Phi-features and the Modular Architecture of - UMR 7023 - CNRS

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1/2.ACC DAT clusters. Thus, there have been French varieties reported to accept
(*)Elle me t'a présenté 'She introduced me.A (me) to you.D (te)' but not *Elle me
lui a présenté 'She introduced me.D (me) to him.D (lui)' (Heger 1966: 28f., Ashby
1977: 76, Simpson and Withgott 1986: 160 note 6, Schwegler 1990: 99, Laenzlinger
1993: 257 note 14, Nicol 2005: 159f.). Most French varieties in the literature,
and all accessible to me, strongly reject them (Kayne 1975, Blanche-Benveniste
1975, Couquaux 1975, Laenzlinger 1993). The weak PCC is said to be more
common in Spanish, Catalan, and Italian.
Yet it would appear that the PCC repair only sees the strong PCC even in
grammars with the weak version, so that when Elle me t'a présenté if fine, so are
the repairs Elle m'a présenté à toi and Elle m'y a présenté with the repair. Bonet
(2008: 125 note 5) makes this point for the Catalan analogue of the y-repair, and
hints occur for both repairs in the literature on French (Schwegler 1990: 99, 229
note 53) and for the strong pronoun repair in Italian (Bianchi 2006: 2042).
This state of affairs may be indicative of the nature of the weak PCC. The
strong-weak PCC split has been taken to reflect different options for person Agree
(Anagnostopoulou 2005, Nevins 2007). The idea is attractive not least because the
subjectEA→objectO person hierarchy interactions of chapter 3 also sometimes treat
1/2EA→2/1O differently from 3EA→1/2O (see further sections 3.4, 5.9). However,
Ormazabal and Romero (2007: 332-4) and others mount a strong case that, in
some Spanish and Italian grammars at least, the weak PCC is a mirage:
– For clitic-doubling, one of the clitics in the weak PCC clusters does not
behave as an argument but rather like the nonargumental 'ethical' dative.
– The relaxation of the strong PCC is available to an idiosyncratic set of
verbs, e.g. enviar 'send' and not mandar 'send'. Kempson and Chatzikyriakidis
(2008) find the same for Italian, along with arbitrary choice of tense.
– The clitic clusters tolerated by the weak PCC are not all 1/2-2/1 combinations,
but an idiosyncratic subset: frequently, te me 'you(SG) me' but not
*me te in Spanish and Catalan, inversely in French, beside *vous nous
'you(PL) us' in all three languages (cf. Rivero 2008 on Spanish, Laenzlinger
1993: 257 note 14 for French, and for Italian, Evans et al. 1978: 160,
Bianchi 2006: 2040, and esp. Cardinaletti 2008). Speakers who tolerate
Spanish te me presento 'you me introduced' and its Catalan analogue vary
in permitting the reading 'introduced you to me' only, or also 'introduced
me to you' (Bonet 1991: 179f., Albizu 1997a: note 12). 98
Laenzlinger (1993: 258) and Ormazabal and Romero (2007: 334) suggest that
one of the arguments in the weak PCC 1/2-2/1 sequences is akin to the nonargumental
ethical dative. Its interpretation as an argument may be idiomatic, in the
98 For similar variation with French multiple dative clitics, see Nicol (159f.), Miller (1992: 265).