Non-Argumental Clitics in Spanish and Galician: A Case Study of the Distribution of Solidarity and Ethical Clitics
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation explores the properties of what traditional grammars call “superfluous elements” or non-arguments, so-called Ethical Dative Clitics (Bello 1954, Seco 1962 among others) and Solidarity Clitics (Álvarez, Rosario, X.L. Regueira & H. Monteaguedo 1986) in Spanish and Galician. This research fills an important gap in the existing formal literature on these forms, providing the first thorough syntactic and typological investigation of the latter phenomenon. The study of non-argumental datives encounters difficulties at different levels: at a descriptive/empirical as well as at a theoretical level. From a descriptive point of view, there are no, so far in the literature, clear syntactic tests to divide these two groups of non-arguments. It is crucial to identify features that can help delimit the different categories and set them apart. The source of the theoretical problem comes from its intrinsic syntactic and pragmatic properties, which differ from the other pronominal clitic datives. One of the most distinctive syntactic properties of a non-argument is that is uniquely represented by the dative clitic. The novelty of this research is that demonstrates not only that non-arguments can be formally distinguished from other datives, arguments marked with dative case, but also delineates how they differ from one another. Ethical Dative Clitics (EthCls) and Solidarity Clitics (SolCls) display different syntactic, morphological, and discursive properties. This study unveils important distributional properties of EthCls and SolCls that have been unnoticed in the literature. Two main restrictions apply to EthCls: (i) the inability to appear in constructions with Subject Dative Experiencers such as Inversion Predicate Constructions (IPCs) and (ii) the inability to appear in certain intransitive constructions. The SolCl share discourse properties with Tag Questions. And the licensing of the SolCl in root and embedded contexts is conditioned by the subject and verb…
abstract: This dissertation explores the properties of what traditional grammars call “superfluous elements” or non-arguments, so-called Ethical Dative Clitics (Bello 1954, Seco 1962 among others) and Solidarity Clitics (Álvarez, Rosario, X.L. Regueira & H. Monteaguedo 1986) in Spanish and Galician. This research fills an important gap in the existing formal literature on these forms, providing the first thorough syntactic and typological investigation of the latter phenomenon. The study of non-argumental datives encounters difficulties at different levels: at a descriptive/empirical as well as at a theoretical level. From a descriptive point of view, there are no, so far in the literature, clear syntactic tests to divide these two groups of non-arguments. It is crucial to identify features that can help delimit the different categories and set them apart. The source of the theoretical problem comes from its intrinsic syntactic and pragmatic properties, which differ from the other pronominal clitic datives. One of the most distinctive syntactic properties of a non-argument is that is uniquely represented by the dative clitic. The novelty of this research is that demonstrates not only that non-arguments can be formally distinguished from other datives, arguments marked with dative case, but also delineates how they differ from one another. Ethical Dative Clitics (EthCls) and Solidarity Clitics (SolCls) display different syntactic, morphological, and discursive properties. This study unveils important distributional properties of EthCls and SolCls that have been unnoticed in the literature. Two main restrictions apply to EthCls: (i) the inability to appear in constructions with Subject Dative Experiencers such as Inversion Predicate Constructions (IPCs) and (ii) the inability to appear in certain intransitive constructions. The SolCl share discourse properties with Tag Questions. And the licensing of the SolCl in root and embedded contexts is conditioned by the subject and verb…
author: Huidobro, Susana
keywords: Syntax, Non-arguments, Ethical, Clitics, Solidarity, Datives, Spanish
date published: 2022-02-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:59:14Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York