Agenda
Luana Sorgini (Utrecht University)
One way for Accusative Case: Theme and Experiencer objects.
Dislocated Accusative Full DPs in Italian display an asymmetry based on their theta-role: only Experiencers (‘AccExs’) can be introduced by the marker a, which is banned when the referent is a Theme (‘AccTheme’):
(1) A-marking of Full DPs in Italian, from (Belletti and Rizzi 1988: 334)
a. AccExs
A Giorgio, questi argomenti non l’ hanno convinto.
A Giorgio, these arguments not him= have.3pl convince.ptcp
‘These arguments did not convince Giorgio.’
b. AccThemes
*A Giorgio, la gente non lo conosce.
A Giorgio, the people not him= know.3sg
‘People don’t know Giorgio.’
In Belletti and Rizzi (1988) this is attributed to the different nature of Accusative Case assigned to the two DPs: inherent in (1a) and structural in (1b). The marker a in (1a) has been traditionally considered a topic marker (Berretta 1989), and not a marker Differential Object Marking (‘DOM’, Bossong 1982), which in Italian is disallowed with Full DPs, as the ungrammaticality of (1b) shows.
In this talk I try to argue that the difference between (1a) and (1b) cannot merely lie in the nature of AccCase, as the same asymmetry is not displayed by pronouns, which require a-marking of AccExs (2a) and allow it when AccThemes are involved (2b):
(2) A-marking of pronouns in Italian, from (Benincà et al. 1988: 135)
a. AccExs
A noi, la soluzione non ci ha soddisfatti.
A us, the solution not us= have.3sg satisfy.ptcp
‘As for us, the solution did not satisfy us.’
b. AccThemes
A te, non ti vogliamo.
A you, not you= want.3pl
‘As for you, we don’t want you.’
The proposal I will try to advance here is that a-marking in both (1) and (2) is a manifestation of DOM, i.e. it concerns the assignment of Accusative Case. Both psych and non-psych verbs in (1) and (2), respectively, are transitive verbs selecting a nominal category (Iwata 1995; Pesetsky 1995; Reinhart 2000; Landau 2010). They differ for the type of phrase they select: PP in (1) and KP in (2). In both cases Accusative Case is assigned via Agree (Chomsky 2000; Chomsky and Kenstowicz 1999) between v and the head of the phrase, (P or K, respectively) and the selected DP inherits case via copying of AccCase feature.
References
Belletti, A. and Rizzi, L. (1988). Psych-verbs and θ-theory. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, pages 291–352.
Benincà, P., Salvi, G., and Frison, L. (1988). L’ordine degli elementi della frase e le costruzioni marcate. In Renzi, L., Salvi, G., and Cardinaletti, A., editors, Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione., volume 1, chapter 2, pages 115–225. il Mulino Bologna.
Berretta, M. (1989). Sulla presenza dell’accusativo preposizionale in italiano settentrionale: note tipologiche. Vox romanica, 48:13.
Bossong, G. (1982). Historische sprachwissenschaft und empirische universalien- forschung. Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 33(1982):17–51.
Chomsky, N. (2000). Minimalist inquiries: The framework (mitopl 15). In Martin, R., Michaels, D., and Uriagereka, J., editors, Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, pages 89–155. MIT press, Cambridge, MA.
Chomsky, N. and Kenstowicz, M. (1999). Derivation by phase. An Annotated Syntax Reader, page 482.
Iwata, S. (1995). The distinctive character of psych-verbs as causatives. Linguistic Analysis, 25(1-2):95–120.
Landau, I. (2010). The locative syntax of experiencers. MIT press.
Pesetsky, D. M. (1995). Zero syntax: Experiencers and cascades. MIT press.
Reinhart, T. (2000). The theta system: Syntactic realization of verbal concepts. OTS Working Papers, pages TL–00.01. Utrecht: Utrecht University.