Linguistics in Göttingen - A platform for empirical and theoretical linguistics

Louise Raynaud (Göttingen)

Romance reflexives, past participle agreement and the PCC


(Practice talk for NELS 48)

Whereas reflexivized direct objects always trigger past participle agreement in French and Italian, French past participles do not agree if the indirect object is reflexivized, while in Italian agreement surfaces in these cases.

      (1) French: no past participle agreement
            Lucie           s’           est         remis-Ø/*e                   le   prix.                
            Lucie.nom  se.dat  be.3sg   give.ptcp-m.sg/*f.sg the prize.acc    
           ‘Lucie gave herself the prize.’

      (2) Italian: past participle agreement
            Lucia           si           è            dat-a/*o                        un  premio. 
            Lucia.nom  se.dat   be.3sg   give.ptcp-f.sg/*m.sg  a    prize.acc
           ‘Lucie gave herself the prize.’

French and Italian differ in another aspect, namely the Person Case Constraint (PCC, Bonet (1991)). French obeys the strong version of the PCC (*IO > 1/2.DO), whereas Italian only bans *3.IO > 1/2.DO combinations, in virtue of the weak version of the PCC.
I argue that these two observations should be connected, and that the difference between French and Italian can be derived via the availability of Multiple Agree, following Anagnostopoulou (2005): French does not allow Multiple Agree while Italian does. I demonstrate that the asymmetry between French and Italian facts in dative reflexives follows from this as well.