Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Person Case Constraint

The syntactic encoding of perspective

  • Published:
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We propose a theory of the person restrictions in clitic double object constructions, a phenomenon known as the Person Case Constraint (PCC). In our proposal, the PCC is concerned with the encoding of perspective, and is, as such, a syntax-semantics interface phenomenon. A phase-based Person-Constraint, triggered by an interpretable person feature on the Applicative head, is responsible for the grammatical marking of the indirect object as a point-of-view center. Variation in the values of the interpretable person feature are shown to have counterparts in logophoric roles. The Person-Constraint has several clauses, which are subject to parametric variation, and which account for the range of cross-linguistic variation in PCC effects. The clauses of the P-Constraint are regulated by a theory of markedness, making predictions about how widely attested and robust the different types of PCC grammars are.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. DeLancey (1981) extends his proposal about the marking of viewpoint to person-based split ergativity (e.g., in Kham, DeLancey 1981; Dyirbal, Dixon 1979). The essential similarity of these two types of person-sensitive systems of inflectional realization of external and internal arguments—direction marking and person-based split ergativity—has long been recognized (Dixon 1979; DeLancey 1981; Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 2006, a.o.), although see Legate (2014) for a morphological syncretism account of split ergativity based on nominal type.

  2. Various names and characterizations have been given to such hierarchies of person and other categories of reference, e.g., Empathy Hierarchy (DeLancey 1981: 644), Animacy Hierarchy (Comrie 1989:128), Hierarchy of Reference (Zwicky 1977), among others. See Lockwood and Macaulay (2012) for a recent overview.

  3. The proximate/obviative distinction in 3Ps is influenced by animacy, as well as by pragmatic factors such as topicality and salience (Jacques and Antonov 2014: 304). Even in the absence of special proximate/obviative marking, we understand the underlying distinction to be one of ‘mental proximity,’ i.e., suitability to be a perspectival center.

  4. Other speakers of Spanish either do not accept such examples (Bonet 1991; Ormazabal and Romero 2007), or find them ambiguous (Bonet 1991), which suggests that they have the strong PCC or yet another variety, known as the weak PCC. These cases will be discussed later in the paper.

  5. Roca (1992) further notes that the effect only holds when the indirect object clitic is 3P, but not when it is 1P or 2P.

  6. Empathy is defined as “the speaker’s identification […] with a person who participates in the event that he describes in a sentence” (Kuno and Kaburaki 1977: 628). The notion of empathy locus, the event participant with whom the speaker identifies (Kuno 1987), is thus very similar to the notion of point-of-view center that we use. We prefer the term point-of-view center because it is also applicable to discourse participants, not just event participants, because it specifies the nature of the phenomenon by evoking perspective, and because it is suggestive of links with the temporal perspective provided by viewpoint aspect.

  7. Some authors, e.g., Walkow (2012), posit that the Appl head is even lower, a complement to V, with the indirect object in its specifier and the direct object its complement.

  8. The proposal that Appl has an iP and an uP bears resemblance to the analysis of collective nouns such as committee in Wurmbrand (2012): such nouns are said to have a set of interpretable and uninterpretable number features, the former plural and the latter singular ([iN: pl] and [uN: sg]), which can be dissociated in agreement.

  9. Note that n is not necessarily the most specific person feature of the indirect object. The interpretable person feature on Appl is independently valued, and so the agreement mechanism ensures compatibility with the person features of the indirect object, not full identity. For instance, a +proximate n value of iP on Appl is compatible with a [+author, +participant, +proximate] specification of iP on the indirect object. In contrast, the uninterpretable person feature on Appl is unvalued and so agreement fully matches the person features of the direct object. Consequently, P-Uniqueness can rule out configurations of indirect and direct object that only partially overlap in features.

  10. We only focus on PCC effects in indicative clauses. Some authors have noted that PCC restrictions don’t obtain in non-finite clauses (e.g., Albizu 1997: 2 on Catalan and Basque; Nevins and Săvescu 2010: 187 on Romanian). We believe that such facts support the view that PCC restrictions reflect the grammatical encoding of perspective, but we cannot offer an account of different types of clauses here.

  11. The order of accusative and dative clitics in French and Spanish noted here concerns 3Ps. 1P and 2P clitics show case syncretism and always precede 3P clitics. See Nicol (2005) on the order of clitics in Romance languages and dialects, and on historical change in Romance.

  12. Czech and Slovenian have been claimed to allow a re-ordering of the typical (for Slavic) linear order indirect object – direct object, with consequences for the type of PCC effects (Medová 2009; Stegovec 2015). We do not provide an account here of how such reorders work, though the affinity with inverse systems is suggestive, and we briefly return to the issue in Sect. 5.

  13. French 1P and 2P object clitics show syncretism between accusative and dative case; only 3P clitics have distinct forms for the two cases. The accusative 3P clitic precedes the dative 3P clitic in the clitic cluster.

  14. 1P and 2P clitics in Catalan (as in Romance more generally) do not show a distinction between accusative and dative case, only 3P clitics do. The linear order of clitics is 2P-1P-3P.

  15. A number of authors have pointed out similarities between the strong PCC effects found in French and Greek and agreement restrictions found in Icelandic (Boeckx 2000; Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2005, 2017; Béjar and Rezac 2003; Bianchi 2006; Ormazabal and Romero 2007, a.o.). In the presence of quirky dative subjects, agreeing nominative arguments in Icelandic have to be 3P (Sigurðsson 1996; Taraldsen 1995). The restriction can be seen both in monoclausal structures without external arguments (experiencer unaccusatives and passives), and in structures with embedded infinitives under experiencer verbs. We do not have space here to illustrate the facts of Icelandic nor provide a proper analysis. We just note that our account can be extended to Icelandic virtually unchanged, except for the position where the interpretable person feature resides: a v that introduces an experiencer argument, rather than Appl.

  16. Ultra-strong PCC effects have also been documented in Slavic. Sturgeon et al. (2011) provide experimental data suggesting that Czech is of the ultra-strong PCC variety. The authors further report that corpus data, confirmed with native-speaker consultants, support a claim made in Medová (2009) that the otherwise ungrammatical Acc-Dat order obviates PCC violations. Because of this, Sturgeon et al. (2011) do not endorse the view that Czech has PCC effects, as these are traditionally understood. Bhatt and Šimík (2009), on the other hand, classify Czech as having weak PCC.

  17. The *<3,3> prohibition is also present in various Catalan dialects (Bonet 1995; Walkow 2012). In Standard Catalan, the *<3,3> prohibition holds only when the dative is 3P singular; when the 3P dative is plural, it can co-occur with a 3P accusative (see Bonet 1991: 74). Prohibited orders can be realized by substituting the dative clitic by the clitic hi. This clitic is analyzed by Anagnostopoulou (2003); Nevins (2007) and Rezac (2011) as a locative clitic, i.e., non-agreeing in person. Bonet (2008) and Walkow (2012) treat hi as a dative clitic, also without person specification. Regardless of the exact status of hi, its use amounts to a deletion of the person feature from the dative clitic, which is in agreement with our suggestion that [+proximate] and [−participant] are incompatible in the relevant dialects.

  18. The applicative suffix ng is likely the source for the dative case form of the direct object in ditransitives, as direct objects in mono-transitives are typically marked accusative.

  19. Nevins and Săvescu (2010: 187) write that “clusters with a 3rd person dative clitic are uniformly unacceptable, regardless of number.” We have indeed found speakers for whom this is the case but have also confirmed with other speakers that the order <3,2> is acceptable.

  20. Farkas and Kazazis (1980: 76–77) note that ethical datives are less acceptable than goal datives in <3,2> combinations (but not for all speakers), and they attribute this to the fact that ethical datives are more natural empathy loci than goal datives, which in turn are more natural empathy loci than themes, accounting for PCC effects. However, it is generally believed that ethical dative clitics do not give rise to PCC effects (Perlmutter 1971; Anagnostopoulou 2003; Bianchi 2006; Juitteau and Rezac 2007; Rezac 2011, a.o.) and they are analyzed as being higher in the structure (Bosse et al. 2012; Charnavel and Mateu 2015). We thus assume that ethical datives are not associated with an interpretable p-feature. Furthermore, on our account <3,2> configurations in me-first grammars are not subject to the P-Constraint. Therefore, we consider the effect observed by Farkas and Kazazis (1980) to be independent of the PCC.

  21. According to the judgements of one of the authors and as confirmed by 4 native speaker consultants, though reports in Haspelmath (2004) suggest otherwise.

  22. Romanian and Bulgarian present a complication with plural direct object clitics (as noted by Nevins 2007 for Romanian). The orders <3,2> and <1,2>, which are acceptable when the accusative clitic is singular (29a), become unacceptable when the accusative clitic is plural. The <3,1> and <2,1> orders remain unacceptable. It appears that Bulgarian has a strong PCC grammar (<3,3> orders are allowed) while Romanian has a super-strong PCC grammar (prohibiting <3,3> orders) with plural accusatives clitics. Because of such complications, Ciucivara (2011) argues that Romanian does not exhibit PCC effects. Nevins and Săvescu (2010) attribute the facts to the syncretism between accusative and dative case that 1P and 2P plural clitics exhibit in Romanian (the same is true for Bulgarian). We do not develop here an account of the role of number in PCC effects, but note that similar differences between singular and plural have been described for other languages with PCC effects and direct/inverse systems. In Shambala, which has the strong PCC, combinations of a plural and singular 3P require the plural 3P to be the direct object (Duranti 1979). Nevins and Sandalo (2011) report that number affects the direct/inverse system of Kadiwéu.

  23. Judgments are confirmed by 5 native speakers. We have also confirmed the absence of CLR effects with 1 native speaker of Romanian.

  24. Recall that when the direct object is plural, Bulgarian additionally prohibits <3,2> and <1,2> configurations (see fn. 24), suggesting a strong PCC setting. If indeed the plural paradigm is strong, we would expect CLR effects to obtain. Results here are inconclusive and require more investigation. 2 native speakers do not find (i) acceptable, but 3 native speakers do.

    1. (i)
      figure aa

  25. Though see Anagnostopoulou (2003) and Haspelmath (2004) for claims that there are differences in acceptability between weak pronouns in double object structure in English that are suggestive of PCC effects.

  26. The non-agreeing direct object also appears in the dative, rather than in the unmarked, nominative case. A further complication arises in past/perfective sentences, which follow an ergative pattern. See Béjar and Rezac (2009: 64–67).

  27. The anti-agreement strategy is also available in the case of *<3,3> violations in dialects of Catalan. <3,3> orders are realized by deleting the person feature from the accusative clitic. A combination of els ‘3pl.acc’, and li ‘3sg.dat’, results in the combination [əlzi] which Bonet (1995: ex. (4c)) argues is the 3pl.dat /lzi/. In other words, the person feature of the accusative clitic has been deleted, and only the number feature survives, and it is spelled-out on the dative clitic. Such facts lend support to a uniform analysis of PCC and *<3,3> effects, as noted by Walkow (2012).

  28. The question arises as to what Case mechanism licenses the non-agreeing object. We leave this issue unresolved, as it is independent of our main concern, but note the separation of case and agreement in recent syntactic research. Another question concerns the uninterpretable p-feature on Appl. Here we can follow Preminger (2014), who suggests that failed agreement (with an uninterpretable probe) need not lead to ungrammaticality.

  29. A similar case is found in Matsigenka. Benefective verbs with a 1P/2P direct object (a PCC violation) can be realized through an alternative strategy that involves the use of a benefective pro-form ashi, with the verb agreeing only with the direct object (O’Hagan 2014: 20–21, ex. (37)).

  30. It is worth pointing out that the absence of a clitic cross-referencing the indirect object in Kambera and Matsigenka is not simply a morpho-phonological phenomenon. Kiowa, a language discussed in Adger and Harbour (2007), shows PCC effects even when a gap in its agreement paradigm leaves the agreement for the indirect object null. In Kiowa, the strong PCC effect is seen on the form of the obligatory agreement prefix, a portmanteau morpheme expressing combinations of the ϕ-features of the subject, indirect and direct objects. 3P animate plural indirect objects do not trigger phonologically overt agreement, yet they trigger abstract agreement and also PCC effects (see (ia) and (ib), (Adger and Harbour 2007: ex. (33, 34))).

    1. (i)
      figure ak

  31. The unifying view is not meant to deny differences between ‘pure’ logophoricity and the licensing of reflexives without clause-mate antecedents. See Culy (1997) and Oshima (2007) for discussion.

References

  • Adger, David, and Daniel Harbour. 2007. Syntax and syncretisms of the Person Case Constraint. Syntax 10(1): 2–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aissen, Judith. 1997. On the syntax of obviation. Language 73(4): 705–750.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aissen, Judith. 1999. Markedness and subject choice in optimality theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17: 673–711.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Albizu, Pablo. 1997. Generalized Person-Case Constraint: A case for syntax-driven inflectional morphology. ASJU Geh 40: 1–33.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexiadou, Arthemis, and Elena Anagnostopoulou. 2006. From hierarchies to features: person splits and direct-inverse alternations. In Agreement systems, ed. Cedric Boeckx, 41–62. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2003. The syntax of ditransitives: Evidence from clitics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2005. Strong and weak person restrictions: A feature checking analysis. In Clitic and affix combinations: Theoretical perspectives, eds. Lorie Heggie and Francisco Ordoñez, 199–235. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2008. Notes on the Person Case Constraint in Germanic (with special reference to German). In Agreement restrictions, ed. Roberta D’Alessandro, Susan Fischer, and Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson. 15–47. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2017. The Person Case Constraint. In The Wiley Blackwell companion to syntax, 2nd edn., eds. Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk, 1–47. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom101.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Artstein, Ron. 1998. Hierarchies. Ms., Rutgers University.

  • Bar-Asher Siegal, Elitzur, and Nora Boneh. 2015. Decomposing affectedness: Truth conditional non-core datives in Modern Hebrew. In Proceedings of IATL 30, ed. Nurit Melnik. Vol. 78 of MIT working papers in linguistics, 1–22. Cambridge: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Béjar, Susana, and Milan Rezac. 2003. Person licensing and the derivation of PCC effects. In Romance linguistics: Theory and acquisition, eds. Ana T. Perez-Leroux and Yves Roberge, 49–62. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Béjar, Susana, and Milan Rezac. 2009. Cyclic agree. Linguistic Inquiry 40: 35–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bhatt, Rajesh, and Radek Šimík. 2009. Variable binding and the Person-Case Constraint. Paper presented at 25th annual meeting of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics (IATL), Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

  • Bianchi, Valentina. 2006. On the syntax of personal arguments. Lingua 116(12): 2023–2067.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bliss, Heather. 2005. Formalizing point-of-view: The role of sentience in Blackfoot’s direct/inverse system, MA thesis, University of Calgary.

  • Bliss, Heather. 2013. The Blackfoot configurationality conspiracy: Parallels and differences in clausal and nominal structures. PhD diss., University of British Columbia.

  • Boeckx, Cedric. 2000. Quirky agreement. Studia Linguistica 54: 354–380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonet, Eulalia. 1991. Morphology after syntax: Pronominal clitics in Romance languages. PhD diss., MIT.

  • Bonet, Eulalia. 1994. The person-case constraint: A morphological approach. In MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 22. The Morphology-Syntax Connection, 33–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonet, Eulalia. 1995. Feature structure of Romance clitics. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13: 607–647.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonet, Eulalia. 2008. The person-case constraint and repair strategies. In Agreement restrictions, eds. Roberta D’Alessandro, Susan Fischer, and Gunnar H. Hrafnbjargarson, 103–128. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bosse, Solveig, Benjamin Bruening, and Masahiro Yamada. 2012. Affected experiencers. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 30(4): 1185–1230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bošković, Željko. 2014. Now I’m a phase, now I’m not a phase: On the variability of phases with extraction and ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 45: 27–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bruening, Benjamin. 2001. Syntax at the edge: Cross-clausal phenomena and the syntax of Passamaquoddy, Ph.D. thesis, MIT.

  • Bruening, Benjamin. 2005. The Algonquian inverse is syntactic: Binding in Passamaquoddy. Ms., University of Delaware.

  • Cetnarowska, Božena. 2003. On pronominal clusters in Polish. In Investigations into formal Slavic linguistics: contributions of the fourth European conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages (FDSL), eds. Peter Kosta et al. Vol. 1, 13–30. Bern: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charnavel, Isabelle, and Victoria E. Mateu. 2015. The clitic binding restriction revisited: Evidence for antilogophoricity. The Linguistic Review 32: 671–702.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, eds. Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka, 89–155. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, ed. Michael Kenstowicz, 1–52. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On phases. In Foundational issues in linguistic theory: Essays in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, eds. Robert Freidin, Carlos Otero, and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta, 133–166. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciucivara, Oana. 2011. A cartographic approach to clitic clusters in Romanian. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 56(2): 97–114.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clements, George. 1975. The logophoric pronoun in Ewe: Its role in discourse. Journal of West African Languages 10: 141–177.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comrie, Bernard. 1989. Language universals and linguistic typology, 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coon, Jessica, and Omer Preminger. 2012. Towards a unified account of person splits. In West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 29, eds. Jaehoon Choi et al., 310–318. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Google Scholar 

  • Culy, Christopher. 1994. Aspects of logophoric marking. Linguistics 32: 1055–1094.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Culy, Christopher. 1997. Logophoric pronouns and point of view. Linguistics 35: 845–859.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DeLancey, Scott. 1981. An interpretation of split ergativity and related patterns. Language 57: 626–657.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Demonte, Violeta. 1995. Dative alternation in Spanish. Probus 7: 5–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dixon, Robert. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55: 59–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doliana, Aaron. 2013. The super-strong Person-Case Constraint: A syntactic rule-interaction approach. Poster presented at the Workshop on Opacity in Grammar, Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop 28. University of Leipzig.

  • Duranti, Alessandro. 1979. Object clitic pronouns in Bantu and the topicality hierarchy. Studies in African Linguistics 10(1): 31–45.

    Google Scholar 

  • É. Kiss, Katalin 2013. The inverse agreement constraint in Uralic languages. Finno-Ugric Languages and Linguistics 2(1): 2–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farkas, Donka, and Kostas Kazazis. 1980. Clitic pronouns and topicality in Rumanian. In Chicago Linguistic Society 16, 75–82.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 1988. Agreement in Arabic, binding and coherence. In Agreement in natural language, approaches, theories, descriptions, eds. Michael Barlow and Charles A. Ferguson, 107–158. Stanford: CSLI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 1993. Issues in the structure of Arabic clauses and words. Vol. 29 of Studies in natural language and linguistic theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Foley, William. 1991. The Yimas language of New Guinea. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foley, William. 1986. The Papuan languages of New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Georgi, Doreen. 2008. A distributed morphology approach to argument encoding in Kambera. Linguistische Berichte 213: 45–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerlach, Birgit. 2002. Clitics between syntax and lexicon. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hale, Kenneth. 1973. Person marking in Walbiri. In A Festschrift for Morris Halle, eds. Stephen R. Anderson and Paul Kiparsky, 308–344. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haspelmath, Martin. 2004. Explaining the ditransitive Person-Role Constraint: A usage-based account. Constructions+ 2004.

  • Jacques, Guillaume, and Anton Antonov. 2014. Direct/inverse systems. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(7): 301–318.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Juitteau, Mélanie, and Milan Rezac. 2007. The French ethical dative: 13 syntactic tests. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics 9: 97–108.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kayne, Richard. 1975. French syntax: The transformational cycle. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klaiman, M.H. 1992. Inverse languages. Lingua 88: 227–261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klamer, Marian. 1997. Spelling out clitics in Kambera. Linguistics 35: 895–927.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klamer, Marian. 1998. A grammar of Kambera. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kuno, Susumu, and Etsuko Kaburaki. 1977. Empathy and syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 8: 627–672.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuno, Susumu. 1987. Functional syntax: Anaphora, discourse, and empathy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Legate, Julie Anne. 2014. Split ergativity based on nominal type. Lingua 148: 183–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lockwood, Hunter T., and Monica Macaulay. 2012. Prominence hierarchies. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(7): 431–446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manzini, Rita. 2012. From Romance clitics to case: Split accusativity and the Person Case Constraint. In Romance languages and linguistics 2010. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Leiden, 2010, eds. Irene Franco, Sara Lusini, and Andrés Saab, 1–20. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Medová, Lucie. 2009. PCC effects in Czech. Paper presented at Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (FASL) 18. Cornell University.

  • Migdalski, Krzysztof. 2006. The syntax of compound tense in Slavic. PhD diss., University of Tilburg.

  • Nevins, Andrew. 2007. The representation of third person and its consequences for Person-Case effects. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25: 273–313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nevins, Andrew. 2011. Multiple agree with clitics: Person complementarity vs. omnivorous number. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29: 939–971.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nevins, Andrew, and Filomena Sandalo. 2011. Markedness and Morphotactics in Kadiwéu [+ participant] agreement. Morphology 21: 351–378.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nevins, Andrew, and Oana Săvescu. 2010. An apparent ‘Number Case Constraint’ in Romanian: The role of syncretism. In Romance linguistics 2008: Interactions in Romance, eds. Karlos Arregi et al. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nichols, Lynn. 2001. The syntactic basis of referential hierarchy phenomena: Clues from languages with and without morphological case. Lingua 111: 515–537.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nicol, Fabrice. 2005. Romance clitic clusters: On diachronic changes and crosslinguistic contrasts. In Clitic and affix combinations, eds. Lorie Heggie and Francisco Ordoñez, 141–197. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Oehrle, Richard. 1975. The grammatical status of the English dative alternation, Ph.D. thesis, MIT.

  • O’Hagan, Zachary. The syntax of Matsigenka object-marking. Ms., University of California, Berkeley.

  • Ormazabal, Javier, and Juan Romero. 2007. The object agreement constraint. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25: 315–347.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oshima, David. 2007. On empathic and logophoric binding. Research on Language and Computation 5: 19–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pearson, Hazel. 2015. The interpretation of the logophoric pronoun in Ewe. Natural Language Semantics 23: 77–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perlmutter, David. 1971. Deep and surface structure constraints in syntax. New York: Rinehart and Winston Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Postal, Paul M. 1990. French indirect object demotion. In Studies in relational grammar 3, eds. Paul M. Postal and Brian D. Joseph, 104–200. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Preminger, Omer. 2014. Agreement and its failures. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Reichenbach, Hans. 1947. Elements of symbolic logic. New York: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reinhart, Tanya, and Eric Reuland. 1993. Reflexivity. Linguistic Inquiry 24(4): 657–720.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rezac, Milan. 2006. Escaping the Person Case Constraint: Reference-set computation in the φ-system. Linguistic Variation Yearbook 6: 97–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rezac, Milan. 2011. Phi-features and the modular architecture of language. New York: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Roca, Francesco. 1992. On the licensing of pronominal clitics: The properties of object clitics in Spanish and Catalan, MA thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

  • Rosen, Carol. 1990. Rethinking Southern Tiwa: The geometry of a triple-agreement language. Language 66(4): 669–713.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sells, Peter. 1987. Aspects of logophoricity. Linguistic Inquiry 18: 445–479.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann. 1996. Icelandic finite verb agreement. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 57: 1–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In Grammatical categories in Australian languages, ed. Robert M.W. Dixon, 112–171. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stegovec, Adrian. 2015. Personality disorders and missing persons deriving the Person-Case Constraint without case. Ms., University of Connecticut.

  • Sturgeon, Anne, Boris Harizanov, Maria Polinsky, Ekaterina Kravtchenko, Carlos Gómez Gallo, Lucie Medová, and Václav Koula. 2011. Revisiting the Person Case Constraint in Czech. In Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (FASL): The University of Maryland, College Park Meeting, Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taraldsen, Knut Tarald. 1995. On agreement and nominative objects in Icelandic. In Studies in comparative Germanic syntax, eds. Hubert Haider, Susan Olsen, and Sten Vikner, 307–327. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Tucker, Mathew. 2013. Building verbs in Maltese. PhD diss., UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz.

  • Walkow, Martin. 2012. Goals, big and small. PhD diss., UMass.

  • Warburton, Irene. 1977. Modern Greek clitic pronouns and the ‘surface structure constraints’ hypothesis. Journal of Linguistics 13: 259–281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiltschko, Martina. 2014. The universal structure of categories: Towards a formal typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wurmbrand, Susi. 2012. Agree(ment): Looking up or looking down? Lecture given in Agreement Seminar, MIT.

  • Zribi-Hertz, Anne. 1989. Anaphor binding and narrative point of view: English reflexive pronouns in sentence and discourse. Language 65: 695–727.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zúñiga, Fernando. 2006. Deixis and alignment: Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zubizarreta Maria Luisa, and Roumyana Pancheva. 2017. A formal characterization of person-based alignment: The case of Paraguayan Guaraní. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 35(4): 1161–1204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zwicky, Arnold. 1977. Hierarchies of person. In Chicago Linguistic Society, Vol. 13, 714–733.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Thomas Borer, Isabelle Charnavel, Elsi Kaiser, Stefan Keine, Javier Ormazabal, and Susi Wurmbrand for insightful discussions. We also thank the students in the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 syntax seminars at USC, where parts of this work were developed, as well as audiences at the Universidad Catolica Pontificia del Perú, Lima (July 2016); at USC’s Syntax+, NELS 47 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Hispanic Linguistic Symposium at Georgetown University, and at University of Arizona (October 2016); Syntax Interface Lectures at Utrecht University and at Unicamp, Campinas, Brasil (November 2016); Workshop on the PCC at the University of Vienna (December 2016), and at the University of Connecticut Linguistic Colloquium (March 2017). We have also benefited from presentations of an early version of this work at the 4th Cambridge Comparative Syntax Conference, Cambridge University, and at the 25th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, Bayonne, France (May 2015); and at the VII Encuentro de Gramática Generativa, Buenos Aires (July 2015). Constructive comments by four anonymous reviewers and by our editor Julie Anne Legate helped make the paper better.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 301 GFS, Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Roumyana Pancheva & Maria Luisa Zubizarreta

Authors
  1. Roumyana Pancheva
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Maria Luisa Zubizarreta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roumyana Pancheva.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Pancheva, R., Zubizarreta, M.L. The Person Case Constraint. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 36, 1291–1337 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-017-9395-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-017-9395-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation