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Double auxiliaries, anteriority and terminativity

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Abstract

In this work I analyze a construction containing an additional past participle auxiliary in Romance and German dialects and show that, although apparently similar, the semantic value of the additional auxiliary is different in the two sets of dialects: in German it is an index of terminativity, in Romance of anteriority. However, an implicational scale ruling the distribution of the additional auxiliary which goes from unergative to passive verbs (going through unaccusative verbs) is valid across all dialects shows that there is a strict relation between the two auxiliaries have and be which can be captured in terms of incorporation of a preposition/determiner as proposed by Kayne.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Language Science, University of Venice—CNR Padua, Ca’ Bembo, Dorsoduro, 7035, Venice, Italy

    Cecilia Poletto

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  1. Cecilia Poletto
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Correspondence to Cecilia Poletto.

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Poletto, C. Double auxiliaries, anteriority and terminativity. J Comp German Linguistics 12, 31–48 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-009-9024-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-009-9024-x

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