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

degraded constructions when the requirement is violated (comparable to *John put on the table
the book). In fact, there are many examples of subject inversion with the order V O S being
perfectly acceptable. I think that the varying degrees of acceptability of the word order V O S
rather depend on the contextual or pragmatic plausibility for the V O sequence to be interpreted
as a topic of conversation (so V O sequences like 'cook the meal', 'pay the bill', etc. readily accept
a postverbal subject, whereas sequences like 'find a curious worm' do not). So, both in Catalan
and, as far as I know, in Italian, sentences like the following are perfectly acceptable:
(22) a. Avui farà el dinar en Joan (Catalan)
Today will-make the lunch the J.
'Today Joan will cook the lunch'
b. Questo mese, pagherà le fatture Gianni (Italian)
This month will-pay the bills G.
'This month Gianni will pay the bills'
Delfitto & Pinto (1992) make the surprising claim that inverted subjects are subject to the
Definiteness Effect, and that apparent counterexamples should be analyzed as involving a Small
Clause structure. They present acceptability contrasts as the following:
(23) Ha recensito il libro un professore/*Gianni
Has reviewed the book a professor / G.
From the empirical point of view, if there is a contrast in 0, it is very feeble: 12 in fact
neither of the options in 0 should be very natural if asserted out of a context. No such contrast
will appear in 0, which is a more felicitous sentence from the pragmatic point of view:
12 The Italian speakers I asked found no such contrast.
1