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

(44) a. *Ho ha fet en Joan ell (mateix)
It-has done the J. he (SELF)
b. *Ho ha fet ell (mateix) en Joan
If instead of ell (mateix) we use an adverbial expression like en persona 'in person',
which has roughly the same interpretation, no such complementary distribution arises: 27
(45) Ho ha fet en Joan en persona
It-has done the J. in person
This strongly suggests that emphatic elements such as ell (mateix) (and, likely, its
English construction-mate himself) do not have the same distribution of an adverbial, but rather
that of an inverted subject. One conclusion of this thesis will be that all languages have 'subject
inversion', if overt anaphoric I-subjects were to be termed inverted subjects. To avoid confusion,
we will keep to the traditional terminology, and call inverted subjects only overt [-anaphoric] I-
subjects. This is an informal term, the actual theoretical term being I-subject which is neutral
w.r.t. both the features [±anaphoric] and [±overt].
Now let us consider 0-b). The prediction is that anaphoric I-subjects are not possible in
Catalan. This prediction is also apparently fulfilled:
27 en Joan and en persona do not necessarily form a
constituent:
(i) Ha vingut el ministre a dinar EN PERSONA
Has come the minister to lunch in person
'The minister has come to have lunch IN PERSON'
but they undoubtedly can:
(ii) [¡Error! Marcador no definido.DP¡Error! Marcador no
definido. El ministre en persona ] i [¡Error! Marcador no
definido.DP¡Error! Marcador no definido. la seva dona ]
The minister in person and his wife
The latter fact does not falsify the contention that in
person is in a A'-position: a subconstituent of an Argument in
an A-position is not (necessarily) an Argument.
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