Defective causative and perception verb constructions in romance. A minimalist approach to infinitival and subjunctive clauses

• Autores: Elena Ciutescu
• Directores de la Tesis: Jaume Mateu Fontanals (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2018
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Alexandra Cornilescu (presid.), Ángel J. Gallego Bartolomé (secret.), Francisco Ordóñez (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia Cognitiva y Lenguaje por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona; la Universidad de Barcelona y la Universidad Rovira i Virgili
• Materias:
  • Lingüística
    • Lingüística sincrónica
      • Sintaxis y análisis sintáctico
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en:  TESEO  TDX 
• Resumen

  • The present dissertation explores aspects of the micro-parametric variation found in defective complements of causative and perception verbs in Romance. The study deals with infinitival and subjunctive clauses with overt lexical subjects in three Romance languages: Spanish, Catalan and Romanian. I focus on various syntactic phenomena of the Case-agreement system in environments that exhibit defective C-T dependencies (in the spirit of Chomsky 2000; 2001, Gallego 2009; 2010; 2014). I argue in favour of a unifying account of the non-finite complementation of causative and perception verbs, investigating at the same time the mechanisms responsible for the micro-parametric variation exhibited by the three languages. I also defend the thesis that Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) configurations are present in Romance languages and that infinitival complements of causative and perception verbs in Spanish and Catalan, as well as subjunctive clauses in Romanian, are manifestations of (Romance) ECM cases.

    The principal aim of this dissertation is to analyse two (apparently) similar configurations paying detailed attention to the syntactic and semantic (a)symmetries between them. These two configurations are made up of causative/perception verbs that subordinate infinitival clauses. The focus is placed on the behaviour of the infinitival subject which can occur pre- or post-verbally, giving rise to issues of clausal architecture, word order patterns, the licensing of objects and subjects, and dependencies found at the level of the Case-agreement system.

    The goal of the thesis is twofold. On the one hand, I propose a unified account for the two configurations based on causative and perception verbs taking infinitival complements. This account is then extended to the case of Romanian subjunctive in the realm of causative constructions. On the other hand, I investigate the syntactic strategies that account for the derivation of the two constructions. My proposal is that, even though causative/perception verb complements receive the same analysis, Catalan and Spanish differ substantially in the mechanisms (object shift, verb movement, raising-to-object) they use in the derivation of the two constructions that are subject to a parametric cut.