This paper provides an overview of the syntax and semantics of Romance clitic impersonal constructions (CL-ICs), as present in the grammars of Spanish and Italian, within the framework of the Minimalist Program. Syntactically, these structures are characterised by the presence of the clitic se ⁄ si, which is analysed as a 0-person clitic, along with other person clitics in Romance, and heads a functional projection in the temporal domain immediately above T(ense). The syntactic properties of CL-ICs can be accounted for with reference to the complex agreement operations involving the clitic se ⁄ si, the empty category in subject position (a null generic pronoun: G-pro), the object argument in transitive contexts, and the features of the heads T and v. The interpretation of CL-ICs crucially relies on the presence of G-pro in the specifier position of vP: it introduces a variable that can be bound by an existential or a universal quantifier, which accounts for the variable quantificational force of CL-ICs. 1 This research was carried out during my stay in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University as a visiting researcher (2006-7).
This paper shows the need to triangulate different approaches in Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research to fully understand late bilinguals' interlanguage grammars. Methodologically, we show how experimental and corpus data can be (and should be) triangulated by reporting on a corpus study (Lozano and Mendikoetxea in Biling Lang Cognit 13(4):475-497, 2010) and a new follow-up offline experiment investigating Subject-Verb inversion (Subject-Verb/Verb-Subject order) in L1 Spanish-L2 English (n = 417). Theoretically, we follow a recent line in psycholinguistic approaches to Bilingualism and SLA research (Interface Hypothesis, Sorace in Linguist Approaches Biling 1(1):1-33, 2011). It focuses on the interface between syntax and language-external modules of the mind/brain (syntax-discourse [end-focus principle] and syntax-phonology [end-weight principle]) as well as a language-internal interface (lexicon-syntax [unaccusative hypothesis]). We argue that it is precisely this multi-faceted interface approach (corpus and experimental data, core syntax and the interfaces, representational and processing models) that provides a deeper understanding of (i) the factors that favour inversion in L2 acquisition in particular and (ii) interlanguage grammars in general.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.