Connecting Agreement, Information Structure and Specificity: Evidence from Clitic Doubling
1. Goal: The goal of this paper is to show how the notions of specificity, presuppositionality and topichood
(in the sense: ‘givenness’/complement of focus, Schwarzschild 1999) interrelate. In line with Cresti (1995)
and Endriss (2006), I contend that topical arguments of verbs are always specific and/or presuppositional,
both when they are DPs and CPs syntactically. The empirical heart of the paper is constituted by two
cognate, yet arguably distinct phenomena that have been notoriously recalcitrant to analysis, namely: (i)
clitic doubling of (dative/genitive) indirect objects (IOs); and (ii) clitic doubling of direct objects (DOs).
While the literature on clitic doubling in various languages converges on the view that DO clitic doubling is
much more restricted than IO clitic doubling (cf. Suñer 1988, Sportiche 1996 for Spanish; Kallulli 2001 for
Albanian; Anagnostopoulou 2003 for Modern Greek – MG; Farkas & von Heusinger 2003 for Romanian), to
date, there exists no unified syntactic account of the two (but cf. Farkas & von Heusinger 2003 for a
semantic analysis in terms of referential stability). The major claim of this paper is that clitic doubling is
always a spell-out of agreement with a topical argument (which, in turn, entails referential stability of sorts).
2. Data: In some languages (e.g. Albanian) datives are invariably doubled by clitics. In (1a) this applies to an
(in)definite (note that doubling is insensitive to vP-internal object scrambling), in (1b) to a wh-dative, and in
(1c,d) to quantificational datives. I.e., IO (doubling) clitics seem to behave as object agreement markers.
(1) a.
b.
c.
Eva
*(i)
dërgoi (lule)
Eva.the CL,DAT,3S
sent
(flowers)
‘Eva sent Ana flowers’ / ‘Eva sent a girl flowers’
Kujt
*(i)
fole?
whoDAT CL,DAT,3S
talked.2S
‘Who did you talk to?’
Ben.i *(u)
blen
gjithë vajzave(t
Ben.the themDAT buys
all
girlsDAT(the)
‘Ben buys all (the) girls flowers.’
Anës
/ një vajze
Ana.theDAT / a girlDAT
lule.
flowers
(lule).
(flowers)
d. Nuk *(i)
fola
askujt.
not CL,DAT,3S talked nobody
‘I didn’t talk to anybody.’
Furthermore, in several languages (e.g. Albanian, Bulgarian, MG) so-called ‘quirky subjects’ are invariably
clitic doubled not only when they bear dative/genitive case but also when they bear accusative case and
irrespective of whether they are definite or indefinite, (2). (The accusative DPs in (2) qualify as quirky
subjects by virtue of the fact that they bind the pronouns inside the nominative themes.)
(2) a.
b.
Benin / një djalë *(e)
shqetëson
sjellja
Ben.theACC a boy CL,ACC,3S
bothers
behaviourNOM
‘His (own) behaviour bothers Ben / a boy.’
Ton Yánni
*(ton) ponái to
kefáli tu.
the YánnisACC
himCL,ACC hurts
the
headNOM his
‘Yannis has a headache.’
e
AGR
tij.
his
(Albanian)
(MG)
Turning to (non-quirky) DOs, in some languages (e.g. MG) they can and in some others (e.g. Albanian) they
must be clitic doubled iff they are outside the focus domain (still irrespective of their (in)definite status), as
shown by the Albanian data in (3) through (6) – note the complementarity of felicity conditions between the
minimally different pairs with and without doubling clitics in the given contexts. That is, DO doubling clitics
trigger a topical interpretation of their associate, a conclusion that is corroborated by the fact that in
Albanian/MG existential constructions the (non-topical) DO of ‘have’ cannot be doubled, (7).
(3) A: What did Anna do?
B: Ana
(*e)
lexoi
librin
/ një libër.
Ana.theNOM 3S,CL,ACC read
book.theACC / a book
‘Ana read the book.’
(4) A: What did Ana read?
B: Ana (*e) lexoi librin / një libër.
(5) A: Who read the/a book?
B: Ana *(e) lexoi librin / një libër.
(6) A: What did Ana do with the/a book? B: Ana *(e) lexoi librin / një libër.
(7) (*I)
kishte minj
në
gjithë apartamentin.
(Albanian)
CL,ACC,3PL had
miceACC in
all
apartment.the
‘There were mice all over the apartment’
However, even within one and the same language (here: Albanian) the broader picture is more complex than
presented so far, as revealed by the fact that DOs instantiated by first and second person full pronouns are
always clitic doubled (see (8)), as are DOs instantiated by the quantifier ‘all’ (which also holds for
Argentinian Spanish and MG – see (9)).
(8) Mua
*(më) / ty
*(të)
meFP,ACC
meCL you2S,FP,ACC youCL
‘Eva asked me / you / us’
(9) a. *(I)
pashë të gjithë.
b. *(Los)
vi
todos.
c. *(Tus)
idha
olus.
themCL,ACC saw.1s allACC
‘I saw them all’
/
ne
*(na)
usFP,ACC
usCL
/ ju
*(ju) pyeti
Eva.
you2P,FP,ACC youCL asked3S Eva
(Albanian)
(Argentinian Spanish)
(MG, example from Tsakali 2007)
Finally, clitic doubling of CP-complements triggers factivity, as in (10)/(11) for Albanian/MG, respectively.
(10) a. Besova
se
Beni
shkoi (por
në
fakt
ai
nuk
shkoi).
believed-I
that
Ben
left
(but
in
fact
he
not
left)
‘I believed that Ben left (but in fact he didn’t)’
b. E
besova
se
Beni
shkoi (*por në
fakt
ai
nuk
shkoi).
itCL,ACC believed-I
that
Ben
left
(but
in
fact
he
not
left)
‘I believed the fact that Ben left (*but actually he didn’t)’
(11) a. Pistepsa
oti
o Janis efije
(ala stin pragmatikotita den ejine kati tetio).
believed-I
that
the Janis left
(but in.the reality neg happened something such)
b. To
pistepsa
oti
o Janis efije
(*ala stin pragmatikotita den ejine kati tetio).
itCL,ACC believed-I
that
the Janis left
(but in.the reality not happened something such)
This picture gives rise to the following questions. First, if the nature of agreement and topic markers is
indeed substantially different, why are doubling clitics employed as means for fulfilling such different
functions? Second, why are datives and DOs instantiated by first and second person full pronouns always
doubled? Third, where in this picture and how (if at all) does the fact fit in that ‘all’-quantifier DOs are
obligatorily doubled? Fourth, what is the relation between presuppositionality and topichood/givenness?
3. Making sense: Concerning the first question, a hypothesis worth entertaining is that, in fact, clitic doubling
is always a spell-out of agreement, and that the verb agrees with a third person DO only when the latter is
topical. This basically means that the first question reduces to the question of why third person DOs must be
topical for object-verb agreement to obtain, which I tackle below. Concerning the second question, there
must be some property that dative objects and DOs instantiated by first and second person pronouns share,
which is presumably responsible for the fact that they are invariably clitic doubled. I suggest that the
property that dative IOs and DOs instantiated by full pronouns have in common hinges on the (nature of the
phrase-structure) positions in which they are initially (i.e. externally) merged. More specifically, I contend
that while datives and full pronoun DOs are merged in specifier positions of verbal projections (vP and VP),
DOs instantiated by third person pronouns and non-pronominal (phonetically non-empty) DPs can merge
either in specifier position or in a sister-to-V (i.e. complement) position, depending on their [±specific]
feature (which, as I will argue, is directly related to the [±topic] feature). A variety of facts converge in
corroborating this view. For instance, bare singulars – which are necessarily non-specific – are predicted to
be externally merged in the complement (to V0) position. Note that, crucially, bare singulars cannot occur as
subjects or IOs, but only as predicate nominals and DOs. This is then evidence that contrary to a certain
tradition it is the status of the DO rather than that of the subject that is somewhat special, a specialness that is
in the present account related to a difference in phrase structure positions (alternatively implementable in
terms of the priority of complement-feature checking, à la Sternefeld 2006). Also, the fact that the
asymmetry in (12a) vs. (12b) – namely the (im)possibility of doubling the DO head of a relative clause
depending on its (in)definiteness feature – does not arise with subjects or datives supports this analysis.
(12) a. Lexova një
libër
që
(e)
read-I a
book
that
3S,CL,ACC
‘I read a book that I got from the library.’
b. Lexova libr-in
që
(*e)
read-I book-the
that
3S,CL,ACC
‘I read the book that I got from the library.’
mora
got-I
në
in
bibliotekë.
library
mora
got-I
në
in
bibliotekë.
library
(Albanian)
In addition, as has been hinted in the literature unlike DOs datives always seem to be presupposed, or given.
Thus, I tie the invariable doubling of datives to their presupposed status. This account extends naturally to
doubling of DOs instantiated by first and second person pronouns, since these are of course also given in the
discourse. Interestingly, in Albanian datives can be (optionally) suffixed with the definite determiner even
when they are accompanied with an indefinite one (which unlike the definite determiner is pre-posed).
If doubling clitics mark their doubled associates as [+topic]/[+given], as shown in (3) through (6),
and in view of the fact that clitic doubling triggers factivity, which is in turn defined in terms of
presuppositionality (Kiparsky & Kiparsky 1970), one question that arises is what the connection (if any)
between givenness and presuppositions is. I adopt the view in Kallulli (2006) (attributed to M. Krifka) that a
proposition can shift from being contextually given to being presupposed (i.e. assumed to be true). That is, to
say that a sentence is presupposed can mean one of two things: either it is assumed to be true, or the
proposition that is expresses has been mentioned before. But in spite of this, this distinction mostly seems to
be blurred, in the sense that propositions that are assumed to be true are given (either in the immediate
context or via world knowledge), and that contextually given propositions are most often taken to be true.
Finally, the fact that ‘all’-quantifier DOs are obligatorily doubled, (9), is under this analysis
straightforwardly derived, since the restrictor of such a quantifier is always given (in the sense defined
above). Moreover, the restrictor of ‘all’ is a DP both when it is phonetically overt, or null (i.e. pro). In other
words, the clitic does not double the quantifier, but only its DP-complement (cf. Matthewson’s 2001 analysis
of quantification versus the traditional one in Barwise and Cooper 1981).