Abstract:This paper proposes a novel analysis of the exceptional agreement patterns in pronominal het 'it'-clefts with the order het-copula-pronoun in Dutch. We argue that the complex interaction in clefts between case, agreement and word order can be explained from the radical featural defectivity of het 'it': het 'it' has a third person (3P) feature, but no case, number, strength and gender features. We show that het 'it' is different from all personal pronouns in the major dialect groups of Dutch in that it never sh… Show more
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