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In:Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond: In honour of Leonardo M. Savoia
Edited by Mirko Grimaldi, Rosangela Lai, Ludovico Franco and Benedetta Baldi
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 252] 2018
► pp. 57–72

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Chapter 3
Objects and subjects in the left periphery

The case of a-Topics

 | University of Siena & University of Geneva
Published online: 19 December 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.252.03bel
Abstract
A parallel is highlighted between the linguistic behavior of young Italian-speaking children as emerged in recent experimental work (Belletti and Manetti 2017) with comparative data from other Romance languages such as Balearic Catalan and (previous stages of) Spanish in the domain of a-Topics. A possible path from a-Topics to DOM is drawn, building on previous proposals in Belletti (2017a). a-Marking of topics concerns direct object DPs. A proposal is sketched out as to why subject DPs could not be a-marked when they are also topics in terms of a possibly conflicting requirement arising from the simultaneous satisfaction of both the Topic criterion with a-marking and the Subject criterion (in the sense of Rizzi 2006).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.a-Topics
    • 2.1a-Topics in Italian during development
    • 2.2a-Topics in a comparative perspective
    • 2.3a-Topics in a diachronic perspective
    • 2.4The development of a-marking
    • 2.5When objects are Topics
  • 3.a-Marking on lexical object Topics, not on lexical subject Topics
    • 3.1Instances of a-marked subjects
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
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