The Challenge 2019
1st FARM CHALLENGE
CLITICS
Barcelona, 15 February 2019
1st FARMM Challenge
Formal Approaches to Romance Microvariation and Microcontact
The FARMM initiative organizes the first Challenge, a workshop oriented at providing an answer to specific questions to a specific dataset within a relevant phenomenon. The event will be held at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona on 15 February 2019.
The empirical domain of this challenge is clitics.
INVITED SPEAKERS:
- Rita Manzini (University of Florence)
- Paco Ordóñez (Stony Brook University)
- Ian Roberts (University of Cambridge)
PROGRAMME (.pdf)
15 February 2019 - Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Campus del Poblenou
Roc Boronat, 138, Barcelona - Room: Sala d'activitats 55.003
9.00 – 9:20 Welcome
9.20 – 10:00 Maria Rita Manzini
The challenge 1 Proclisis/enclisis alternations in Romance:
Microvariation and macrocategories in syntax
10.00 – 10:40 Francisco Ordóñez
The challenge 2 Split configurations, clitics and weak pronouns
10:40 – 11:10 Coffee break
11:10 – 11:50 Ian Roberts
The challenge 3 Interactions of clitics with the left periphery
11:50 – 13:30 CHALLENGE: discussion among the contenders + open question time
13.30 – 15:00 Lunch
15:00 – 15:35 Clàudia Pons-Moll, Jordi Fortuny
Enclisis/proclisis alternation and defectivity in Majorcan and Minorcan Catalan gerundenclitic sequences
15.35 – 16.10 Diego Pescarini
Some diachronic remarks on the emergence of Romance clitics
16.10 – 16.40 Coffee break
16:40 – 17:15 Paolo Lorusso, Andrea Moro
On the propredicative clitics in Italo-Romance
17:15 – 17:50 Adolfo Ausín, Francisco Fernandez-Rubiera
Towards a uniform account of accusative and dative clitic doubling
17.50 Conclusive roundtable
20:00 Dinner at El Menjador de la Beckett (Pere IV, 228-232, Barcelona)
DATASETS (.pdf)
The datasets are the followings:
DATASET 1
Current syntactic analyses claim that in most Romance languages clitic placement occurs
in either T or v (Kayne 1991, Sportiche 1998, Roberts 2010, Gallego 2016 a.o.). However,
in several varieties proclitic/enclitic placement is affected by phenomena/features
encoded in C:
- in most Romance languages, clitic placement is affected by Finiteness, see (1);
- in all medieval Romance languages and in present day western Ibero-Romance,
enclisis is forbidden in sentences featuring Focus/Wh fronting, see (2);
- subject clitic inversion is conditioned by illocutionary Force (Munaro 2010);
- enclisis is never permitted with complementisers introducing
irrealis/subjunctive clauses, whereas realis/indicative clauses are more liberal
with respect to clitic placement (see Fernández-Rubiera 2010; Pescarini &
Benincà 2014). If the two Cs are located respectively in Fin0 and Force0
(Ledgeway 2007), the pattern in (3) and (4) confirms that C heads affect
cliticisation.
(1) a. dice che lo sa (Italian)
pro.says that it=knows
‘He/she says that he/she know is’
b. Dice di saperlo
pro.says to know=it
‘He/she says that he/she know is’
(2) a. Quem me chamou / *chamou-me? (Port.)
Who 1.ACC= call.PST.3SG call.PST.3SG=1.ACC
‘Who called me?’
b. Só ele a entende / *entende-a
Only he 3SG.F= understand.3SG understand.3SG=3SG.F
‘Only he understands her’
(3) a. 'do:ʧə ka sə lu 'maɲɲə 'sɛmprə
says that to.him/her-self= it= eats always
b. 'do:ʧə ka 'maɲɲə sə lu 'sɛmprə
says that eats =to.him/her-self=it always
‘He/she says that he/she always eats it’
(4) a. 'wojə kə tə lu 'mɪɲɲə
I.want that to.you= it=eat
b.*'wojə kə 'mɪɲɲə te lu
I.want that you.eat =to.yourself =it
‘I want you to eat it’
DATASET 2
Phonological analyses cannot always account for stress shift phenomena triggered by
enclitic placement, see (1) and (2). Enclisis/proclisis asymmetries arguably result from a
lexical alternation, as witnessed by patterns of fully-fledged suppletion, cf. (3).
(1) a. t o 'portə (Neapolitan)
you= it= I.bring
‘I’ll bring it to you’
b. porta-t-íllə
bring=to.yourself=him/them.M/it.M
‘bring him/it.m/them for you’
(2) Finir-lù ‘to end it’ (Viozene, Lig.)
saver-lù ‘to know it’
portama-rù ‘let us take it’
vindirù ‘sell it’
servirsì ‘to help oneself’
(3) a. Il me le donne (French)
he to.me= it=gives
‘He gives it to me’
b. Donne-le-moi!
give=it=to.me
‘Give it to me!’
The nature of the alternation, however, remains unclear. Ordóñez and Repetti (2006) argue that the alternation results from the presence of two classes of pronouns, viz. weak vs clitic (but see Pescarini 2018 a.o.). However, one wonders how the distribution of lexical variants – regardless of their inner structure – is ultimately linked to (or affected by) the syntactic mechanisms yielding proclitic/enclitic placement (see above).
CHALLENGE
- How can we model clitic placement in order to capture the above interaction between C heads and clitic placement?
- How can the same model account for the interaction between lexical selection and clitic placement in order to account for patterns of allomorphy and suppletion?
- What are the predictions that your model makes with respect to contact between varieties with clitics obeying different constraints?
Call for papers
Papers addressing one or more aspects of the challenge are welcome. New data that can shed light on the issues are particularly encouraged. Each paper presentation will be allotted 25 minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion. Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract, or two joint abstracts per author.
Authors are asked to submit their anonymous abstracts as a PDF file to the following address: formal.microvariation@gmail.com (you will receive a confirmation email soon after your submission arrives).
Abstracts should be no longer than two pages in length (including examples and references), in a 12point font, single line spacing and 2,5 cm. margins.
IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline for submission: 30 november 2018
Notification of acceptance: 15 december 2018
Organizing committee
Roberta D'Alessandro
Anna Pineda
Cristina Real
Scientific committee
Heather Burnett
Jan Casalicchio
Silvio Cruschina
Roberta D'Alessandro
Adina Dragomirescu
Ángel Gallego
Alexandru Nicolae
Diego Pescarini
Anna Pineda
Francesc Torres-Tamarit