Reflexive clitics are verbal, not pronominal
Date
2022
Authors
McGinnis, Martha
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Canadian Journal of Linguistics
Abstract
I argue that reflexive clitics are not pronominal, but verbal. Cross-linguistically, reflexive
clitics can realize either an unaccusative or an unergative Voice head, both of which allow anaphoric
interpretations (as suggested by the work of Reinhart and Siloni 2004, 2005). I contrast
the anaphoric Voice analysis with two well-known pronominal analyses of reflexive clitics:
one, proposed for French, postulating an anaphoric external argument (McGinnis 1998,
Sportiche 1998), and another, proposed for Icelandic figure reflexives, postulating an expletive
argument in [Spec, pP] (Wood 2014, 2015; Wood and Marantz 2017). Evidence against the
external-argument analysis for French includes: a language-internal contrast between unergative
and unaccusative anaphoric clauses (Labelle 2008); the absence of a c-command requirement
on the licensing of anaphoric Voice; the absence of a lethal ambiguity effect with
anaphoric Voice (McGinnis 1998, 2004); and the interpretation of focus constructions with
seul ‘only’ (Sportiche 2014, Haiden 2019). Evidence against the Icelandic expletive-argument
analysis includes: the observation that not all figure reflexives have a pP, or allow an impersonal
passive (Moser 2021); and the difficulty of extending the analysis to other languages
with reflexive clitics – in particular, the difficulty of accounting for the widespread observation
that anaphoric clitics are restricted to referential dependencies involving the external argument.
Description
Keywords
expletive argument, figure reflexive, impersonal passive, lethal ambiguity, reflexive clitic
Citation
McGinnis, M. (2022). “Reflexive clitics are verbal, not pronominal.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 67(3), 328-352. https://doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2022.28