Papers by Matthew L . Maddox
<p>German <italic>sich</italic> and Spanish <italic>se</italic> can... more <p>German <italic>sich</italic> and Spanish <italic>se</italic> can have reflexive or anticausative interpretations but only Spanish <italic>se</italic> can have a passive interpretation. We argue that Spanish Pass<sub>se</sub> is the result of interaction between the subject agreement cycle and the reflexive object cycle. We make two claims: i) <italic>pro</italic> merges in Spec-Voice in Pass<sub>se</sub>, due to the subject agreement cycle; and ii) <italic>se</italic> heads Voice due to the reflexive cycle. The types of reflexive constructions a language has depends on the presence/absence of <italic>pro</italic> and the categorial status of the reflexive pronoun (head or DP). French appears problematic since it has Pass<sub>se</sub> but lacks subject <italic>pro</italic>. However, Pass<sub>se</sub> existed in Old French (Cennamo 1993), which was a null subject language (Vance 1997). Thus, French is consistent with this claim; i.e., it developed Pass<sub>se</sub> when it had subject <italic>pro</italic> and <italic>se</italic> as a head. Pass<sub>se</sub> survived into Modern French as a historical remnant.</p>
The main source of evidence for this contrast comes from an inalienable possession interpretation... more The main source of evidence for this contrast comes from an inalienable possession interpretation of a body part available in the Passse and Impse constructions, but not in the periphrastic passive. Based on the conclusion that there is a projected implicit argument in Spec,Voice in Passse and Impse constructions, we explore consequences for other parts of BP grammar. We also briefly touch upon BP's status as a partial null subject language in contrast to Spanish, a consistent null subject language which also has these se constructions. These se constructions in BP, we suggest, are a residue of an early BP grammar when it still was a consistent null subject language. This paper is structured as follows: in section 2, we review diagnostics from the literature for implicit agentive arguments. We will see that Passse, Impse, and the
The Romance clitic se/si in reflexive, passive, and related constructions has been analyzed as a ... more The Romance clitic se/si in reflexive, passive, and related constructions has been analyzed as a functional head/verbal inflection (Cuervo MC, Datives at large.
In this study, I analyze three syntactic constructions in Liturgical Ladino (LL) that previous au... more In this study, I analyze three syntactic constructions in Liturgical Ladino (LL) that previous authors (Sephiha 1973, 1980, et passim; López-Morillas 1990) have superficially labeled as calques. I extend MacSwan's (1999) Minimalist approach to the bilingual language faculty, to LL. In this language, a single computational component has access to two lexicons, one Hebrew, the other Spanish. Lexical items with their formal features from either lexicon may be selected to enter into the syntactic derivation, thereby producing an apparent hybrid syntax. 0. Introduction Liturgical Ladino, a language described by Sephiha as a Hebrew-Spanish calque, displays syntactic constructions that are ungrammatical in Spanish, such as verbless sentences (1), construct state nominals (2), and multiple determiners (3). (1) a. Este Ø el pan dela afriisyon. (Ladino) this the bread of-the affliction "This is the bread of affliction." b. *Este Ø el pan de la aflicción. (Spanish) (2) a. de pres...
Conservative varieties of Modern Spanish exhibit clitic left-dislocation and accusative clitic do... more Conservative varieties of Modern Spanish exhibit clitic left-dislocation and accusative clitic doubling of pronominal objects. Clitic left-dislocation occurs in Old Spanish but accusative clitic doubling first appears in the fifteenth century, becoming regular in the sixteenth century. Conservative Modern Spanish allows some non-referential null objects but generally lacks null referential objects. However, null referential objects do occur in Rioplatense Spanish (Schwenter 2006). In this paper, I show how these patterns are related. My main claim is that clitic left-dislocation, accusative clitic doubling, and null referential objects become available diachronically as a result of the grammaticalization of object clitics; i.e., van Gelderen’s (2011) Object Agreement Cycle. The stage of the cycle a language is in correlates with whether the language has clitic left-dislocation, accusative clitic doubling, and/or null referential objects. I extend Holmberg, Nayudu & Sheehan’s (2009) ...
Journal of Linguistics, 2017
In this article, we discuss passive se constructions in Romanian and Spanish. We argue that there... more In this article, we discuss passive se constructions in Romanian and Spanish. We argue that there is a projected implicit external argument in passive se constructions in both languages based on an available inalienable possession interpretation of body parts. These constructions, however, differ from each other in one important way: Romanian passive se allows a ‘by’-phrase, while Spanish passive se shows severe restrictions. Moreover, we illustrate that in Old Spanish, passive se freely allowed ‘by’-phrases. Thus, Modern Romanian reflects an earlier stage of Spanish. We propose a linguistic cycle to explain these differences, where Spanish and Romanian are at different stages of that cycle. The approach offers an explanation for a general pattern within Romance, where ‘by’-phrases are initially grammatical with passive se, but then become ungrammatical over time, a pattern to date that has not yet been explained. It also offers a thereotical account for why some languages do not de...
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Papers by Matthew L . Maddox