The goal of this work is to provide an account of dative clitic dependencies in constructions with raising verbs such as to seem in Romanian. Dative clitic experiencers as quirky subjects and dative clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD) constructions are discussed from a syntactic point of view and experimentally tested in a psycholinguistics study. The study contributes to current innovations in the Minimalist Program, presenting new perspectives on Romanian clitic dependencies in raising constructions partially addressed in earlier generative grammar. This study poses new questions regarding raising, the intervention effects of dative clitic experiencers, and the effects of clitic dependencies in ditransitive constructions. Chapter II presents an overview of Romanian raising constructions without dative experiencers. I show that Romanian possesses three raising constructions, based on the type of the embedded clause: subjunctive, infinitive, and indicative. Each of these has three potential locations for the nominative subject, argued to be generated in the embedded clause. Formal mechanisms such as Long Distance and Multiple Agree, Movement, Case and EPP are considered independent of one another. Dative clitic experiencers in raising constructions, analyzed in Chapter III, are claimed to be quirky subjects and to structurally occupy the highest position in the sentence. Having established the role of dative clitic experiencers, I discuss raising constructions involving dative experiencers generated and/or surfacing in various positions, and their effects on operations such as Agree and Move. I then discuss Experiencer Islands, formed by matrix and embedded experiencers in the same utterance, and present the contexts in which they occur. A Grammaticality Judgment Test confirms the existence of such restriction in Romanian. Furthermore, I present an analysis of Experiencer Islands and discuss observed exceptions to the restriction. Dative clitic dependencies such as CLLD constructions and Long Distance CLLD Constructions are also analyzed in this thesis. The experimental study presented in Chapter IV supports theoretical claims and demonstrates that Romanian speakers are aware of dative clitic dependencies, such as clitic experiencer dependencies and clitic dependencies in CLLD constructions, possess the grammatical knowledge of biclausal constructions involving dative clitic dependencies and have the ability to recognize such dependencies.

The goal of this work is to provide an account of dative clitic dependencies in constructions with raising verbs such as to seem in Romanian. Dative clitic experiencers as quirky subjects and dative clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD) constructions are discussed from a syntactic point of view and experimentally tested in a psycholinguistics study. The study contributes to current innovations in the Minimalist Program, presenting new perspectives on Romanian clitic dependencies in raising constructions partially addressed in earlier generative grammar. This study poses new questions regarding raising, the intervention effects of dative clitic experiencers, and the effects of clitic dependencies in ditransitive constructions. Chapter II presents an overview of Romanian raising constructions without dative experiencers. I show that Romanian possesses three raising constructions, based on the type of the embedded clause: subjunctive, infinitive, and indicative. Each of these has three potential locations for the nominative subject, argued to be generated in the embedded clause. Formal mechanisms such as Long Distance and Multiple Agree, Movement, Case and EPP are considered independent of one another. Dative clitic experiencers in raising constructions, analyzed in Chapter III, are claimed to be quirky subjects and to structurally occupy the highest position in the sentence. Having established the role of dative clitic experiencers, I discuss raising constructions involving dative experiencers generated and/or surfacing in various positions, and their effects on operations such as Agree and Move. I then discuss Experiencer Islands, formed by matrix and embedded experiencers in the same utterance, and present the contexts in which they occur. A Grammaticality Judgment Test confirms the existence of such restriction in Romanian. Furthermore, I present an analysis of Experiencer Islands and discuss observed exceptions to the restriction. Dative clitic dependencies such as CLLD constructions and Long Distance CLLD Constructions are also analyzed in this thesis. The experimental study presented in Chapter IV supports theoretical claims and demonstrates that Romanian speakers are aware of dative clitic dependencies, such as clitic experiencer dependencies and clitic dependencies in CLLD constructions, possess the grammatical knowledge of biclausal constructions involving dative clitic dependencies and have the ability to recognize such dependencies.

The goal of this work is to provide an account of dative clitic dependencies in constructions with raising verbs such as to seem in Romanian. Dative clitic experiencers as quirky subjects and dative clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD) constructions are discussed from a syntactic point of view and experimentally tested in a psycholinguistics study. The study contributes to current innovations in the Minimalist Program, presenting new perspectives on Romanian clitic dependencies in raising constructions partially addressed in earlier generative grammar. This study poses new questions regarding raising, the intervention effects of dative clitic experiencers, and the effects of clitic dependencies in ditransitive constructions. Chapter II presents an overview of Romanian raising constructions without dative experiencers. I show that Romanian possesses three raising constructions, based on the type of the embedded clause: subjunctive, infinitive, and indicative. Each of these has three potential locations for the nominative subject, argued to be generated in the embedded clause. Formal mechanisms such as Long Distance and Multiple Agree, Movement, Case and EPP are considered independent of one another. Dative clitic experiencers in raising constructions, analyzed in Chapter III, are claimed to be quirky subjects and to structurally occupy the highest position in the sentence. Having established the role of dative clitic experiencers, I discuss raising constructions involving dative experiencers generated and/or surfacing in various positions, and their effects on operations such as Agree and Move. I then discuss Experiencer Islands, formed by matrix and embedded experiencers in the same utterance, and present the contexts in which they occur. A Grammaticality Judgment Test confirms the existence of such restriction in Romanian. Furthermore, I present an analysis of Experiencer Islands and discuss observed exceptions to the restriction. Dative clitic dependencies such as CLLD constructions and Long Distance CLLD Constructions are also analyzed in this thesis. The experimental study presented in Chapter IV supports theoretical claims and demonstrates that Romanian speakers are aware of dative clitic dependencies, such as clitic experiencer dependencies and clitic dependencies in CLLD constructions, possess the grammatical knowledge of biclausal constructions involving dative clitic dependencies and have the ability to recognize such dependencies.

The goal of this work is to provide an account of dative clitic dependencies in constructions with raising verbs such as to seem in Romanian. Dative clitic experiencers as quirky subjects and dative clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD) constructions are discussed from a syntactic point of view and experimentally tested in a psycholinguistics study. The study contributes to current innovations in the Minimalist Program, presenting new perspectives on Romanian clitic dependencies in raising constructions partially addressed in earlier generative grammar. This study poses new questions regarding raising, the intervention effects of dative clitic experiencers, and the effects of clitic dependencies in ditransitive constructions. Chapter II presents an overview of Romanian raising constructions without dative experiencers. I show that Romanian possesses three raising constructions, based on the type of the embedded clause: subjunctive, infinitive, and indicative. Each of these has three potential locations for the nominative subject, argued to be generated in the embedded clause. Formal mechanisms such as Long Distance and Multiple Agree, Movement, Case and EPP are considered independent of one another. Dative clitic experiencers in raising constructions, analyzed in Chapter III, are claimed to be quirky subjects and to structurally occupy the highest position in the sentence. Having established the role of dative clitic experiencers, I discuss raising constructions involving dative experiencers generated and/or surfacing in various positions, and their effects on operations such as Agree and Move. I then discuss Experiencer Islands, formed by matrix and embedded experiencers in the same utterance, and present the contexts in which they occur. A Grammaticality Judgment Test confirms the existence of such restriction in Romanian. Furthermore, I present an analysis of Experiencer Islands and discuss observed exceptions to the restriction. Dative clitic dependencies such as CLLD constructions and Long Distance CLLD Constructions are also analyzed in this thesis. The experimental study presented in Chapter IV supports theoretical claims and demonstrates that Romanian speakers are aware of dative clitic dependencies, such as clitic experiencer dependencies and clitic dependencies in CLLD constructions, possess the grammatical knowledge of biclausal constructions involving dative clitic dependencies and have the ability to recognize such dependencies.

This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of wh-question formation in Jordanian Arabic (JA) and presents a uniform approach that can accommodate all of its various wh-constructions. JA makes use of five different wh-constructions, four of which involve clause-initial wh-phrases and the fifth is a typical in-situ wh-construction. Although wh-phrases surface clause-initially in four different wh-constructions in JA, I propose that bona fide wh-movement to [Spec, CP] does not occur in any of these constructions, whether overtly in syntax or covertly at LF. I abandon the classification of JA as a wh-movement language (Abdel Razaq 2011) and focus instead on identifying the syntactic role that wh-phrases realize and the underlying structures that feed each wh-construction. I propose that the clause-initial position of the wh-phrase results either from the syntactic function that the wh-phrase serves or from other syntactic operations that are independently attested in JA. There are three clause-initial positions that the wh-phrase can occupy: it surfaces in [Spec, TP] when functioning as the subject of a verbal or verbless structure, in [Spec, TopP] when functioning as a clitic-left-dislocated element (as in CLLD questions and ʔilli-interrogatives involving PRON), or in [Spec, FocP] when undergoing focus fronting. Thus, all instances of clause-initial wh-phrases in JA constitute what I refer to as “pseudo wh-fronting”, as the clause-initial position of the wh-phrase arises from mechanisms other than canonical wh-movement to [Spec, CP]. To account for the interpretation of wh-phrases in JA, I adopt a binding approach in which a null interrogative morpheme (Baker 1970; Pesetsky 1987; Chomsky 1995) unselectively binds the wh-phrase regardless of its surface position, whether clause-initial or clause-internal (in-situ). A major implication of this analysis is that JA is a concealed wh-in-situ language of the Chinese type although it looks at a cursory glance as though it were a wh-movement language of the English type. A broader typological implication of my analysis is the convergence of Cheng’s (1991) Clausal Typing Hypothesis to which JA previously appeared to constitute a counterexample. The recognition of the null interrogative particle, or its optional overt realization as the Q-particle huwweh, as the locus of interrogative clause typing in all JA wh-questions entails that JA employs just one unique strategy to type a clause as a wh-question, as predicted by Cheng’s Clausal Typing Hypothesis, regardless of whether the wh-phrase surfaces clause-initially or clause-internally. / February 2017