<div><div><div><p>The present study contributes to our understanding of the effects of age and type of linguistic input in the acquisition of Spanish as a second language in adulthood. I examine the Spanish syntax (word order) of three groups of speakers, monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico and two bilingual English-Spanish speakers born and raised in the United States (N = 53) to measure the effects of an early, oral-based versus a late, written-based exposure to the target language. Results from a sentence completion task show comparable behavior across all groups in the four verb conditions, with a strong tendency to favor the no climbing (enclisis) option, and a proficiency effect among the experimental groups. Results of an acceptability judgment task show comparable behavior across all groups, accepting grammatical proclitic placement and rejecting ungrammatical sentences with climbing. Neither proficiency or group effects were found in this task, although the judgments of the experimental groups were less categorical compared to the native speakers’. The combined results of these two tasks point to an absence of age or input effects in the L2 acquisition of this syntactic phenomenon in Spanish. </p></div></div></div>

Estudos que tratam da sintaxe dos objetos indiretos (OI) no português brasileiro (PB), com base em dados coletados de fonte documental histórica, revelam o uso variado das preposições a e para com OIs interpretados como recipiente/meta, no contexto dos verbos de transferência e movimento, entre eles, dar, levar, e outros. Tais estudos revelam ainda a ausência da preposição a com os chamados verbos de criação, entre eles, construir, desenhar, pintar, etc. nos quais OI é interpretado como beneficiário. Outro fato relacionado aos anteriores pode ser descrito da seguinte forma: no PB, o OI não mais é expresso pelos clíticos dativos de 3a pessoa. Tal estratégia está restrita à escrita formal. Isso sugere que sua expressão morfológica foi afetada. Nosso principal objetivo nesta dissertação é contribuir com novas evidências dos aspectos dinâmicos que caracterizam a variação e mudança na história do PB, com base em um corpus constituído de dados extraídos de peças teatrais dos séculos XIX e XX. Como será mostrado, nossos resultados corroboram os estudos anteriores: há uma forte queda na frequência dos clíticos dativos em seu uso de 3a pessoa. Estes deixam de ser a estratégia principal na expressão do OI pronominal. Com base em Torres Morais & Salles (2010) e trabalhos subsequentes, assumimos que a mudança paramétrica na gramática do PB pode ser descrita como a perda do núcleo aplicativo baixo que introduz o OI dativo em estruturas bitransitivas. A configuração em que uma preposição lexical introduz o OI como seu complemento oblíquo é a única opção encontrada no PB. Por ser um modelo internalista, a Teoria dos Princípios e Parâmetros propõe que a mudança sintática é ativada durante o processo de aquisição da língua materna. A mudança no valor de um parâmetro é catastrófica: uma vez fixado na fase de aquisição da linguagem não poderá ser refixado (cf. Lightfoot, 1979, 1997, 1999). Este tipo de abordagem, porém, não traz respostas para as questões que se referem à dinâmica da mudança sintática. Portanto, seguindo Roberts (2007), assumimos que é perfeitamente possível e desejável que se busque conciliar a abordagem proposta no quadro da teoria dos P&P e a abordagem proposta na Teoria da Variação e Mudança Linguística, tal como formulada por Weinreich, Labov & Hersog (1968) eLabov (1972, 1994).Assumimos ainda a ideia da competição de gramáticas, como proposta por Kroch (1989, 2000, 2001). / Studies on the syntax of indirect objects (IO) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), with data collected from a varied source of historical documents, reveal the variable use of the prepositions a and para introducing the recipient/goal argument, with predicates of transference, such as dar (to give), etc. Another relevant fact is that the preposition a is lost in contexts in which the IO is interpreted as the benefactive, with verbs of creation, such as construir (to build), etc., being replaced by para. Also, a related property is that the IO is no longer expressed by the 3rd person dative pronoun lhe, suggesting that its morphological expression is affected. Our main goal is to contribute to this aspect of variation and change in the history of BP from the perspective of a new data extracted from 19th and 20th centuries plays. Our results corroborate previous studies: there is a strong decrease in the frequency of 3a person dative clitics as a main strategy on the expression of the pronominal IO. Based on Torres Morais & Salles (2010) and subsequent studies we assume a parametric change in the BP grammar, described as the loss of the low applicative head that introduces the dative IO in ditransitive contexts. Thus configuration with the lexical/true preposition is the only option found in (Standard) BP. As an internalist model, the Principles and Parameters Theory assumes that syntactic change is driven by the first-language acquisition process. Consequently the parametric change is catastrophic in each individual in process of learning the mother tongue (cf. Lightfoot, 1979, 1997, 1999). This kind of approach is not insightful for a number of questions concerning the dynamics of syntactic change. Then, following Roberts (2007) we assume that it is perfectly possible and desirable to reconcile the P&P approach with the Theory of Variation and Change, as proposed by Weinreich, Labov &Hersog (1968) e Labov (1972, 1994). We assume also the ideia of competing grammar as proposed by Kroch (1989, 2000, 2001).

Estudos que tratam da sintaxe dos objetos indiretos (OI) no português brasileiro (PB), com base em dados coletados de fonte documental histórica, revelam o uso variado das preposições a e para com OIs interpretados como recipiente/meta, no contexto dos verbos de transferência e movimento, entre eles, dar, levar, e outros. Tais estudos revelam ainda a ausência da preposição a com os chamados verbos de criação, entre eles, construir, desenhar, pintar, etc. nos quais OI é interpretado como beneficiário. Outro fato relacionado aos anteriores pode ser descrito da seguinte forma: no PB, o OI não mais é expresso pelos clíticos dativos de 3a pessoa. Tal estratégia está restrita à escrita formal. Isso sugere que sua expressão morfológica foi afetada. Nosso principal objetivo nesta dissertação é contribuir com novas evidências dos aspectos dinâmicos que caracterizam a variação e mudança na história do PB, com base em um corpus constituído de dados extraídos de peças teatrais dos séculos XIX e XX. Como será mostrado, nossos resultados corroboram os estudos anteriores: há uma forte queda na frequência dos clíticos dativos em seu uso de 3a pessoa. Estes deixam de ser a estratégia principal na expressão do OI pronominal. Com base em Torres Morais & Salles (2010) e trabalhos subsequentes, assumimos que a mudança paramétrica na gramática do PB pode ser descrita como a perda do núcleo aplicativo baixo que introduz o OI dativo em estruturas bitransitivas. A configuração em que uma preposição lexical introduz o OI como seu complemento oblíquo é a única opção encontrada no PB. Por ser um modelo internalista, a Teoria dos Princípios e Parâmetros propõe que a mudança sintática é ativada durante o processo de aquisição da língua materna. A mudança no valor de um parâmetro é catastrófica: uma vez fixado na fase de aquisição da linguagem não poderá ser refixado (cf. Lightfoot, 1979, 1997, 1999). Este tipo de abordagem, porém, não traz respostas para as questões que se referem à dinâmica da mudança sintática. Portanto, seguindo Roberts (2007), assumimos que é perfeitamente possível e desejável que se busque conciliar a abordagem proposta no quadro da teoria dos P&P e a abordagem proposta na Teoria da Variação e Mudança Linguística, tal como formulada por Weinreich, Labov & Hersog (1968) eLabov (1972, 1994).Assumimos ainda a ideia da competição de gramáticas, como proposta por Kroch (1989, 2000, 2001). / Studies on the syntax of indirect objects (IO) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), with data collected from a varied source of historical documents, reveal the variable use of the prepositions a and para introducing the recipient/goal argument, with predicates of transference, such as dar (to give), etc. Another relevant fact is that the preposition a is lost in contexts in which the IO is interpreted as the benefactive, with verbs of creation, such as construir (to build), etc., being replaced by para. Also, a related property is that the IO is no longer expressed by the 3rd person dative pronoun lhe, suggesting that its morphological expression is affected. Our main goal is to contribute to this aspect of variation and change in the history of BP from the perspective of a new data extracted from 19th and 20th centuries plays. Our results corroborate previous studies: there is a strong decrease in the frequency of 3a person dative clitics as a main strategy on the expression of the pronominal IO. Based on Torres Morais & Salles (2010) and subsequent studies we assume a parametric change in the BP grammar, described as the loss of the low applicative head that introduces the dative IO in ditransitive contexts. Thus configuration with the lexical/true preposition is the only option found in (Standard) BP. As an internalist model, the Principles and Parameters Theory assumes that syntactic change is driven by the first-language acquisition process. Consequently the parametric change is catastrophic in each individual in process of learning the mother tongue (cf. Lightfoot, 1979, 1997, 1999). This kind of approach is not insightful for a number of questions concerning the dynamics of syntactic change. Then, following Roberts (2007) we assume that it is perfectly possible and desirable to reconcile the P&P approach with the Theory of Variation and Change, as proposed by Weinreich, Labov &Hersog (1968) e Labov (1972, 1994). We assume also the ideia of competing grammar as proposed by Kroch (1989, 2000, 2001).

abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore the syntax and pragmatics of subject doubling in spoken French. Many prescriptivists have considered it a redundant and ungrammatical form, but over the years, it has gained more interest from syntacticians. It is widely acknowledged that dislocations involve topics, but the position of these structures is very disputed. Some linguists believe in base generation while others state there is movement. The status of subject clitics also comes into play and their role as arguments or agreement markers is crucial to understanding the issues at stake with a topic analysis. It is often argued that the clitics are undergoing a linguistic cycle whereby they lose their function of argument, and need to be reinforced by disjunct pronouns. In this study, I examined which analyses support my data and I attempted to determine what structures tend to be most dislocated by looking at the environment of the discourse in a corpus of spoken French. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. French 2012

This thesis investigates the first language acquisition (L1A) of pronominal object clitics in Cypriot Greek (CG) by typically developing (TD) children, focusing on an exceptional form of non–adult–like clitic placement attested in early data. The aim of the present study is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to sketch the developmental stages in the course of L1A of CG in relation to other clitic languages. On the other, it investigates whether and to what extent syntactic (Agouraki 2001, Terzi 1999a, 1999b), prosodic (Condoravdi and Kiparsky 2001) and interface approaches (Mavrogiorgos 2012, Revithiadou 2006) can account for early clitic production. Research on L1A of clitic pronouns has demonstrated both clitic realisation and omission in child languages. However, no instances of clitic misplacement have been reported for early European languages, with the interesting exceptions of CG (Petinou & Terzi 2002) and European Portuguese (Lobo & Costa 2012). The present thesis examines the L1A of CG in the age range 2−4 on the basis of spontaneous and experimental data, cross−sectional as well as longitudinal, with a focus on clitic placement. Spontaneous speech data were collected from 8 children, and one of the children was also followed longitudinally for a period of 6 months. An elicited production task performed by 50 children was used to generate 3rd person singular accusative object clitics. The results of the study indicate that, for CG: (i) clitic placement in enclisis environments is adult–like from the onset in structures involving single clitics and clitic clusters, as well as in Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation; (ii) clitic misplacement is attested in proclisis contexts in a subset of children aged 2;6 to 3;0; (iii) clitic misplacement does not correlate with early non–finite forms; (iv) occasional realisation of two copies of the clitic is attested in some children aged 2;6 to 3;0; (v) by age 3;6, TD children manifest adult–like clitic placement. These findings raise issues regarding the acquisition of clitics in different classes of languages (Tobler–Mussafia, finiteness–sensitive languages, languages exhibiting second position restrictions), as well as the role of syntax, prosody and the syntax–phonology interface in clitic L1A. The current study suggests that only Tobler–Mussafia languages display clitic misplacement, as attested in the L1A of CG. Clitic misplacement in CG is interpreted within an interface account in line with Revithiadou (2006) and, following the spirit of Bošković (2000), it is assumed that the placement requirement imposed on CG clitics “can be captured in its entirety through a filtering effect of the phonology on the syntax” (2000:105). Clitic placement in CG is an interface phenomenon: the syntax provides two copies of clitic pronouns (Franks 1998) and the syntactic outcome is filtered through a phonology–controlled procedure.

In this work, the pronominal reduplication is interpreted as an agreement of the verb with the object by means of a clitic. In this way, the object resembles the subject, which agrees with the verb by means of an affix. However, while the subject agreement is absolutely regular, the agreement of the object, or reduplication, is conditioned by diverse factors. These factors are the main object of investigation in this work. The reinterpretation of the object clitics as agreement markers is the consequence of their grammaticalization from the original character of unstressed personal pronouns towards the character of verbal affixes. The dative clitics are rather further in this process than the accusative clitics - they conserve less pronominal features, and also the reduplication of the indirect object is much more frequent than the reduplication of direct object. This is related to the fact that the indirect object is by its nature closer to the subject, therefore it favours more the regular agreement with the predicate. Key words: pronominal reduplication, clitic doubling, object pronouns, clitics, direct object, indirect object, spanish syntax

Le système de marquage personnel du kurde centrale, avec un ensemble complexe de paradigmes personnels, présente un bon nombre de problèmes. Par exemple, un enclitique personnel qui marque l’actant oblique, construit avec une préposition dans les constructions au présent, devient un affixe personnel dans les constructions au passé. Les recherches précédentes (Bynon 1979 ; Samvelian 2007 ; Haig 2008 ; Jügel 2009) ont mis en évidence les phénomènes pertinents, mais un traitement global du problème et une explication générale des motivations derrière le phénomène font encore défaut. Nous établissons le statut morphophonologique des paradigmes des personnes et nous examinons en détail le fonctionnement des marques de personnes. Nous proposons une nouvelle analyse du positionnement des enclitiques mobiles en kurde centrale en termes de phonologie prosodique (Selkirk 1995 ; Truckenbrodt 1999 ; Anderson, 2005) selon laquelle une forme de personne enclitique apparait systématiquement après la première phrase phonologique (ou mot prosodique) dans le domaine du syntagme verbal. L’alternance formelle d’un enclitique personnel et d’un affixe personnel est considéré comme le résultat des restrictions sur les combinaisons des enclitiques (Gerlach 2002). D’autres problèmes du système des marques de personnes sont expliqués grâce à un examen plus approfondi des faits de prosodie et par une série de contraintes plus générales de la langue (Prince and Smolensky 1993 ; Yip 1998) qui favorisent l’expression des actants en maintenant distincte l’identité morphologique et phonologique des marques de personnes lorsqu’elles sont en combinaison. / The person-marking system of Central Kurdish, with a complex set of person-marker paradigms, presents a number of problems, especially in the manners in which different person-marker paradigms are distributed for argument-indexing. For instance, a pronominal complement of an adposition is a person form from clitic person markers in a present-tense construction, but the formal expression of the same argument is switched to a verbal affix person marker in a past-tense construction. Previous scholarship (Bynon 1979; Samvelian 2007; Haig 2008; Jügel 2009) has pointed to the relevant phenomena and provided important descriptive facts, but, a comprehensive treatment of the problem is still lacking. In this study, morphophonological status of person marking paradigms is established and argument-indexing function of person-marker paradigms are thoroughly investigated. A novel analysis of clitic placement in Central Kurdish is proposed whereby a clitic is considered to be systematically occurring after a prosodic word. The formal switch from a clitic to a verbal affix person marker in the expression of a number of arguments is analysed as occurring for avoiding certain clitic combinations (Gerlach 2002) since the latter inevitably leads to an improperly placed clitic. A number of other problems relating to seeminlgy non-clitic-

The study of clitic clusters and the restrictions that surface when two or more clitics are combined have long intrigued linguists and, as such, clitic phenomena are at the core of an ever-growing body of research in linguistic theory. However, three aspects remain largely unexplored when it comes to clitic cluster constraints, namely the evolution of these restrictions through time, the perception and processing of different clitic combinations, both acceptable and unacceptable, by native speakers and the acquisition of such combinations by non-native speakers. This dissertation, which focuses on 1st and 2nd person clitic clusters in Spanish, aims to shed new light on clitic phenomena with a new analysis and new data from all these perspectives. Specifically, I study the effects that case and marked features have on Spanish clitic combinations, both synchronically and diachronically. In addition, I explore the effects of clitic combination restrictions in language processing and analyze the learnability issues derived from such restrictions in three groups of speakers of Spanish as a second language whose L1s are English, French and Romanian, respectively. At a particular level, this dissertation is a study of clitic cluster constraints from different perspectives, both traditional and new, namely linguistic theory, diachrony, language processing and language acquisition. At a general level, it constitutes an attempt to explore the ways in which linguistic theory can guide applied research and, conversely, the ways in which experimental data may contribute to linguistic theory.

Esse trabalho baseia-se no estudo da colocação pronominal, pois este já é reconhecidamente um fator crucial na identificação de diferenças gramaticais entre PE e PB, verificadas desde o século XVIII.O objetivo deste trabalho é verificar se há alguma característica na linguagem dos jornais de imprensa negra que os diferencie dos da imprensa de circulação mais ampla e de outros documentos da época. E, assim, confirmar a diferença entre as variantes brasileira e europeia da língua portuguesa não é apenas superficial, mas gramatical, uma vez que enquanto o PE se tornou uma língua de colocação enclítica dos pronomes átonos, o PB tornou-se a mais proclítica das línguas românicas. Sendo assim, foram analisados dois jornais: O Patrocínio (1925- 1930), um periódico da imprensa negra da cidade de Piracicaba; e, a título de comparação, A Gazeta de Piracicaba (1882-1937), um exemplar da imprensa majoritária da época. Os jornais são constituídos de textos de diversos gêneros que trazem, portanto, dados que possuem características distintas e particulares em um mesmo periódico. Nesse contexto, o interesse pela imprensa negra surgiu da possibilidade de analisar textos escritos majoritariamente por negros e para negros. Devido a fatores sociais ligados à escolarização da população negra do período, havia a possibilidade do vernáculo da época encontrar-se mais exposto nesse material. Sendo assim, pretendia-se observar se a colocação brasileira se apresentava de forma mais saliente nesses textos que nos da imprensa majoritária. Porém, a história social mostrou que esses periódicos foram escritos por negros que haviam tido acesso, das mais diversas formas, aos padrões cultos da língua. Dessa maneira, a fim de se adequar aos padrões da sociedade da época, buscavam manter a variante culta da língua em sua escrita. De fato, na comparação dos dados da imprensa negra com os da imprensa majoritária foi possível perceber - no que se refere ao fenômeno estudado - uma grande semelhante entre ambos os jornais. Em particular, verificou-se que esses periódicos apresentam padrões de colocação próximos, ou seja, ambos mostram, ao lado da colocação lusitana, a colocação brasileira em percentuais que não se diferenciam significativamente. / This research is based on the investigation of clitic placement in Portuguese, since this a factor of great importance to identify grammatical differences between Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and European Portuguese (EP), acknowledged since the eighteenth century. The main aim is to verify whether there is any specific characteristic on the texts from the so called black press that distinguishes them from the major press from the period. And, then, confirm that the differences between the Brazilian and European variants exist not only superficially, but also in their inner grammar features. While EP has become a language that prefers enclitic placement, BP is the most proclitic of all romance languages. Hence, two newspapers have been analyzed: One of them, named O Patrocínio (1925-1930), represents the so black press, and the other one, called Gazeta de Piracicaba (1882-1937) is from the major press. Newspapers consist of different text genres, thus this data contains different and particular features among the same paper. In this context, the analysis of a black press newspaper is particularly interesting once the texts were mainly written by afro-descendents people, to afro-descendents. Therefore, the language that was actually used by the people at that time was expected to be found. However, the social and historical aspects of the period showed that, somehow, the main writers of these papers had access to the normative grammar of the language. So, as their purpose was to fit in the society of the period, they tried to maintain, in their texts, what was considered to be the correct grammar at the time. Hence, when the data from both papers was compared, it was verified that they have a very similar clitic placement. That is, both of them present the standard European placement along with the Brazilian placement with very similar percentages.

Resumption has been the object of lively research (Doron 1982; Sells 1984; McClauskey 1990; 2002; Shlonsky 1992; Cann 1999; Sharvit 1999; Alexopoulou 2006; Guilliot 2006; Malkawi 2009; Rouveret 2011) and various analyses consider it a form of agreement, a last syntactic resort or a special kind of ellipsis. On the theoretical side, I survey the issues that are the background of the research, such as the nature of the pronouns that are involved in resumption. I develop a syntactic analysis of resumptive pronouns in which they are clitics (Cardinaletti and Starke 1999; Dechaine and Wiltschko 2002; Roberts 2010) and they form a complex determiner phrase together with the relative pronoun or interrogative pronoun. I argue that when resumption is obligatory, it follows from requirements in the syntax and only when it is optional it is a phenomenon at the syntax-pragmatics interface. On the empirical side, I contrast and compare the pronominal paradigms of Arabic and Romanian, an Eastern Romance language which strikingly shows a similar pattern of resumption as Arabic: (i) obligatory resumption in relativization, (ii) designated relative pronoun. Though for Romanian nobody has disputed the nature of the clitic pronouns as clitic in the sense that I am adopting (Cardinaletti and Starke 1999), it has not been thoroughly documented either. I then discuss the pragmatics of resumption in contexts in which it is optional, such as D-linked questions in Arabic. The difference between obligatory resumption and optional resumption is not found in the syntax, because this same syntactic derivation is associated with different interpretive effects depending on whether it occurs in obligatory or in optional contexts. I argue that the presence of the pronoun when it is not required by the syntax triggers a change in interpretation: the module pragmatics assigns it a pragmatic feature.