When agreement is for covert but not for overt: the case of ustedes plus second person plural inflections in peninsular Spanish

Abstract

The Spanish spoken in western Andalusia is characterised by having a single second person plural pronoun (ustedes) (unlike the standard variety which possesses two) and by inducing two agreements (second person and third person). In this article, I propose an analysis of unagreement configurations that follows the big DP hypothesis of Uriagereka (1995) for clitic doubling constructions. That is, I argue that the overt subject is base generated in the complement of a big DP whose specifier is a silent pronoun (a pro). The overt subject moves to a topic position and the silent pro stays in the subject position. Agreement mismatches arise from the fact that both DPs can trigger agreement. Furthermore, I propose that the different patterns in agreement found with ustedes arise from the diachronic cycle through which overt subjects are first topics. I state that in the process of reanalysis of topics as subjects, there is an intermediate phase in which a big DP emerges. This DP structure contains two different pronouns (one overt and one covert) that can establish different agreement relations. Finally, when the topic is completely reinterpreted as the subject, its agreement spreads throughout syntax, making agreement mismatches disappear.