Comparative Syntax of the Balkan Languages (Oxford ... - Cryptm.org

INTRODUCTION 11thematic feature is attracted to the subject generated in the matrix sentence, and itcomes from the lower verb (agreement between the two predicates also follows).Here, then, we have three alternative views on raising, control, and obviation,and new answers for two of the basic questions raised in this area of syntaxand semantics concerning the languages of the Balkans.Dalina Kallulli, in "Clitic Doubling in Albanian and Greek" deals withclitics as functional categories and with their syntactic and semantic effects onthe clause. She studies doubled Accusatives, as in (10) with clitic and doubleshown in bold.(10) a. An-a e lexoi libr-in. AlbAnn-the it read book-theb. / Anna to djavuse to vivlio. Grkthe Ann it read the book"Ann read the book.'Clitic doubling is often cited among distinguishing characteristics of Balkanlanguages, and an early semantic discussion of (indefinite) doubling is found inKazazis and Pentheroudakis (1976). Precise generative analyses for this phenomenon,however, were first proposed for Romance and Semitic languages(including Jaeggli 1982 and Borer 1984) and served as one of the bases for therich syntactico-semantic analysis of Greek by Anagnostopoulou (1994). In theseand other works that we leave uncited, doubling is variously related to theanimate, human, specific, definite, or referential features of nominal expressions.Kallulli takes a different position by arguing that in Albanian and Greek,Accusative doubling indicates that nominal expressions are defocused. focusbeing defined as the most informative part of the utterance. Sentences withdoubling as in (10) can be felicitous replies to Who read the book? (answer:Ann) or What did Ann do with the book? (Read (it)), but not to What did Anndo? (Read the book) nor to What did Ann read? (The book). In brief, doublingis possible when the subject or the verb are in focus, but not when the directobject is in focus. In this, Kallulli differs from Anagnostopoulou, who speaksof definiteness and referentiality as crucial factors. This semantic hypothesis isimplemented structurally via Sportiche's analysis of clitic constructions (1995),which makes compatible earlier proposals on clitic movement (as in Kayne1975) and on clitic base-generation (as in Jaeggli 1982 and Borer 1984, above).Namely, Kallulli adopts the idea that the clitic is base-generated as the head of afunctional projection, and the double raises (covertly) to the specifier of thisprojection to check a feature, which is one current method to account for the cooccurrenceof clitic and double. The relevant feature of accusative clitics inAlbanian and Greek is determiner (D), so they must double determiner phrases(DP) not (bare) noun phrases (NP). As a result, definite and indefinite nounphrases as DPs may always be doubled; see (11). By contrast, bare singulars asNPs can never be doubled (12-13):(11) a. An-a dome te-(a) blente nie fustan. AlbAnn-the wanted te-(her) buy a dress