Verb Movement, Adverbs and Clitic Positions in Romance

Abstract

The present article explores so-called interpolation structures in the dialects of southern Italy where, in contrast to most standard Romance varieties, the otherwise inseparable nexus consisting of clitic and verb can be interrupted by a specific class of intervening adverbs. In addition to providing substantial independent evidence for Cinque's (1999) richly-articulated clause structure and strictly ordered sequence of adverb positions, the proposed analysis of the southern Italian dialect data is demonstrated to shed light on the nature of pronominal cliticization and verb movement in Romance more generally. In particular, cliticization and verb movement are argued to variously target one of two positions in Romance, one associated with a clause-medial functional projection and the other associated with a relatively low functional projection, giving rise to four possible language types in accordance with attested Romance parametric variation.

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