Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

(137) Paduan (Rizzi (1982)):
a. (Giorgio) *(el) vien
G. he-CL comes
b. (*El) vien Giorgio
He-CL comes Giorgio
Like in the case of French Stylistic inversion, this suggests that the requirements for
null subjects are stronger than the requirements for subject inversion. In our terms, the
requirements for pro I-subjects are stronger than the requirements for overt [-anaphoric] subjects.
The former require some minimal richness (as the one displayed in French AGR-morphology or
Northern Italian strict AGR-morphology). The latter requires a full range of AGR-distinctions
(which is simply not possible in French, and possible by resorting to clitics in Northern Italian
dialects).
repeated here:
In order to capture these facts, we should refine our parameter for the AGR-identifier,
(138) a. AGR must have an AGR-identifier.
b. X can be an AGR-identifier iff X is rich in phi-features (number and person).
c. AGR o /Spec of AGR is the AGR-identifier of AGR.
0.b) mentions richness in number and person as necessary for AGR o to be the AGR-
identifier. In fact, if we look at the Italian dialects mentioned above, subject inversion involves
person agreement, but not number-agreement (see Brandi & Cordin (1989:fn 10): 103
103 Modern Standard Arabic behaves the same as these
dialects.
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