable from its unique and error variance to reveal the underlying factor structure (Osborne & Costello 2009), Dalola's (2016) L2 participants rated users of PFFE similarly for two separate groups of adjectives: *polite, well-educated, speaks clearly, speaks formally*, a category the author refers to collectively as traits of formality, and *confident, persuasive, I respect X, I trust X*, a category the author refers to collectively as traits of trustworthiness. Like their L2 counterparts, L1 speakers also rated users of PFFE similarly for two separate groups of adjectives, however, the

adjectival members of the groups were both more numerous and compositionally different: *well-educated, professional, speaks clearly, polite, intelligent, patient, confident, persuasive, I trust X, I respect X, I believe what X says, I would like to speak like X* formed a category referred to collectively as traits of admirability, while *aggressive, bourgeois, superficial, bossy, native French speaker, speaks with emotion* formed a category referred to collectively as emotional affect. It should be noted that all the traits that made up the L2 category of formality were also present in the L1 category of admirability, and that the reason for the difference in category name was due to the author's desire to assign names that applied to the full collection of adjectives. No gender effects were found for the voices being rated, however, there was a significant gender effect among those giving ratings, such that women were more likely to assign higher ratings for the adjective profiles overall than men.

#### **1.4 L2 Speakers & PFFE**

Given its salient phonetic energy and robust distribution among native francophone populations, it is somewhat unsurprising to learn that PFFE, despite its status as a sociophonetic variable, is also readily employed by L2 French speakers (Dalola & Bullock 2017). Investigating the nature of L1 and L2 PFFE as produced in different genres of speech, they revealed subtle but nuanced differences at every level of production. For rates of use of PFFE, L1 and L2 speakers performed similarly overall but were motivated by different genres of speech: L1 speakers used more PFFE in role-plays while L2s were more likely to use it when reading wordlists. In terms of PFFE duration, or the proportional length of the epithesized fricative when compared to its host vowel, larger differences between speaker groups were documented: not only did L1 and L2 speakers produce PFFE segments that were statistically different in length (L1 PFFE length > L2 PFFE length), but each group showed sensitivity to a different linguistic parameter. L1s produced longer PFFEs as a reaction to pragmatic shifts (indicated in the roleplays via scenario-setting prompts), producing longer PFFEs in slower and formal speech, while L2s produced longer PFFEs as a reaction to task shifts (indicated by shifting from roleplays to wordlist), producing longer PFFEs in the wordlist task. Despite the various pragmatic and speaker group effects in this study, no effects were found across participants for measures of gender or age. In the first study to examine spectral differences between L1 and L2 users of PFFE, Dalola & Bridwell (2020) examined COG measures taken throughout the fricative and found L1 speakers to produce PFFE differently, as a function of phonological context, while L2 speakers instead were found to produce a singular, high-energy, hyperarticulated allophone in a majority of environments. The discovery of spectral differences in terms of COG measures, a metric commonly used for diagnosing fricatives (segments that are notoriously difficult to describe due in part to their sustained aperiodic energy), therefore, invites the investigation of the other spectral moments commonly used to talk about fricatives, namely standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis, as well as independent measures of intensity.

#### **1.5 Spectral Moments**

The use of the four spectral moments in diagnosing the energy of fricatives is common practice in phonetic studies, as it has been reported that listeners tend to classify voiceless obstruents from spectral information during the first 40 ms of the segment (Forrest et al. 1988). The four spectral moments used to classify fricatives are individually center of gravity (COG), standard deviation (SD), skewness, and kurtosis; each is a unique statistical manipulation of the segment's energy profile meant to capture a different quantitative aspect of the aperiodic energy sustained throughout the segment. If one conceives of the various frequencies produced during a fricative in terms of a normal distribution (see Figure 2), then the COG corresponds to the measure of central tendency among the frequencies, or the spectral mean. The standard deviation is then the measure of spread, or the average variation in frequencies from the spectral mean during the segment. As with distributions, skewness corresponds to a measure of energy distribution above or below the spectral mean, or spectral tilt, while kurtosis corresponds to a measure of the distribution of energy at the tail extremities, or tailedness. In addition to the four spectral moments, this study will also take measurements of amplitude, also called intensity, which is perceived by listeners as loudness. Although not one of the four spectral moments, intensity has also been shown to be a relevant parameter for the perception of obstruents (Forrest et al. 1988).

#### **1.6 Spectral moments as cues**

Although spectral moments and measures of intensity have been shown to aid listeners in identifying and discerning voiceless obstruents in languages, they have also been found working independently or in concert with other acoustic parameters to convey social information about the speaker. Zimman (2017) reported COG to be a marker of masculine voices when considered alongside fundamental frequency (f0 ). Munson et al. (2006) found the skewness of frequencies in [s] to be a relevant predictor of speaker sexuality, such that negatively skewed [s],

Figure 2: The four spectral moments, visualized as statistical transformations: a) center of gravity and standard deviation, b) skewness, c) kurtosis.

or [s] segments with a higher concentration of energy above the spectral mean, served as a marker of gay men's speech. In terms of the PFFE variable, Dalola (2016) found intensity measures to be a predictor of affect ratings assigned by L1 French listeners to PFFE users, such that higher intensity PFFEs yielded higher ratings for features of intense affect (*aggressive, bourgeois, superficial, bossy, native French speaker, speaks with emotion*). Although relevant for the perception of intense affect, intensity measures were not found to be a predictor of features of admirability (*educated, professional, speaks clearly, polite, intelligent, patient, confident, persuasive, I trust X, I respect X, I believe what X says, I would like to speak like X*) among L1 French listeners, nor were they found to be at all relevant for L2 French listeners perceiving PFFE segments.

#### **1.7 Motivation**

This article reports on production differences in spectral tendencies in PFFE among L1 and advanced L2 speakers of Continental French. Since PFFE is a sociophonetic marker in CF (Dalola 2014, 2016), it presents an interesting testing ground for comparing spectral values across native and non-native speakers. Previous work has reported production differences in rate and degree of devoicing between native and non-native French speakers (Dalola & Bullock 2017), but only a few studies have extended the comparison to investigate the phonetic quality of PFFE's variable emergent fricatives (Dalola & Bridwell 2020). This study looked uniquely at COG measures and reported significant differences across speaker groups. However, fricatives are most commonly identified by a profile of four spectral moments, including measures of COG, SD, skewness, and kurtosis, not just COG alone. Combined with the many known articulatory differences and false similarities in vowel production between French and English (the L1 of the non-native population in this/previous studies), e.g. French /u/=[u] vs. English

/u/=[uw], it is reasonable to expect that L1 articulatory behaviors may persist which could contribute to differences in spectral energy when realizing PFFE, even among advanced L2 speakers (Flege & Hillenbrand 1984, Flege 1987, 1995). The goal of this study, therefore, is to examine and characterize the fricatives epithesized after devoiced vowels using measures of fricative-vowel ratio (length of fricative divided by length of full vowel), COG (average peak frequency during PFFE segments), SD (variation in frequencies from the spectral mean during PFFE segments), skewness (energy distribution above or below the spectral mean during PFFE segments), kurtosis (energy distribution at the tail extremities during PFFE segments), and intensity (loudness of PFFE segments). We will then use inferential statistics to determine the presence of speaker group differences in PFFE in terms of measures of COG, SD, skewness, kurtosis, and intensity. Finally, we will investigate the role of vowel type and fricative-vowel ratio in modulating these speaker group differences.

#### **1.8 Research Questions & Hypotheses**

The current study puts forth the following research questions:

A previous study carried out by Dalola & Bridwell (2020) predicts significant differences across speaker group for measures of COG, a hypothesis that is maintained in the present study. Predictions will not be offered for each of the other parameters, as previous work has not yet diagnosed these aspects of the PFFE variable among L1 or L2 speakers.

### **2 Methods**

#### **2.1 Participants**

40 speakers of CF participated in the experiment, of which 31 were L1-French speakers and nine L1-English advanced L2-French speakers. All participants were recorded in Paris or Strasbourg in France or in the United States. Among the L1 participants, 23 were women and eight were men, ranging in age from 20 to 66 years (mean: 38.4 years). All L1 speakers were L2 speakers of English, having

studied it formally for four or more years and using it in interactions once a week or more. Among the L2 participants, five were women and four were men, ranging in age from 27 to 58 years (mean: 38.6 years). L2 speakers were classified as "advanced" because they had all lived in France for at least two years, had prepared or were preparing an upper-level degree in French, and used French regularly in their careers. All L2 speakers were L1 speakers of American English. All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the University of South Carolina Institutional Review Board (USC IRB).

#### **2.2 Stimuli**

Inspired by the task and pragmatic effects findings of Dalola & Bullock (2017) and several studies' reports of PFFE's robustness among news anchors reading off teleprompters (Paternostro 2008, Candea 2012, Candea et al. 2013), participants were asked to complete a reading task that consisted of 106 single sentences, containing 98 phrase-final tokens of /i,y,u/, occurring after all licit (C)C(C) onset sequences in one- to three-syllable real words in French (see Table 1 for a breakdown of consonant environments).

#### **2.3 Procedure**

Participants were presented with sentences one at a time on a MacBook Pro via Microsoft Powerpoint and told to read each one aloud, imagining they were reading a story to a native francophone listener. Participants were instructed to read each sentence twice and to repeat any trials from the beginning in the event of a disfluency. As they read aloud, participants were recorded via a head-mounted unidirectional cardioid microphone (SHURE WH20) plugged into a solid-state

digital recorder (Marantz PMD 660) digitized at 44.1 kHz (16 bit). The task was completed under the direction of the L1-English advanced L2-French researcher; the task was self-paced and participants were given as much time as they needed to complete it.

#### **2.4 Measurements**

The final vowel of each target word was examined in Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2018) for the presence of PFFE, as indicated by the loss of a voicing band and the onset of high-frequency aperiodic energy (for reference, see Figure 1). All tokens exhibiting PFFE were then measured for the duration of the fricative and of the vowel itself. Since measures of raw duration do not take into account relative durational differences brought on by variable realizations of final lengthening, the derived measure of *fricative-vowel ratio (FVR)* was selected as the relevant durational variable. This measure was calculated according to the formula *FVR = F/V*, where *F* is the length of the epithesized fricative and *V* is the length of the full vowel including the fricative (Dalola & Bridwell 2020).

Time-averaged spectral measures were obtained for each of the tokens by measuring the spectra of seven frames, each 8 ms in length and overlapping by 2 ms, from the central 44 ms of the fricative and averaging across these frames (see Toda 2007, 2009). This method of averaging across multiple windows was chosen in order to reduce the effects of the random fluctuation that is inherent in aperiodic energy (Toda et al. 2010). The resulting measures included the four spectral moments of *COG*, *standard deviation (SD)*, *skewness*, and *kurtosis*, and a measure of *intensity*.

#### **2.5 Statistical Analyses**

Of the 7942 tokens collected, 4995 exhibited PFFE (62.9%). Of these, 426 (8.5%) were discarded as being too short (i.e. exhibiting under 44 ms of frication) or as spectrally unanalyzable at one or more of the timepoints, leaving 4569 tokens for analysis. Statistical analyses were conducted in R (R Core Team 2018), using the function *lmer()* from the packages *lme4* (Bates et al. 2015) and *lmerTest* (Kuznetsova et al. 2017) to run mixed-effects linear regression models for each of the five variables. This method of analysis was chosen because mixed-effects models allow for reliable comparisons between unequal sample sizes. In each model, *vowel*, *speaker group*, *FVR*, and all possible interactions between them were treated as predictor variables while *participant* was treated as a random ef-

fect.1 Although normalized COG values have been used in previous studies to account for variation in vocal tract size (Dalola & Bridwell 2019, 2020), this proved to be redundant when *participant* was included as a random effect, and therefore, will not be used here. The proportion of the variance in the data explained by the random effects is reported in terms of the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), as calculated by the function *icc()* in the package *performance* (Lüdecke et al. 2021). Since post-hoc tests are not traditionally performed on mixed models (Levshina 2015), results below are interpreted in terms of 95% confidence intervals, as generated by the *effects* package (Fox 2003, Fox & Weisberg 2018, 2019). Visualizations were generated using *ggplot2* (Wickham 2016).

#### **3 Results**

#### **3.1 COG**

As presented in Table 2, the results of the COG model indicated a significant three-way interaction between *vowel*,*speaker group*, and *FVR*. While the complexity of this interaction makes interpreting the statistical results difficult, a visual presentation of the effects generated by this model (Figure 3) makes the patterns in the data clear. These are interpreted below, with all differences reported as statistically significant, reflecting results from 95% confidence intervals. In terms of variation present in the data, the ICC measure of 0.338 suggests relatively low levels of similarity between measurements taken from the same speaker, indicative of a high level of variability throughout.

Overall, it can be seen that COG increases as FVR increases, a pattern which is true of all vowels and both speaker groups, although the rate of increase differs across vowels. At low FVRs (i.e. 0%), /y,u/ > /i/ for L1 speakers (*p*<.05); L2 speakers exhibit no significant differences between vowels here, although /y/ trends higher than /i/ (*p*=.071). At high FVRs (i.e. 100%), /i/ > /y/ > /u/ for L1 speakers (*p*<.05); for L2 speakers, /i/ > /y,u/ (*p*<.05), although the difference between /y/ and /u/ is nearly significant (*p*=.055). At no point do L1 speakers differ from L2 speakers for a given vowel and FVR in terms of statistical significance.

1Because repeated measures were taken for each word, initial models also included *word* as a random effect. However, examination of the ICCs for each model indicated that the grouping factor of *word* accounted for a very low amount of the total variation (1–3%). Since random effects with ICCs below 0.1 do not appreciably change the model (Vajargah & Nikbakhtt 2015), our models were therefore simplified to only include *participant* as a random effect.

Table 2: Mixed-effects linear regression model for COG

Figure 3: COG regression model effects

#### **3.2 Standard deviation**

As shown in Table 3, significant two-way interactions for*standard deviation* were present between *vowel* and *FVR* and *FVR* and *speaker group* while the interaction between *vowel* and *speaker group* was nearly significant. As visualized in Figure 4, patterns of standard deviation differed across vowels: it significantly increased with FVR for /i,u/ (*p*<.05), but decreased for /y/ (*p*<.05). As a result, /i,y/ > /u/ at low FVRs (*p*<.05), but at high FVRs /i/ > /u/ > /y/ (*p*<.05). In terms of speaker group, standard deviation increased with FVR for L1 speakers (*p*<.05) but not for L2 speakers (*p*>.10). At low FVRs, L2 speakers tended toward higher standard deviations than L1 speakers (*p*=.096); at high FVRs L1 speakers tended to show higher values (*p*=.080).

The ICC measure of 0.324 suggests relatively low levels of similarity between measurements taken from the same speaker, indicative of a high level of variability throughout.

Table 3: Mixed-effects linear regression model for standard deviation

Figure 4: Standard deviation regression model effects

#### **3.3 Skewness**