Table Of ContentRomance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2011
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory (RLLT)
The yearly ‘Going Romance’ meetings feature research in formal linguistics
of Romance languages, mainly in the domains of morphology, syntax, and
semantics, and, to a certain extent, phonology. Each volume brings together a
peer-reviewed selection of papers that were presented at one of the meetings,
aiming to provide a representation of the spread of topics at that conference, and
of the variety of research carried out nowadays on Romance languages within
theoretical linguistics.
Editor
Frank Drijkoningen
Utrecht University
Volume 5
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2011. Selected papers from ‘Going
Romance’ Utrecht 2011
Edited by Sergio Baauw, Frank Drijkoningen, Luisa Meroni and Manuela Pinto
Romance Languages
and Linguistic Theory 2011
Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ Utrecht 2011
Edited by
Sergio Baauw
Frank Drijkoningen
Luisa Meroni
Manuela Pinto
Utrecht University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Going Romance (Conference) (2011 : Utrecht University)
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2011 : Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’
Utrecht 2011 / Edited by Sergio Baauw, Frank Drijkoningen, Luisa Meroni and
Manuela Pinto.
p. cm. (Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory, issn 1574-552X ; v. 5)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Romance languages--Congresses. I. Baauw, Sergio, 1970- editor of compilation.
II. Title.
PC11.G65 2013
440--dc23 2013027691
isbn 978 90 272 0385 4 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 7129 7 (Eb)
© 2013 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
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John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
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Table of contents
Introduction vii
A′-dependencies in French: A study in L1 acquisition 1
Anamaria Benţea and Stephanie Durrleman
The irregular forms of the Italian “Passato Remoto”:
A synchronic and diachronic analysis 17
Andrea Calabrese
On the lack of stranded negated quantifiers and inverse scope
of negation in Romance 59
Robert Cirillo
Evidence for the competition-based analysis of subjunctive obviation
from relative and adverbial clauses in Italian 75
Francesco Costantini
Quotative expansions 93
Ricardo Etxepare
Datives, prepositions, and argument structure in Spanish 125
Héctor Fernández-Alcalde
A typology of agreement processes and its implications
for language development 143
Vincenzo Moscati and Luigi Rizzi
On the syntax of focalizers in some Italo-Romance dialects 157
Nicola Munaro
The phonotactics of word-initial clusters in Romance:
Typological and theoretical implications 175
Diana Passino
Double object constructions in Spanish (and Catalan) revisited 193
Anna Pineda
vi Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2011
Cognitive economy, non-redundancy and typological primacy
in L3 acquisition: Initial stages of L3 Romance and beyond 217
Jason Rothman
L1 acquisition of noun ellipsis in French and in Dutch:
Consequences for linguistic theory 249
Petra Sleeman and Aafke Hulk
Index 267
Introduction
In 2011, the conference series Going Romance celebrated its 25th edition, in
Utrecht, the founder city of the enterprise.
(We are) Going (to study) Romance (languages) was the – admittedly national,
Dutch – slogan for the idea behind the first meeting in the winter of 1986, for
which a number of key figures of European generativism were invited. The major
goal was to discuss the properties of Romance languages within the framework
of Government and Binding and the parameters that could distinguish Romance
languages from English (and more broadly, Germanic languages) within the
Principles and Parameters approach. At that time, it was an important step as it
allowed to combine two more political goals: on the one hand, it offered the circle
of generative linguists, often working in departments of linguistics, possibilities
to spread their ideas by showing relevance for and actual analyses of data from
Romance languages; on the other hand, linguists working in language-specific
departments with colleagues focussing on literature or culture (French, Italian,
Spanish, …) were offered opportunities to discuss the universal and common
properties of their languages beyond the historical approach based on the com-
mon ancestor. A lingua franca was determined: English.
Due to the success of the first meeting, a follow-up was organized in the win-
ter of 1987, and another one in the spring of 1988. As there appeared to be a
high number of abstract submissions from scholars from different universities in
Europe and the United States, it was concluded that there was sufficient interest
for the enterprise at the international level for rendering the conference a stan-
dard annual series. In the early nineties, the Utrecht community of linguists yearly
organized the conference and also made possible the publication of a selection of
the papers in a volume of the international journal Probus.
As colleagues from the other universities in the Netherlands, Amsterdam,
Groningen, Leiden, Nijmegen and the VU in Amsterdam wished to extend their
involvement, the organization of the conference became national. Venues alter-
nated between Utrecht and one of the other cities at first, but this gradually devel-
oped to a situation in which Going Romance was organized in turn by one of
Romance language departments of these universities. During this period, due to
the quantity of high quality papers, the publication associated to the conference
consisted of an entire volume in a series, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory.
viii Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2011
Although Going Romance is associated with the Netherlands, it has been
clear from the beginning that it actually has a high international status within
Europe. More recently, the steering committee decided that this could very well
be reflected in the yearly venues. This resulted in a conference in Nice in 2009 and
one in Leuven in 2012; the contribution of other European universities is currently
being planned.
Since the beginning years, both the frameworks and the issues have evolved,
but the conference series has proven to be successfull in focussing on in-depth
analyses of (one of the) Romance languages while making use of articulated gen-
eral theories, in combination with an open eye for differences with respect to other
(Romance) languages. Local organizations are free to include a one day workshop
with a specific theme that reflects their local research strength. The rate of accep-
tance of abstracts nowadays is between 20% and 40%.
Not only the conference in 2011 was a lustrum, this volume published in 2013
is one too. It’s the 5th in our series Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory
(RLLT) published by John Benjamins.
The actual content of this volume may be seen as a continuation of theoriza-
tion in interaction with interfaces on the one hand, and the emergence of new
research areas, models and theories on the other hand.
One of the research areas that have been developed since the eighties of the
last century can be defined as research into the ‘developmental problem of lan-
guage acquisition’, the actual acquisition process of children. The papers by Benţea
& Durrleman and Sleeman & Hulk address typical issues in such L1 Acquisition,
of A′ dependencies and nominals respectively. Subsequent theorization into the
acquisition of second languages (L2, including bilingualism) is somehwat more
recent. As an extension to this field we publish here the contribution by Jason
Rothman who presents a novel model for the acquisition of L3, based on cognitive
economy and typological proximity.
The further elaboration of syntactic theory is visible in the clear paper by
Moscati & Rizzi, who discuss the typology of agreement processes in interac-
tion with locality, phases and structural adjacency. Ricardo Etxepare shows that
quotative constructions have intricate syntactic properties that directly bear on
discussions of predication. The topic of datives and indirect objects in Spanish
is subject to discussion and analysis in the papers by Fernández-Alcalde and by
Pineda. The framework making use of parameters has been further developed
towards a differential view with both macro- and micro-parameters; the notion of
micro-parameters allows for a certain revival of classical dialectology: the paper by
Munaro on focalisers can be considered a representative of this strand.
In phonology, Passino discusses the way in which Government Phonology
can build a typology of onset-clusters for Romance. Cirillo discusses the semantic
Introduction ix
phenomenon of inverse scope. The paper by Costantini adresses issues in the
interaction between subjunctives and obviation.
A certain revival of surface-form oriented morphology can be noted by the
popularity of the model of Distributed Morphology. Andrea Calabrese makes
extensive use of this model in order to explain the intricate details of the mor-
pho-phonological rules for the Italian passato remoto. He thus shows that, at a
meta-level of linguistic theory, these subregularities are best classified as being
rule-governed.
The 2011 venue would not have been possible without the support of a num-
ber of people and institutions. We wish to thank here all colleagues (and they were
quite a lot) who contributed to the abstract selection procedure and/or the review
procedure of this volume. Financial support dominantly came from the Utrecht
institute of Linguistics OTS, but all Dutch partner institutions of the enterprise
contributed.
The Editors
