Abstract
The Person-Case Constraint (pcc) is a restriction on co-occurring weak pronominal direct (do) and indirect objects (io) that restricts the person value of the do. This article presents a previously unnoticed variant of the pcc found in Slovenian, where the canonical pcc operates alongside a reverse pcc, where the restriction applies to the io. This pattern is not predicted by standard syntactic approaches to the pcc (which rely on inherent asymmetries between the io and do). It is argued that the pcc (in all its forms) arises with pronouns that are inherently unspecified for a person value and need to receive it externally from a functional head via Agree. The structurally higher pronoun blocks the structurally lower pronoun from receiving a person value, giving rise to the pcc. The reverse pcc then arises due to optional do-over-io clitic movement prior to person valuation. The proposed analysis is shown to capture cross-linguistic variation regarding the pcc including the Strong/Weak pcc split, which is attributed to a variation in the structure of pronouns. The article also establishes a cross-linguistic typology of the reverse pcc, where the reverse pcc exists exclusively as an optional pattern alongside the baseline pcc pattern.
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Notes
All examples are glossed using Leipzig glossing rules. Unmarked number, case, and tense are left out unless relevant, while caseless/case-syncretic pronouns are glossed according to their grammatical role.
The data in this section are from a grammaticality judgment survey performed on 29/30May 2014 through Google Forms. 42 native speakers took part in the survey composed of 24 target and 24 filler sentences. The judgments in the rest of the paper are my own and verified with 4 other speakers.
The two orders are not entirely equivalent in examples like (9). There seem to be discourse factors that influence the choice of one over the other. This will be briefly addressed in Sect. 4.1.1.
There is a contrast for ‘Weak speakers’ between 2p.do»1p.io and *1p.do»2p.io (i). I will argue in Sect. 4.1.4 that (i) is a restriction independent of the pcc (I put it aside pending the discussion below).
- (i)
- (i)
One could also translate this into cartographic functional sequences, where slots correspond to specifiers of dedicated person (PersP), number (NumP), or case (KP) projections, and can only be filled by one element. This is essentially the approach adopted by Ciucivara (2009) and Cardinaletti (2008).
Under this approach, Person-Case Constraint is a misnomer, but I still use pcc as a cover term for all syntactic person restrictions in this article due to it being so ubiquitous and established in the literature.
≫ and » are used respectively to mark asymmetric c-command and linear precedence.
Following convention, “Case” stands for abstract syntactic case.
Řezáč (2008), who gives an alternative, attributes the inaccessibility of dat goals to Agree directly to the obligatory presence of a PP dominating them, assuming PP is a phase that makes the goal invisible for Agree. This change does not affect the incorrect predictions regarding the Slovenian facts.
Note that the French surface clitic order in (17) does not reflect their position in (18). It is crucial for Béjar and Řezáč (2003) (and for my analysis in Sect. 4) that the configuration is io≫do at the stage when v probes. See Sect. 6 for a discussion of the relation between clitic order and the pcc cross-linguistically.
Note that for Béjar and Řezáč (2003) all dat arguments (including clitics) are PPs. The analysis to be proposed in Sect. 4 does not require this assumption. In fact, there is a case to be made that at least dat clitics cannot be PPs. As Abels (2003a,b) shows, in non-P-stranding languages (like Slovenian or French) clitics cannot be complements in PPs as a result of two conflicting requirements: (i) clitics in PPs must extract to a position outside PP, and (ii) PPs block complement extraction in non-P-stranding languages. This can also explain why in French prepositional ditransitives the io is never a clitic (Perlmutter 1971; Kayne 1975).
Anagnostopoulou (2003, 2005) proposes that io and do inherently carry different sets of φ-features: io only has [π], while do only has [#] if 3p or has both [#] and [π] if 1/2p. Adger and Harbour (2007), similarly, propose that the io must always have a [participant] feature, even if 3p—in contrast to the do. In both approaches, the pcc arises due to a Case-checking asymmetry that such differences yield in a doc. In simplified terms: in the presence of an io a 3p.do can check Case while a 1/2p.do cannot.
A similar principle is employed by Nevins (2007, 2011), who proposes that both Strong and Weak pcc arise due to constraints on MA. The idea is that what counts as a conflicting specification, not the option of MA itself, is parameterized. If both goals have non-conflicting [π] values, the probe Agrees with them both, triggering clitic-doubling. However, if the two goals have conflicting [π] values, Agree is impossible with the lower one, yielding the pcc. Crucially, Agree never takes place with 3p goals in his system. This creates an issue though, as clitic-doubling must also take place with 3p objects. Thus, 3p clitics must be assumed to surface even when Agree fails, but this is at odds with Preminger’s (2009) insight that failed Agree always results in the lack of clitic-doubling, never in “default” clitic-doubling.
There is another link between the pcc and binding, noted by Ormazabal and Romero (2007) (attributing it to Roca 1992): in some languages animate do clitics cannot be bound in the presence of an io clitic. Bhatt and Šimík (2009) also note for Slovenian that with the do»io clitic order, the binding ban applies to the io clitic (parallel to the reverse pcc). I take the constraint as additional support for analyzing the pcc in terms of Kratzer (2009) (but see Charnavel and Mateu 2015 for an alternative view).
Number restrictions in docs only seem to arise due to language specific morphological factors (Ciucivara and Nevins 2008; Nevins 2011), whereas the pcc arises even with morphologically inert null markers (Albizu 1997b; Ormazabal and Romero 2007) and is insensitive to morphological factors like syncretism (Adger and Harbour 2007). I do not, however, exclude the possibility of pcc-like restrictions being sensitive to animacy and definiteness (see Ormazabal and Romero 2007). If Richards (2008) is correct, these notions are manifestations of [π] features and such restrictions should then also follow from my proposal.
The difference in the valued/unvalued status between [π] and [Γ] can also be related to the curious absence of pcc effects with reflexive clitics in Bulgarian (Rivero 2004) and Slovenian (Stegovec 2016a). Unlike the reflexive clitics in languages where these do yield pcc effects (Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2005), the reflexive clitics in Bulgarian and Slovenian never show number/gender contrasts—suggesting the lack of [Γ] features, but do pattern morphologically with 1/2p pronouns—suggesting the presence of [π] features. Due to the lack of [iΓ], these clitics are then not eligible goals for the [uΓ] probe on v. A reflexive io then does not block Agree between v and a non-reflexive do, which can then be valued 1/2p parasitically on [Γ], explaining why the pcc is voided in such cases in Bulgarian and Slovenian. In Slovenian, this holds for both Strong and Weak pcc, as well as the reverse pcc with reflexive dos (Stegovec 2016a).
Note that although do’s unvalued [iπ] is here technically an active probe without a matching goal in its probing domain, the last resort default value allows the derivation to proceed, in line with Preminger (2014). As we will see later, different displacement possibilities for the do may change this outcome.
I do not argue against Multiple Agree as a possible operation, I simply show that it is not needed to derive the Weak pcc (but see Haegeman and Lohndal 2010 for explicit arguments against its existence).
Although the checking operation predates Agree, they can be equated for present purposes. What is important is that they are both operations that occur between matching feature sets; the issue of what happens to uninterpretable features after taking part in a checking or Agree operation arises with both.
A reviewer asks what prevents
in Strong pcc derivations in Slovenian (cf. (34,36)) from moving across 
to SpecvP and be [π]-valued there. Recall that object reordering can occur in Slovenian before v enters the derivation, so either io or do can be closest to v and be [π]-valued without having to move to SpecvP. It is possible that the option of early object reordering (below v) blocks any derivations with late object reordering—like the one suggested by the reviewer. Another possibility is that with the Strong pcc, where Maximize Agree forces [π] to be valued parasitically to [Γ], the immediate valuation of all unvalued features on both v and 
always enforces the immediate deletion of [uπ] on v (cf. (43)), thus leaving the 
without a source of valued [π] even if it moved to SpecvP. As it does not matter for the present discussion which of the options is correct, I leave teasing them apart for future work.Due to the optionality of [uπ] deletion, there are really two derivations that yield 3p≫3p: one parallel to (i)—where [uπ] is not deleted after Agree with
, and one parallel to (iii)—where it is deleted. Since valued and default 3p are equivalent in the [π] system I adopt, both come out the same.Interestingly, some speakers I consulted actually judge do»io clitic orders as slightly improved when the io»do clitic order would result in a banned combination such as *2p.io»1p.do.
I do not, however, exclude the possibility that differences in the timing or locus of auth-valuation could potentially arise due to language-specific factors and give rise to more fine-grained person restrictions like the one we saw with BCS above (see also Nevins 2007 for more similar restrictions). This is something I leave as a possibility to explore in future work; but see Franks (2016) for an analysis of the BCS person restriction based on an earlier version of the analysis of the pcc presented here.
Charnavel and Mateu (2015) in fact argue that the pcc itself should be reduced to this restriction—the io clitic intervenes between the operator and the 1/2p clitic. But this excludes both the Weak pcc and the reverse pcc—the patterns which show that the pcc should not simply be reduced to logophoric licensing.
Anagnostopoulou (2003, 2005) alternatively argues that in these cases strong pronouns simply do not check their φ-features against v, as they do not enter into a Move/Agree relation with v. This means that Case-checking must not be a requirement for strong pronouns (Anagnostopoulou 2003:316–321). While this does capture the facts, it is difficult to see why strong pronouns should be exempt from Case-checking, especially with cases like Slovenian where clitic and strong forms both express the same case contrasts.
One potential exception to this generalization is Icelandic, where strong nom object pronouns are restricted to 3p in the presence of a dat subject (Taraldsen 1995). However, as Schütze (2003) argues, there is evidence that this actually results from the ineffability of the agreement marker itself. I discuss the relevance of the difference between the pcc and this Icelandic person restriction in Stegovec (2016a).
The resulting object is not unlike what was assumed about INFL prior to Pollock (1989), namely that it was a bundle of T and AGR. See also Bobaljik and Thráinsson (1998) regarding the parameterization of the INFL split, which is similar to what I am proposing regarding the clitic/weak pronoun split.
A reviewer suggests English as a potential counterexample, as it appears to have the Strong pcc (Richards 2008). But it is not entirely clear that English deficient pronouns are not clitics. As Bošković (2004a) points out, at least pronouns that license quantifier float cannot be coordinated and must be unstressed (‘*Mary hates you, him, and her all’; ‘*Mary hates THEM all’ vs. ‘Mary hates them all’), which are properties associated with clitics (see also Lasnik 1999 regarding clitic pronouns in English).
See Sheppard and Golden (2002) regarding clitic placement in Slovenian imperatives. I noted above that Slovenian is losing a rigid 2nd position requirement, occasionally allowing clitics in the 1st position, but as Sheppard and Golden observe, this is not true of imperatives, which never allow 1st position clitics.
The editor asks if the lack of pcc effects in imperatives could be tied to the perspective shift effects discussed briefly in Sect. 4.1.4. This is an attractive idea, given that imperatives have been argued to shift the perspective to the addressee, just like questions (Speas and Tenny 2003), and we saw in Sect. 4.1.4 that Slovenian questions differ from declaratives in terms of possible clitic combinations. However, imperatives and questions behave differently here: recall that the order of 1p and 2p clitics is more constrained in questions than outside of them and that the pcc effect is actually observed in questions. Furthermore, there is independent evidence that imperatives actually pattern with declaratives, not questions, in terms of perspective encoding. I discuss the relevant semantic and syntactic facts in Stegovec (2017a, 2018).
The pcc effect is perceived as weaker than in declaratives here, although it is stronger again with 3p.f clitics—it is unclear why this is so. A similar weakening of the pcc is also observed in Greek imperatives with the do»io clitic order (see (59b) below and Bonet 1991, Mavrogiorgos 2010 for discussion).
Notice that in order for do-over-io movement to even occur, it cannot be preceded by head-adjunction of the do clitic to V. Because of this I assume here and below that in such cases head-adjoining “as soon as possible” means head-adjoining as soon as possible after do-over-io movement has taken place.
Nothing hinges on the identity of the head(s) between v and T here, but there are many arguments in the literature for projections between vP and TP; e.g.: from verb movement (Belletti 1990; Cinque 1999; Stjepanović 1999), subject positions (Bobaljik and Jonas 1996), and quantifier float (Bošković 2004a).
Tucking in is only relevant when both elements are head-moving or XP-moving: as a SpecKP target always precedes an Ktarget, if one element head-moves to Kand the other element XP-moves to SpecKP, the latter will always precede the head-moved element regardless of the order in which they move.
The editor asks why a clitic may sometimes cross another one outside vP (e.g. in (68a)) without contradicting a previous linearization. In all such cases (but not in (74d)) the clitic order established within vP is always reestablished with the final positions of the clitics in CP. I therefore assume that linearization only cares about the topmost copies of moving elements within a phase, which can be seen as a natural result of combining the approach to copy pronunciation assumed above with phase-based derivations.
As far as I could gather, Werner (1999) uses ‘??’ to mark unacceptability in (77b) because the speakers he consulted tend to replace the weak pronoun forms with strong ones to ameliorate the construction.
From the data provided by Werner (1999) it is impossible to discern whether the restriction is Strong or Weak or some other type of pcc. Czech conforms to Weak pcc with an additional 1p»2p restriction.
A similar case is found in (standard) German, where the Weak pcc arises with weak object pronoun pairs in the Wackernagel position of embedded clauses. Anagnostopoulou (2008:29) notes that while the base order there is generally do»io, speakers may resort to an io»do order to void the pcc effect. Also, when the io and do are both 1/2p person, both do»io and io»do orders are possible.
A small number of the consulted Slovenian speakers also had judgments similar to (81).
I have identified the typological gap as part of an ongoing broad cross-linguistic survey of pcc effects spanning so far 101 languages from 24 families and 3 isolates (Stegovec in preparation b). The survey also reveals the reverse pcc to be quite rare in general; I was able to identify it only in the languages discussed above and a few others. The preliminary findings of the survey, based on a smaller number of languages, were presented in Stegovec (2017b).
The lack of pcc effects here could be due to ios always being strong pronouns in PPs and thus in prepositional ditransitives (see fn. 13), or because Ps may, just like v, bear valued [π] features.
in Strong 
to SpecvP and be [π]-valued there. Recall that object reordering can occur in Slovenian before v enters the derivation, so either 
always enforces the immediate deletion of [uπ] on v (cf. (43)), thus leaving the 
without a source of valued [π] even if it moved to SpecvP. As it does not matter for the present discussion which of the options is correct, I leave teasing them apart for future work.
, and one parallel to (iii)—where it is deleted. Since valued and default References
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Acknowledgements
I thank Amy Rose Deal, Jonathan Bobaljik, Željko Bošković, Paula Fenger, Steven Franks, Laura Kalin, Ivona Kučerova, Troy Messick, Andrew Nevins, Jairo Nunes, Roumyana Pancheva, Omer Preminger, Mamoru Saito, Koji Shimamura, Susi Wurmbrand, and Michelle Yuan for their comments, suggestions, and valuable discussion. I would also like to thank for their feedback the audiences at the UConn LingLunch (October 2014), NELS 45 (MIT), WCCFL 33 (SFU), FASL 24 (NYU), ECO-5 (Harvard), Agreement Across Borders (University of Zadar), and the University of Nova Gorica (January 2015). Special thanks go to the speakers who took part in my survey on the pcc in Slovenian. This paper improved greatly thanks to comments from four anonymous NLLT reviewers, as well as the editor Julie Legate. Finally, I would like to again thank Jonathan, Susi, and especially Željko, for reading and commenting on my drafts and for their guidance. The remaining errors are my own.
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Stegovec, A. Taking case out of the Person-Case Constraint. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 38, 261–311 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-019-09443-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-019-09443-0