Agreement, Binding and the structure of clitics

Abstract

In this thesis, I offer the results of a detailed investigation I have conducted on the binding relations that Direct Object (DO) and Indirect Object (IO) clitics can establish with the associated DP that they double (and with other DPs in the clause), as well as the structural conditions under which such relations are licensed in this language. As I will show, the study of these properties plays a fundamental role in defining the different (sub)classes of clitics existing in modern Spanish. This empirical study will prove crucial to achieve the first goal of this thesis, which is to evaluate which hypothesis concerning the syntactic status of Spanish clitics (the agreement vs. the pronominal hypothesis) is able to account for the whole range of properties these clitics display at syntax-semantic interface. To that end, I analyze with great care the wide variety of DO and IO clitic constructions present in Spanish. This investigation will be fundamental to accomplish the second major goal of this thesis, which is to offer a theoretically and empirically solid classification of Spanish DO and IO clitics which is able to account for the syntactic and semantic properties they display.