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.