Infinitive Wh-relatives in romance : consequences for the truncation-versus-intervention debate

Romance clitic left dislocation is widespread across all kinds of nonroot contexts, but it is forbidden in infinitive wh-relatives. This article investigates the extent and nature of this restriction and the consequences it raises for the truncation and intervention analyses of the left periphery of embedded sentences. We will show that current proposals cannot account for the whole gamut of data. In consequence, we will propose that infinitive wh-relatives display a maximally syncretic left periphery, whereas infinitive wh-interrogatives have a full-fledged left periphery, crucially involving ForceP, because they are selected by a higher predicate. This crucial difference between infinitive relatives and interrogatives will also be shown to be consistent with the existence of specialized complementizers for the former but not the latte

On the superficiality of Welsh agreement

A notable feature of Welsh is a number of agreement phenomena, all of which only occur with pronouns. Finite verbs agree with a following pronominal subject, prepositions agree with a following pronominal complement, and a particle which introduces non-finite clauses agrees with a following pronominal subject. Similarly, nouns have a preceding clitic agreeing with a following pronominal possessor, non-finite verbs have a preceding clitic agreeing with a following pronominal object, and what looks like the non-finite form of bod "be", which introduces certain subordinate clauses, has a preceding clitic agreeing with a following pronominal subject. There seems to be a single phenomenon here. Approaches that involve an abstract level face problems and there is no evidence that the phenomenon involves an abstract level. It seems quite plausible to suggest that superficial linear order is crucial, and this idea can be implemented in a straightforward way within linearization-based Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). The properties of agreement also entail that unexpressed noun phrases of various kinds must be represented in the superficial constituent structure and not just at some abstract level, contrary to the view of some frameworks. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V