On restructuring: theory, language acquisition and variation

Anna Cardinaletti
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
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The talk will discuss restructuring (Rizzi, 1978/1982) and in particular, the distribution of clitic objects with restructuring verbs (modal, aspectual or motion). Clitic pronouns are cliticized on either the lexical verb or the higher, functional verb, a phenomenon called clitic climbing.

The theoretical aspects will be discussed, namely whether the absence of clitic climbing is associated with a monoclausal or a biclausal structure (Rizzi, 1978/1982; Cinque, 2004; Cardinaletti & Shlonsky, 2004) as well as the acquisition of clitic climbing and in particular children’s preference for clitic climbing over non-climbing (Eisenchlas, 2003; Lobo & Vitorino, 2021; Cardinaletti, Cerutti & Volpato, 2024).

While the two positions are optional in languages like Italian, massive variation is observed across Romance languages and in particular Italo-Romance varieties (Manzini & Savoia, 2005; Cardinaletti, Giusti & Lebani, 2024). The issues of variation and optionality will raise important theoretical questions.

References

Cardinaletti, Anna, Sara Cerutti & Francesca Volpato. 2024. On the acquisition of clitic placement in restructuring: A study on monolingual Italian children, Isogloss.

Cardinaletti, Anna, Giuliana Giusti & Gianluca E. Lebani. 2024. Clitic climbing across Italy: Variation, optionality, and the role of bilectalism, submitted for the Proceedings of CIDSM 16, Naples, September 15, 2022.

Cardinaletti, Anna, & Ur Shlonsky. 2004. Clitic positions and restructuring in Italian. Linguistic Inquiry 35(4): 519-557.

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2004. Restructuring and Functional Structure. In A. Belletti (ed.), Structures and Beyond, 132-191. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

Eisenchlas, Susana. 2003. Clitics in child Spanish. First Language 23(2): 193–211.

Lobo, Maria, & Inês Vitorino. 2021. Acquisition of clitic climbing by European Portuguese children. In L. Avram, A. Sevcenco, & V. Tomescu (eds), L1 Acquisition and L2 learning. The View from Romance, 13-38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Manzini, Maria Rita, & Leonardo Maria Savoia. 2005. I dialetti italiani e romanci. Morfosintassi generativa, Volume 1. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.

Rizzi, Luigi. 1978/1982. A restructuring rule in Italian syntax. In S.J. Keyser (ed.), Recent Transformational Studies in European Languages, 113-158. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press; reprinted in Issues in Italian Syntax, 1-48. Dordrecht: Foris.