Reflexive clitics are verbal, not pronominal
| dc.contributor.author | McGinnis, Martha | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-02-07T19:46:38Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-02-07T19:46:38Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2022 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2022 | |
| dc.description.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. | en_US |
| dc.description.reviewstatus | Reviewed | en_US |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Faculty | en_US |
| dc.identifier.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 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.1017/cnj.2022.28 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/14764 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Canadian Journal of Linguistics | en_US |
| dc.subject | expletive argument | |
| dc.subject | figure reflexive | |
| dc.subject | impersonal passive | |
| dc.subject | lethal ambiguity | |
| dc.subject | reflexive clitic | |
| dc.subject.department | School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures | |
| dc.title | Reflexive clitics are verbal, not pronominal | en_US |
| dc.type | Article | en_US |