Temporal Perihrasis and Clitics in Central Romance Languages

TEMPORAL PERIPHRASIS AND CLITICS IN CENTRAL ROMANCE LANGUAGES Franco Benucci Universit2 di Padova The paper analyzes both the diachronic development and the synchronic syntactic behaviour of the temporal periphrasis (i.e. the compound tenses) in many nonstandard, geographidly central and syntactidly advanced Romance varieties, with particular regard to clitic placement. It is argued that in the languages examined Aux+Pp constructions have a disentential constituency, i.e. they consist of a fullfledged participa1 CP embedded in the auxiliary clause, and that the syntactic change that led them to this situation is the last development of the general destructuring process that affected in previous centuries the modal and causativelperceptive constructions of the same languages. 1. Introduction In Benucci (1989), (1990a) and (1990b) we presented an analysis of both the diachronic development and the synchronic situation of Romance periphrastic verbal constructions (i.e. modal and causativelperceptive structures) in connection with the phenomena of clitic placement, which accounted for the two basic types of clitic constructions (Cl+V+Inf vs. V+Cl+Inf/V+Inf+Cl) and for the related phenomena that differentiate the various Romance varieties, in tems of monosentential vs. disentential structures. Namely, we suggested that in a monosentential construction like Italian (I), the two verbal items belong together as a complex predicate V*, heading the complex VP* of a single subjectlpredicate articulated S-structure sentence, derived (via VP raising and other morphosyntactic adjustrnents) from a D-structure containing an embedded infinitival IP, complement to the main modallcausativelperceptive clause: Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics (CWPL) 3.1 (1993): 51-83 Universitat Autbnoma de Barcelona (1) Te ne vogliollasciolvedo dare due. to-you of-them (I) wantlletlsee (to) give two On the other hand, we claimed that in the counterpart French constructions (2), each verbal item corresponds, at both Dand S-structures, to a full-fledged CP with its subjectlpredicate articulation, i.e. that the whole structure is a disentential embedding one: (2) Je veuxllaisselvois t'en donner deux. I wantlletlsee to-you of-them (to) give two Furthermore, we pointed out that all the old Romance languages admitted only the Italian-like construction, and we proposed a diachronic mechanism of reanalysis, which we termed 'destructuring', responsible for the evolution of the monosentential structure into the disentential one in those languages that behave nowadays like French. The examination of the various stages of diachronic development in the periphrastic constructions of French highlighted a chronological concatenation between the monosentential > disentential evolution of modal periphrasis and the analogous development of causativelperceptive ones, as if they were two (successive and staggered by one step, due to the increasing structural complexity) stages of the same destructuring process. The cross-linguistic examination of the distribution of the various periphrastic phenomena confirmed this hypothesis: the Romance languages that share with French a disentential structure for modal periphrasis (Walloon, Franco-Proven@, Northern Italian Dialects, RhaetoRomanceILadin varieties and Brazilian Portuguese) also present many clues of a very advanced destructuration in the causativelperceptive domain. We will tem this group of languages the advanced Romance languages, referring particularly to the syntax of their verbal periphrasis. On the other hand, the languages with still consistently monosentential modal constructions (Sardinian and Southern Italian Dialects)' display the same characteristics in the causativelperceptive domain too. Between these two extremes, many languages (Standard Italian, Central Italian Dialects, Occitan, Norman and other O'itanic Dialects, Catalan, Spanish, Galician and Portuguese) display a (more or less advanced) regime of free variation between monoand disentential structures in the modal as well as in the causativelperceptive domains. The concatenation of the diachronic evolution in the modal and causativelperceptive domains highlights a general and pervasive trend towards the destructuration of monosentential structures, i.e. to the reanalysis of complex predicates into simple predicate, embedded disentential structures, each of them with its own autonomous argumental, thematic and Casemarking grids, its bunch of functional projection (including CP), etc. The natural prediction of our analysis is that the same destructuring process should sooner or later affect also the very basic complex predicates of Romance languages, i.e. their compound tenses, which can be considered as 'temporallaspectual' periphrasis consisting of an inflected auxiliary verb and a past participle. The goa1 of this paper is to review the syntactic behaviour of the compound tenses in Romance varieties and to provide an analysis of some phenomena that seem to instantiate a further step of the agelong destructuring process, with the 'breaking down' of the temporal periphrasis into two autonomous full-fledged sentential structures. As in our previous works, clitic placement phenomena will be taken as a macroscopic evidence of the structure of participial constructions, although related phenomena will considered as Romanian, that is monosentential in modal domain, has lost all the periphrastic phenomena in causativelperceptive structwes, which evoluted to a generalized pseudo-relative subjunctival type. well. For the centrality of clitic placement in the analysis of verbal periphrasis, which relies on the conditions of possible clitic movement, the reader is referred to Benucci (1990a). The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we will survey the situation of participial clitic constructions in Romance, both in its synchronic distribution (s 2.1) and in its diachronic evolution (5 2.2). Furthermore, the data from language acquisition analysed in fi 2.3 will confirm the claimed concatenation between the various kinds of verbal periphrasis and lead us into the structural analysis of the temporal ones, that is developped in section 3. We will do so by having first a closer look at the syntactic behaviour of clitics and related matter in participial constructions in Franco-proven~al (fi 3.1) and in Piedmontese and other dialects (s 3.2), before explicating our analysis in 9 3.3. In section 4 we will summarize and draw the conclusion of the whole paper. 2. Romance Past Participle and Clitics Temporal periphrasis constitute the very basic model for all the Romance derived complex predicates V* (i.e. the monosentential modal and causative/perceptive constructions); even if this model may be retraced to the reanalysis of an original (Latin) predicative embedding structure, such a derivational origin is by now completely opaque for the speakers and the V* has been wmpletely grammaticalized in the inflectional paradigm of all the Romance verbs. 2.1. The Synchronic Situalion of Clitic Placement in Compound Tenses The general pattern of clitic placement in compound tenses of contemporary standard Romance languages has the clitic attached to the auxiliary, as it is instantiated by the exarnples in (3):2 2 The position of clitics, i.e. whether they appear in proclisis or in enclisis, depends on specifications particular to the grammar of each language, including reference to tense and mood of the auxiliary and (in some varieties as Portupese and Galician) to its structural position, which we will not pursue here. Participial absolute constructions like Itaiian Salutatami, Gianni usci (Greeted-me. Gianni left) are also beyond the scope of this Paper. (3) a. Portuguese: Quando chegou, já 1h.e tinha coniado um conto. b. Spanish: Cuando llegó, ya le había contado un cuento. c. French: Quand il aniva, je lui avais déji raconté une histoire. d. Italian: Quando arrivb, gli avevo gi8 raccontato una storia. when he arrived, I to-him had already told a story e. Romanian: M-a vazut. (he) me has seen Yet, it is not infrequent, in the synchronic syntactic landscape of Romania, to come across nonstandard(ized) varieties displaying a different behaviour of clitics in the context of temporal periphrasis. What we find in many Romance varieties is short movement of clitics (¡.e. attachment to the past participle), as well as clitic repetition or clitic splitting (on the auxiliary and on the past participle),3 as in (4): (4) a. Walloon (Remacle ( 1952:264-5)): Tant k'i n'aront nin su fouté one pire. as-long as-they not-will-have themselves thrown a stone Here again we will not deal with the specifications of cliticization in the considered varieties, yielding proclisis or enclisis to the participle, according to each particular grammar. b. Franco-provenpl4 (Olszyna-Marzys (196447-59), Keller (1958: 140I), Hanis (1967, 1969), Roberts (1990, 1991)): Y a surra-me la gordze. he has clenched-me the throat Me chei pa en-chwenae. myself am not about-it-remembered c. Piedmontese (Aly-Belfadel(1933: 159-61), Rohlfs (1%7: 175), Burzio (1986: 124, 417), Tuttle (1986:233,276), Brero (1988:73-95), Pany (1990, 1991, 1992)): V'a purta-vvi. (he) you-has taken-you P6na ch'i sun vedii-me. as-soon as I am seen-myself Data from Oszyna-Marzys (1964) from the central Valais (Switzerland) variety are factually against Keller's (1958) hypothesis, further supported by Harris (1967, 1969). according to whom the construction Aux+Pp+Cl in ValdBtain would be due to a Piedmontese iníluence: "qu'il s'agisse bien d'une iníluence pikmontaise, ceci ne fait pas de doute. car la postposition du pronom n'existe pas au-delA des Alpes. [...I D'autre part elle est courante en pikmontais". In our opinion, speaking of the influence of a variety onto the other has no sense: rather both Piedmontese and ValdBtain (as well as the other Romance varieties analized here) bave imovated in a parallel way, according to a general (Romance, at least) tendency, even if it is possible that the nearby prestigious dialect contributed to strengthen the incipient destructuring of temporal periphrasis in ValdBtain. See in section 2.2. the diachronic development. d . Rhaeto-Romances (Thiini (1%9:78)): Vous vez lar scretgas. you have them written e. Friulians (Marchetti (1952:140,164), Benincuvanelli (1984:fn. 6)): I ai dat-i. (I) to-him have given-to-him 'O veis contcidi-ur-al. you have told-to-them-it f. Brazilian Portuguese (Salvi (19Wfn.7, BianchiIFigueiredo Silva (1993)) O Jos6 tinha realmente me decepcionado. the José had really me deceived All the above phenomena of 'aberrant' cliticization are typical clues of a (more or less advanceú) destructuring process, i.e. of a syntactic change in progress, consisting in giving full verbal The referred phenomenon is to be found only in the Surmiran variety and in limited contexts (feminine accusative and reflexive clitics), since the use of clitics is generally speaking quite obsolete and 'literary' or has even completely disappeared in other Rhaeto-Romance varieties (cf. Thoni (1969:74-5, 78)). An exception to this is the reflexive clitic se -that is still used in the Sursilvan variety and generalized to all the grammatical personswhich also follows the pattem in (44 (cf. Spescha (1989:384-98), Taraldsen (1993)): (i) Jeu sun seretratgs da tut mes uffecis. I arn selfdismissed from all my charges In Put& and VallAde~ varieties, both the complement clitics and the reflexive ones (differentiated by person) follow the 'standard Romance' pattem in (3). attaching to the auxiliary (cf. Ganzoni (1983a, b). Data from Iliescu (1972: 153-4). who collects witnesses of varieties coming from all over Friuli and dispersed in various areas of Romania, seem to belie BenincAlVanelli (1984) and Marchetti (1952). who attribute the constructions in (4e) to "qualche varieta della Bassa Friulana" and define them as "estranee al friulano centrale comune [e alla] koinb friulana". 'dignity' to the non-temporalized element of the complex predicate,7 thus making it the nucleus of a new embedded sentential structure. Indeed, the same phenomena are met in the history of French (and Romance) modal and causativelperceptive periphrasis, at the moment of their 'breaking down' into disentential constructions. It is then quite interesting to note that all the varieties in (4) belong to the group of Romance languages that share with French the disentential status of modal and causativelperceptive periphrasis (see section 1). This suggests that the constructions in (4) are actually further instantiations of the Romance general trend to destructuration of complex predicates, and that we are dealing here with another step of destructuring, namely with the dragging of compound tenses by the other types of periphrasis. The idiosyncratic behaviour of the Romanian clitic o (feminine direct object) seems instead to be due to mere phonological reasons. While in modal periphrasis o climbs to the modal verb as all other clitics, in compound tenses o differentiates from other clitics in remaining attached to the past participle (cf. Lombard (1974: 128-9). Radford (1977305-6)): (i) a. Le pot face = O pot face. ((I) it,lrcan do) b. L-arn cumparat - Arn cumparata. ((I) i$,,-have bought-itf) In the latter case, given the Romanian phonological rule according to which V > 0 I - V (cf. (i b): Le > L-), if o were to climb to the auxiliary, it would completely disappear: its permanence on the participle is then the only possibility for the object to be expressed. This does not necessarily mean that the temporal periphrasis of Romanian are currently evolving towards disentential status: when the same participle has several clitic complements, only o remains downstairs, while the other ones regularly climb to the auxiliary: (ii) V-a dat-o - *Va-a datlA dat-v-o. ((he) to-you-has given-itf) In spite of this, it is not implausibile that this exceptional and independently motivated phenomenon (that yields clitic splitting anyway) may become the penetrating way of destructuring in other contexts of contemporary Romanian, as we hypothesized in Benncci (1990a:Ch. 3 fn. 4). If this view is correct, then it can seem strange not to find any destructuring phenomenon in the temporal periphrasis of French, i.e. of the language we assumed (cf. Benucci (1989:333) to 'lead' the whole group and to summarize in its history the very differentiated contemporary situation of Romance languages). Yet, if this is true for standard French, which of course is a highly regulated language, a closer look at the popular language (Francais avancé in Frei's (1928) tems) allows us to find a situation quite analogous to what we have seen in (4), as these examples, quoted by Frei (1928: 166) from the letters of French soldiers of WW1, show: (5) a. Comme tu m'as déjB en envoyé une paire. as you to-me-have already of-it sent a pair b. Cher fils je te dirai que javais vous envoyez un colit. dear son I you will-say that I-had you sent a parcel c. Merci et a R. auci davoire me donné du tabac. thanks and to R. too of-hav(ing) me given some tobacco We can assume then that 'spontaneous' French, too, would have clitic splitting and short movement in compound tenses, i.e. that temporal periphrasis also underwent destructuring at some stage of its history, but the normative and scholastic pressure prevented the 'modem' pattern from spreading throughout the language.8 Such phenomena are not completely isolated and absent from contemporary standard French. As Fouiet (1930:299) and Dauzat (194693-4) respectively point out, instead of the semi-idiomatic "ils s'en sont allés [...I la langue popuiaire [...I dit: ils se sont en allés; cc'st du reste une fagon de s'exprimer qui n'est pas inconnue ?i la langue farnilitre et que certains éaivains mEme wmmencent ?i accueillir". "L'usage parlé n'est pas douteux (sauf chez les gens recherchés) en faveur de la soudure [...,I voici maintenant l'usage des bons éaivains contemporains: [...I Flaubert 'i1 se serait peut-&tre en allé ' (SalammM XIII:265), A.Daudet 'quand le docteur se fut en allé' (Jack 1%) [.. .], Estaunié 'I1 s'est en allé, répéta Claire' (L'ascension de M. Balhe II:7)". As Mair Parry @.c.) suggests, one could argue here for a lexical agglutination, leading to the formation of a verb en-aller. Even if this turned out to be true for the special case at issue, as the final consequence of the destructuring process we are studying (cf. on the other hand Dauzat (194693): "la particde, vidée peu ?i peu de son sens, tendait ?i s'agréger au verbe pur former un verbe nouveau"), this just confirms the vitality of the overall phenomenon in modem French. 3.1. Franco-provencal The morphological and syntactic characteristics of clitics in Franco-provenqal varieties are extensively studied in Olszyna-Marzys (1964) and Roberts (1990, 1991). If one disregards the extreme fragmentation of local dialects and tries to lead the often conflicting and disparate data to a consistent analysis, the following paradigm can be established (examples from Roberts (1990), Ayas dialect): (14) a. (Ou) m'indja la pomma. (HE) eats the apple b. L'a m'indja la pomma. he-has eaten the apple c. Mindje-Cl la pomma? eats-HE the apple? d. L'a-8 m'indjala pomma? he-has-HE eaten the apple? As shown in (14a), the simple tenses of Franco-provenqal verbs are generally used without any form of subject pronoun;l2 in the cases and in the varieties where such a subject pronoun is used, it is anyway a full subject pronoun (which we render here with capital HE). In the compound tenses (14b), on the contrary, a reduced subject pronoun (which we render here with lower case he) obligatorily appears with all the verbal persons. The relevant paradigms are given in (15a,c). l2 With the exception of the 2nd person singular, always attested with an obligatory pronominal forn te/tu/teu, in accordance with a pattern common tomany Romance varieties: cf. Renzi and Vanelli (1983). -. . . A subject pronoun obligatorily appears (in post-verbal position) also in simple interrogative constructions (14): in this case, too, the inverted pronoun has the full forn some morphological variants due to the different phonological contexts, cf. (15b)):l3 tense (with (15) a. PreV full pronouns Dzelyo Tdte Od(r)luill(y)é No Vo I/(r)lou b. PostV full pronouns Dzolyoleo Td(t)hu IIél(a) Noti) Voti) I c. Reduced pronouns Dz/y/l Tíi (I)lll(ile) NI1 VIyA (1)llylle Finally, in interrogative compound tense constructions (14d), both the full pronoun in inverted position and the reduced one in pre-auxiliary position appear. What is crucial to notice here is that the reduced forms only appear with compound tenses (i.e. temporal periphrasis), and that they never invert in interrogative contexts, but always keep the position before the auxiliary, in assertive as well as in interrogative sentences, thus giving rise to a sort of reduplication of subject pronoun in the latter case. Roberts (1990, 1991) analyzes these alternances by assuming that full forns are argumental pronouns occupying the Spec-AgrP position, completely comparable to French subject clitics also in being affected by a merely phonological cliticization. On the contrary, reduced forms would be in Roberts' analysis true syntactic clitics, ¡.e. just spelling-outs (or default markers) of AgrO, 'present when nothing blocks themI.14 The reason of the latter proviso is connected with the fact that such syntactic clitics are only allowed to surface when auxiliaries are present, l3 We disregard here the form ri (and variants) that can be used in interrogative contexts with all the verbal persons in all the Franco-provengal varieties (as well as in Fran~ais populaire). We assume with Roberts (1991 and 1993:220-4) that these morphemes are not subject clitics at all, but rather simple interrogative markers (in contexts of non-inversion), coming from a lower position in the structure. l4 More specifically, since Roberts' (1991) analysis includes two AgrP's (i.e. AgrPl immediately dominating AgrF'2). full forms should be occupiers of Spec-AgrP2, and reduced ones default markers of ~~rO1. As these details are irrelevant for the purposes of our analysis here, in what follows we will collapse the two AgrP's into a single one, as in Roberts (1990). since they should function as a sort of theta-role absorber: according to Roberts' analysis, these clitics would always be generated in AgP but would have a different fate according to the kind of verb incorporating to that head. Lexical verbs, which are theta-role assigners, should incorporate to AgP by substitution (thus eliminating the clitic), while auxiliaries should do so by right-adjunction to AgP, i.e. to the clitic itself: this would create a complex Head Cl+V correctly blocking theta-role assignment.15 In both cases, the item in AgrO (V or Cl+V according to the cases) will move as a whole to CO in interrogative sentences, thus yielding the inversion phenomena seen in (14c,d). Data in (16) seem indeed to show that these subject clitics share the behaviour of the Agr-clitics of many Northern Italian Dialects, coexisting with all kinds of preverbal subjects, including quantifiers, which cannot be dislocated (as (16d) shows, the clitic appears in compound tenses only, also with quantifier subjects): (16) a. Dzyan l'a konta de kónte di mó. Dz. he-has told some stories of dead-people b. RluiCe ju ina. HE he-is up(stairs) gone c. Nyun tan bala kakye tsóuja. nobody he-have given any thing d. Nyun dujave Ibi demanda. nobody dared him (to) ask Roberts concludes from this that Franco-proven~al varieties have both series of subject clitics, thus summing up in the relevant syntactic contexts the properties of French and Northern Italian 15 We should point out that this assumption is quite an ad hoc one, and contrary to Kayne's suggestion that all head-to-head movement places the raised Head to the left of any material already present in the host, an analysis that Roberts (1990:fn. 3) claims to adopt though. Dialects. Now, while we will follow Roberts' analysis concerning full (French-like) subject pronouns, we would like to propose here an alternative one for the supposed (North Italianlike) subject clitics. Notice first, by comparing (16) and (17), that the pseudo Agr-clitics in coocurrence with lexical subjects behave exactly as the complement clitics of paradigm (18), and observe then in (19) the possible behaviours of complement clitics (CCI) and pseudo Agr-clitics (SCI) interacting in the same compound tense sentence: (17) a. I pare l'a tapa. the father him-has beaten b. Yh li 6 pa balya. I to-him have not given c. Gnunc m'a viu. nobody me-has seem (18) PersonlCase 1st 2nd 3rdíAcc 3rdDat 3rdíRefl Singular m(e) t(e) (I)(ola) I(e)ilyelgli ch(e) PI ural no vo (be (lo)u/lei ch(e) (19) a. I m'a dona de pilksa blantsi. (SCl+CCl+Aux+Pp) he me-has given some powder white b. Ybn douna euna pomma. (CCl+Aux+Pp) him-have (we) given an apple c. L'a bala bna poera. (SCl+Aux+Pp) he-has thrown a stone (to me) d. Y at douna-te ina poma. (SCI+Aux+Pp+CCI) he has given-you an apple The construction in (19a), where the two clitics cooccur on the auxiliary, is quite rare and represents a by now obsolete state of language: this example dates back to 1900, while most similar examples come from texts and inquiries of the first quarter of 20th c. or from the dialect of Is6rables, that Olszyna-Marzys (1964: 120) defines 'trh archaique'. Examples (19b-d) show instead the nowadays most frequent constructions, pointing out the existence of a sort of complementary distribution of 'subject' clitics and complement clitics in the pre-auxiliary position. The only possibility of expressing both clitics in the same utterance is to place each of them on a different verbal item, as in (19d). Also quite common is the construction in (19c), where the complement clitic is omitted. Constructions like (19b), where the omitted clitic is the 'subject' one are mainly attested in most conservative dialects, like that of Ayas (whence the given example comes), defined as 'ancien' by Roberts (1991).16 As Roberts (1990:fn. 3) observes, this form of complementary distribution, as well as the constant pre-auxiliary position (also in inversion contexts) of the pseudo Agr-clitics, seem to show that "the subject clitic raises from some lower position to the position of the inflected verb, [...I rather like an object clitic [...I, in such a way as to prevent the other [object] clitics from moving to this position". A further reason for considering the clitics (1%) as complement clitics rather than subject ones or spelling-outs of AgP, is their morphological difference from the full subject pronouns, and their relative resemblance to complement clitics: the most frequent form of these clitics is in fact 1 for all persons, which is strongly reminiscent of the consonantal form of the 3rd person object clitics (cf. (18)). As Olszyna-Marzys (196430, passim) points out, "la forme réduite de la le p. 16 The same kind of alternance is to be observed in Franco-provenqal Valksien with reflexive clitics, too (cf. Olszym-Marzys (1964parsim)): (i) a. L'e metu a raada. he-is put (himself) to watch b. Che chon enpacha de dire. themselves are prevented from say(ing) c. Y C ché demunta. he is self got-off sg. [...I 1 ne rappelle yo ni par sa forme, ni par son emploi. De plus, [elle] s'identifie 21 la forme consonantique de la 3e pers. [et] est sans doute [...I d'origine analogique". We are then led to formulate the hypothesis that the clitics in (15c), which are only found before the auxiliaries and in complementary distribution with other complement clitics, represent a 'special' object of the auxiliary (from which they receive Case), while maintaining a specific grammatical relation with the subject. In order to verify and detail such a hypothesis, we will have a look at the facts of Piedmontese and other dialects, where the situation is possibly clearer than in Franco-proven~al. 3.2. Piedmontese and Otkr Dialects The situation of Piedmontese is very similar to what we have seen in the previous section. All the phenomena we have seen in Franco-proven~al also occur in Piedmontese, while many of them are present in other Northern Italian dialects. For reasons of space, we will show each phenomenon in all the varieties it occurs, even if not all of these present the whole pattern. The relevant phenomena are the following.l7 In compound tenses, a special clitic appears before the auxiliary, which does not occur in simple tenses. If a subject pronoun of some sort appears, the two items can cooccur (in some varieties), but no person agreement holds between them, nor between the special clitic and the auxiliary. In some varieties (cf. (20)), the auxiliary clitic has an invariable form 1, identical to the 3rd person accusative clitic.18 In other varieties (cf. (21)), the form corresponds to the 3rd person dative/locative clitic:lg l7 In spite of their striking sharpness, at least in Piedmontese central variety, and of the copious descriptive and nomative literature on the matter, it seems to us that the relevant data remained up to now unaccounted for. Even Poletto (1993:78-90), who mentions the constructions at issue in the frame of an overall account of subject pronouns in Northern Italian Diaiects, offers, however, no specific anaiysis for the relevant phenomena. l8 In Piedmontese, the 1 clitic appears with all the persons of all the tenses and finite moods of auxiliary avej 'have' and with 3rd person singular of present and imperfect indicative of auxiliary esse 'be' (cf. Aly-Belfadel (20) a. Piedmontese (cf. Brero (1988)): Mn che it dise e chi a i'ha dit, a merito nen la pen-a. what that YOU say and who HE cl-has said, THEY deserve not the trouble b. Ligurian (cf. Battye (1990)): I larnpezzan i feOgi1I lan larnpezzou i feGgi. THEY explode the firesíTHEY cl-have exploded the fires c. Trentino and Northern Venetian (cf. Poletto (1990, 1993)): Bepi magna senpre qua IBepi Ca magn5 qua ien. B. eats always hereIB. cl-has eaten here yesterday (21) Central Venetian: Te magni senpre pomil Te ghe magn5 pomi. YOU eat always applesNOU cl-have eaten apples Whichever form the auxiliary clitic has, it does not invert in interrogative contexts, while 'normal' subject clitics do (cf. (22)). This is the same behaviour of complement clitics, which never invert in interrogative contexts in these varieties. This similarity is confirmed by the cooccurence (in compound tenses only) of our special clitics with quantifier subjects, which is not the case for normal subject clitics (but is the nom for complement clitics), (cf. (23)): (22) a. Piedmontese: Cb thai-ne fat ? what cl-have-I done ? b. Ligurian: Quanti omi Ce anivou ? how-many men cl-is anived ? (1933: 167). Brero (1988:75)). A similar situation seeis to hold for Ligurian, judging from the available data (Battye (1990). Parry (1990)). For the non-auxiliary uses of 'have' cf. fn. 26. 19 Analogous to this are Franco-provenqal y, occuning with many verbal persons (cf. (15)). and Piedmontese j, that occurs with ai1 the persons of the indicative imperfect of esse except the 3rd sg. (cf. Brero (1988:75)): (i) I j'era vola da ti. I cl-was flown to you c. Venetian: Cossa gheto magnh? what cl-have-YOU eaten ? (23) a. Piedmontese: Gnun (*a) Cha parly Gnun (*l)parla. nobody (HE) cl-has spokenlnobody (c1)speaks b. Ligurian: Nisciün (*o) re arrivoulNisciün (*l)riva. nobody (HE) cl-is anivedlnobody (c1)anives c. N.Venetian: Nisun (*el) Ca parly Nisun (*()parla nobody (HE) cl-has spokenlnobody (c1)speaks These clitics are incompatible with complement clitics. Several solutions are possible when different clitics (an auxiliary one and a (cluster of) complement one(s)) should cooccur in the same sentence: only one of the two kinds appears (before the auxiliary), or both kinds appear, but on distinct verbal items. This is the same complementary distribution between auxiliary clitics and complement clitics we have found in Franco-provenpi (cf. ex. (19)):20 (24) a. Piedmontese: *A m'l'h scritlA m'a scritlA Ca scritme. HE (me-)(cl-)has written(-me) b. Ligurian (cf. Pany (1990: 1 1-2): Quande o s(*e 1)'B regiru o (*se) l't arestbu. when HE self-(cl-)is turned HE (self) cl-is stood-still c. N.Venetian: Nisun (*C)mVa visto. nobody (cl-)me-has seen 20 In Central Venetian the situation is not so clearcut, as auxiliary clitics can cooccur, in some varieties, with complement ones. But this is not the only possibility, as the auxiliary clitic can (and in some southern varieties must) drop when a complement clitic is present: (i) Ea m(e g)a visto in piassa she me-(cl-)has seen in square On the other hand, we know that auxiliary clitics did not generalize in Piedmontese and in Franco-proven~al Valdatain till the 19th c. (cf. Parry (1991), Harris (1967: 185)). Old Venetian texts up to the 18th c. (e.g. Ruzante and Goldoni) also show that auxiliary clitics generalized only aftenvards, and suggest the same distributional pattern: once the auxiliary clitics appear, they tend to prevent complement clitics from climbing to the pre-auxiliary position and to replace them in that position. Again, the appearance of the special clitic only in compound tenses and in complementary distribution with complement clitics suggests that it is somehow linked to the argumental grid of the auxiliary, whlle entertaining some grammatical relation with the subject. 21 Th~s is attested in some Friulian varieties, even if not as systematically as in Franco-provenqal and F'iedmontese (the 'subject' clitic of 2nd person singular never disappears in Friulian, that of 3rd person singular only drops in the presence of a dative clitic). However, it seems significant to us that several languages which are geograficaily non-contiguous, but share many of the syntactic features analyzed here and in Benucci (1990, 1991a.b). have a similar behaviour also in this particular forn of clitic distribution. In our perspective, the differences between Venetian, Gallo-romance and Rhaeto-romance varieties are only a matter of degree in the spreading of destructuring in the temporal domain of all these languages that already have disentential modal and causativelperceptive periphrasis. This allows us to disregard any hypothesis of mutual influence and to adopt rather an analysis of parallel development also in the case of Franco-provenqal and F'iedmontese (cf. fn. 4). d. Friulian (cf. Marchetti (1952: 140), Beninci (1986:468)):21 *'O j'e &i puart2ti'O &i ppuart6tlJ1e Bi puart2tl'O &i puartkdial. (I) (him-it) have brought (him-it) Diachronic data also confirm the complementary distribution of auxiliary clitics and complement clitics in pre-auxiliary position we have just seen for Gallo-italic synchronic varieties. As we have pointed out in section 2.2, constructions like A m'a scrit were considered "antiquated" in Piedmontese already by Aly-Belfadel (1933: 169), while peripheral conservative dialects (both Piedmontese and ValdBtain) still retain the 17119th c. construction, with repetition of clitics (cf. (8)). 3.3. The Analysis In order to determine the structural configuration of these constructions and the exact relation of auxiliary clitics with the subject, the examination of the different constructions in (19) and (24) and of their diachronic specifications is helpful. The linear orders of the different constructions is schematized in (25), where AC1 stands for auxiliary clitic and CC1 stands for complement clitic (Pp and CC1 ordering in (25d) irrelevant: cf. fn. 2 and 3): (25a) represents the archaic construction, with no AC1 and no barrier for CC1 between auxiliary and past participle. (25b) is the transitional construction, also quite obsolete, with both an AC1 and CC1 climbing: the auxiliary has its own 'object', but still no barrier for participle clitics holds. In (25c,d) such a barrier arose, preventing CC1 from appearing (on the auxiliary). In this perspective, the structural sequence would be the following (parallel to what we proposed in previous works for modal and causativelperceptive periphrasis): 1. basic complex predicate Aux+Pp > 2. auxiliary with AgrP participial complement (VP raising and CC1 climbing possible) > 3. auxiliary with full-fledged participial complement. 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