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Clitic placement and the Anti-V2 effect in European Portuguese

Insights from uninflected verbs

 | Newcastle University
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Abstract
Clitic placement with European Portuguese uninflected verbs is problematic for prosodic analyses. While ‘proclisis triggers’ give rise to obligatory proclisis with inflected verbs, they often lead to optional proclisis/enclisis with uninflected verbs (Raposo, E. and Uriagereka, J., 2008. Clitic Placement in Western Iberian: A Minimalist View. In: G. Cinque and R. Kayne, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax. [online] Oxford University Press. pp.639–697. Available at: 〈[URL]〉 [Accessed 15 November 2024].), except for aspectual/quantificational adverbials with head-like behaviour (, 2013a. Posição dos prenomes pessoais clíticos. In: E. Raposo, M. F. Bacelar do Nascimento, L. Segura and A. Mendes, eds. Gramática do Português. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. pp.2231–2302.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). These patterns provide support for a syntactic ‘Anti-V2 requirement’, whereby clitics usually raise to adjoin to T and either: (a) an XP raises to/through spec FinP and the verb stays in Asp (resulting in proclisis); or (b) the verb raises through T to Fin (resulting in enclisis); but not both (building on Fernandez-Rubiera, F., 2009. Clitics at the edge : clitic placement in Western Iberian Romance languages. PhD. Georgetown University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Fernandez-Ruberia, F., 2010. Forceo, Finitenesso and the placement of clitics in Western Iberian Romance languages. Estudos de lingüística galega, 21, pp.76–95.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The special behaviour of uninflected infinitives can be explained by the possibility of clitics attaching to a lower verbal host and then moving with that host to T resulting in enclisis (Raposo, E. and Uriagereka, J., 2008. Clitic Placement in Western Iberian: A Minimalist View. In: G. Cinque and R. Kayne, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax. [online] Oxford University Press. pp.639–697. Available at: 〈[URL]〉 [Accessed 15 November 2024].). Aspectual/quantificational heads block verb movement to T, ruling out enclisis via ‘low fusion’.
Article outline
  • 1.Clitic placement in European Portuguese with inflected verbs
    • 1.1Proclisis triggers
    • 1.2Adverbial proclisis triggers can be heads
    • 1.3Enclisis (and mesoclisis)
  • 2.Towards an analysis of EP clitic placement
    • 2.1Previous analyses
    • 2.2The Anti-V2 analysis
    • 2.3Fleshing out the analysis
  • 3.The curious behaviour of European Portuguese uninflected verbs
    • 3.1Clitic placement with uninflected infinitives
    • 3.2Raposo & Uriagereka’s (2008) ‘low fusion’ proposal
    • 3.3Evidence for the importance of tense
  • 4.Putting it all together: A unified analysis of the patterns
    • 4.1Optional enclisis with uninflected infinitives
    • 4.2No low fusion with adverbial head proclisis triggers
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
References (33)
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