On the Syntax of Subnominal Clitics: Cliticization and Ellipsis

Abstract

This article uses the properties of the French subnominal clitic en as a probe to explore various issues in current syntactic theory. Section 2 presents some of its chief properties; section 3 deals with the way they relate to the VP-internal hypothesis for subjects; section 4 discusses the intricate ways in which the null subject parameter interacts with the syntax of en/ne in French and Italian; section 5 analyzes the contrast between ''adnominal en'' -as in J'en ai lu le premier chapitre (I en-have read the first chapter) -and ''quantitative en'' -as in J'en ai lu trois (I en-have read three) -with respect to preverbal subjects, and explores the respective properties of ''encliticization'' and nominal ellipses in French and English. It will be shown that a natural extension of Kayne's (1994:8.6) analysis of de to en sheds light on mysterious properties of en. From a more theoretical perspective, the article can be read as a fresh attempt to vindicate the view that the parallelism between the internal structures of IP and DP is closer than traditionally believed.

Head-ing toward PF

“…7 A first conceptual drawback is that the account relies on government, which the Minimalist Program tries to dispense with for reasons we will not go into here (see Chomsky 1993. It is true that the phenomena covered in such studies on ellipsis processes as Lobeck's and Zagona's still await a ''governmentfree,'' minimalist treatment, but recent work (Boeckx 1999, Depiante 2000, Pollock 1998) suggests that the crosslinguistic distribution of ellipsis might be derived from independent parametric options, without recourse to government.…”

On the Syntax of Number in Romance

“…See alsoKayne (1975),Pollock (1998), among others, for analyses of so-called partitive en in French.…”

Movement under Control

“…But even if we grant the contrast, it is not clear why it argues against the MTC. All we need to do is adopt Pollock's (1998) claim that en is a clitic heading a big DP, taking its NP associate as a complement. Since en is the head, it is the element that is -marked.…”