ORGANISMOS MULTILATERALES DE CRÉDITO

and proi fires me […] anyway, apart from this, proi is really funny – then there is M.F.k who is practicing

for his exam as a journalist/ in one and a half years, so at least hek has a guarantee that prok will stay there

till prok has made the exam because hei then must make/ write a report…

il mio capo ‘my boss’ is considered an Aboutness topic, since it is the element that is newly introduced

into the utterance. As we can see in this example, after this Aboutness topic becomes available, the arguments in the subject positions of the subsequent sentences can be ‘realized’ as pro. In the middle of the monologue, a new topic, M.F., comes in, and serves as the antecedent of the following null subjects. If we pay attention to the second half of the utterance carefully, we will find that the first subject position after the sentence containing M.F. is not empty, but occupied by an overt pronoun lui ‘he.’ The same overt pronoun appears again in the end of the utterance when the speaker turns back to talk about her boss.

The use of luik in the utterance seems unnecessary, since its referent, M.F., has just appeared in the

sentence immediately preceding it. Based on the fact that the tonal contour of lui ‘he’ is similar to that of

capo ‘boss’, Frascarelli (2007) proposes that the appearance of the overt pronoun signals the beginning of

the topic chain, so that the subject(s) appearing afterwards can be phonetically null.

subject is not a move that is restricted to monologues. In Italian, unlike in Mandarin Chinese, such connections can take place across speakers as well.

(24) A che strada hai preso?

B la Cristoforo Colombo [andando verso Roma], dopo di che dovevo girare a destra dovevo riuscire a beccare la “Roma-Fiumicino”- m’aveva detto Marcok e invece……

A secondo me la Roma-Fiumicinoz sta sulla sinistra

B non lo so – comunque proz non c’era dopo di che ho capito che luik m’aveva detto – prok mi

aveva dato una dritta che l’uscita era – prok dice – vicino allo Sherat – dietro allo Sheraton […] a un punto dicevo possibile che non c’è un’inversione di marcia? mi sono fermata presa

dal panico a un benzinaioj e gli ho detto scusi ma se unow poveraccio sbaglia qui come prow fa

a tornare indietro e luij m’ ha detto no guarda devi uscire a Maccarese paghi il pedaggio e torni

indietro.

A Which road did you take?

B the “Crisoforo Colombo” [going towards Rome], then I had to turn right to take the “Rome- Fiumicino” motorway – Marcok told me, but……..

A In my opinion the Rome-Fiumicinoz motorway is on the left

B I don’t know – anyway, proz was not there, then I understood that hek had told me – prok has

suggested me – prok had told me that the exit was next to the Sheraton hotel […] then I

wondered, is it possible that there is not a U-turn? In the panic, I stopped at a gas stationj and I

said, sorry but if onew, poor guy, goes the wrong way here, how can prow come back? and hej

[the person working at the gas station] told me, look you must take the exit at Maccarese, pay the toll and turn back.

person, Marco, who was introduced into the dialogue earlier, Speaker B used another null subject, prok,

following the strong pronoun hek. The use of null subjects, proz and prok, in this case conforms to the

proposal that Frascarelli makes in her paper: subject pro has to be co-referential with the closest Aboutness topic, either covert or overt.

This analysis, however, raises a question concerning the status of the overt nominal phrase that serves as the antecedent for subject pro: if subject pro can only be associated with an Aboutness topic, how should we understand the syntax of the preverbal subject that is co-referential with subject pro? Is it in an A’-position or is still in an A-position? In order to demonstrate that the nominal phrases that serve as antecedents of referential pro are located in A’-position, Frascarelli (2007) employs the diagnostics mentioned in Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1998) (henceforth A&A 1998) to determine whether Italian patterns like Greek with respect to the properties of preverbal nominal phrases.

A&A (1998) use several pieces of evidence to support the idea that, in Greek, preverbal subjects occupy an A’-position, since they behave differently from postverbal subjects. The first piece of evidence concerns the scope properties of quantifier phrases.

(25) a. Kapios fititis stihiothetise kathe arthro. some student filed every article

b. stihiothetise kapios fititis kathe arthro.

A&A (1998) claim that Greek is different from English in that preverbal indefinites, like some student in (25a), have only a wide scope reading; the narrow scope reading is only available to sentences like (25b), in which the indefinite appears postverbally. This fact leads the authors to propose that, “if preverbal subjects in Greek were raised to an A-position, they would preserve their narrow scope interpretation (A&A 1998: 505).” Since the narrow scope interpretation is not preserved, they analyze the preverbal nominal phrase as an A’-constituent.

Along the same line, Frascarelli (2007) notices that preverbal subjects in some Italian sentences have only one interpretation as well.

(26) Qualche studente ha archiviato ogni libro della biblioteca. some student have.3SG filed every book of-the library

‘Some student filed every book in the library.’

According to Frascarelli, this sentence is ambiguous, since the quantifier phrase some student can take wide scope or narrow scope. However, when the same sentence is followed by another one containing subject pro, only the wide scope reading is maintained.

(27) [Qualche studente]K ha archiviato ogni libro della biblioteca e

some student have.3SG filed every book of-the library and

proK è stato premiato.

be.3SG been prized

‘Some (specific) student filed every book in the library and got a prize.’

In (27), the narrow scope reading of the quantifier phrase qualche studente ‘some student’ is not available, and only the wide scope reading remains. Another example is given below.

(28) Un poliziotto stave a guardia di ogni angolo. a policeman be.PAST.3SG at guard of every corner

‘A policeman guarded each corner.’

fumava in continuazione. smoke.PAST.3SG in continuation

‘A (single) policeman guarded each corner and was smoking continuously.’

In (28), the indefinite nominal phrase a policeman can take wide scope or narrow scope, resulting in a semantic ambiguity. However, when this sentence is followed by another sentence in which the subject position is not only left empty but also co-referential with the indefinite, the indefinite phrase must be interpreted as taking wide scope over the quantifier phrase in the object position. Based on the difference between (28) and (29), Frascarelli (2007) proposes that the indefinite in (29) is base-generated in an A’- position, from which it can bind a subject pro, while the one in (28) sits in an A-position.

Given these facts, Frascarelli (2007) claims that “preverbal ‘subjects’ are merged as (Aboutness- shift) Topics in the C-domain and provide a referential value to a NS (null subject) sitting in argument position (Frascarelli 2007:716).”

In order to account for the co-referential relationship between an A’-element and a referential null subject, Frascarelli (2007) proposes that a null subject pro has to Agree in φ-features with a local Aboutness topic which is located in the Spec of ShiftP. This analysis is illustrated below:

(30) Frascarelli (2007:718):

[ShiftP DP[αPn] [ Shift° [ … [AgrSP [ Agr° [vP pro[αPn] [VP ] ] … ]] ]]]

AGREE

[+aboutness] [φ-features]

The Agree mechanism shown in (30) enables subject pro to acquire features that can identify itself. This analysis, as Frascarelli claims, excludes AGR from playing a role in ‘reconstructing’ the content of pro,

and implies that the meaning of pro cannot be completely computed until the CP domain is reached.3 In other words, the meaning of pro is dependent on the existence of an Aboutness topic in the CP domain. Therefore, Frascarelli (2007) re-phrases Chomsky’s Avoid Pronoun as follows:

(31) Avoid Pronoun (Frascarelli 2007:719)

Avoid strong pronoun, whenever it agrees with the local Aboutness-shift Topic.

The new interpretation of ‘Avoid Pronoun’ implies that “every predicative sentence must have a Topic” (Lambrecht 1994) so that the referential subject pro can find a constituent to Agree with.4

To sum up, Frascarelli (2007) proposes that the content of a referential subject pro should be determined by a constituent in its CP domain. In addition, when an overt preverbal nominal phrase serves as the antecedent of a subject pro, it must be considered an A’-element—an Aboutness topic, rather than a canonical subject in A-position.

4.3.2 Roberts (2010)

Under the Minimalist framework (Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2001), Rizzi’s (1986) identification condition shown in (21b) can be paraphrased as follows: in the beginning of the derivation, AGR/INFL has valued φ-features, while pro has unvalued ones. Given the assumption that Agree takes place between elements bearing valued and unvalued features, AGR/INFL enters into an Agree relationship with pro, valuing its φ-features. However, Holmberg (2005) points out that this analysis is problematic from the Minimalist perspective, since it is usually assumed that φ-features on nominals are inherently valued, while those on

3 _{Camacho (2011) agrees with Frascarelli (2007) in that pro should be identified with the help of a}

discourse topic, but departs from her in claiming that AGR/INFL is still responsible for valuing some of

pro’s features.

4 _{The assumption that every predicative sentence must have a topic does not mean that an overt topic has}