SYNTATIC-SEMANTIC RESTRICTIONS OF THE DOUBLING OBJECT: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CLITICS DOUBLING

Abstract

ABSTRACT

In this research we aimed to study the doubling of pronominal clitics. Martins (2013) describes that in European Portuguese, in structures of contrastive focus, the constituent appears realized by a clitic and a strong pronoun, with the same traces of people and number of the clítico, preceded by the preposition a. In this case, the clitic and the strong pronoun associated with it, make a single verbal argument. In these contexts, doubling of the tonic pronoun occurs, to fill its weak nature. As a consequence, the structure of cliotic redoubled. In Brazilian Portuguese it is not verified the use of the preposition in redouble of accusative object, and the phenomenon seems to involve only the first and second people of the singular, facts that distinguish this language from Spanish, European Portuguese, Medieval and Classical Portuguese, once that, in these varieties, the preposition appears in redouble of accusative object, and there are also contexts of redouble with the third person. The aim of this work is to investigate which the syntactic-semantic restrictions that allow or block the occurrence of redouble in these varieties, making for a revisit of works about the linguistic phenomenon known as clitics doubling in different synchronies of Portuguese (Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Medieval Portuguese and Classical Portuguese) and in Spanish’s varieties, emphasizing the redouble related to the complements of transitive verbs (constituents with value of direct or indirect object), assuming a generative approach to the comparative analysis. The comparative study has shown that the clitics doubling pronouns is conditioned by the constraints imposed by the syntactic-semantic amount of the doubled syntagm. The comparative study between the descriptions and data of the phenomenon in Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Medieval Portuguese, Classical Portuguese and the varieties of Spanish indicates that in all varieties, as syntactic restriction of the syntagms that participate of the redoubled constructions, the redoubled object does not can be a bare NP, and must necessarily design a functional cover DP. Also of common form among the varieties, we find that in all the predicate must be of the type that presents non-epistemic reading, so that redouble occurs. With regard to the semantic contribution, the revisited data show specificities referring to each revisited variety: in Spanish the redoubled accusative object can be both animate and inanimate, first, second or third person, provided that it has the positive traits for referentiality, specificity and definiteness. The dative may be less specific and less defined in the observed data of Spanish. In Medieval Portuguese, Portuguese Classical and European Portuguese, both the accusative and the dative object, when redoubled, are necessarily human, specific, defined, being first, second or third persons. In Brazilian Portuguese the direct or indirect object besides being defined and necessarily human, are necessarily first or second person.