Spanish clitic left dislocation as a non-quantificational A-movement

Abstract

This paper argues that the Spanish Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) must be analyzed as a movement account, not as a base-generation one. Specifically, this study provides a novel analysis of the Spanish CLLD constructions by means of combining two explicit derivational steps: A-movement and A-movement that take place successively throughout different phasal domains (vP and CP). In the first step, A-movement is realized, and as a result of [+Case] and [+Specific/ +Presuppositional] features checking between the DP constituent and the light verb v, a reduplicated clitic is spelled-out. In the second step, the dislocated constituent, which is not a quantifier but a referential DP, moves up to the left periphery to check its [+Contrastive Topic] feature with the TopP. Our analysis gives a plausible explication of the issues involved in the Spanish CLLD, such as clitic reduplication, weak crossover effect, parasitic gap, syntactic island, etc., drawing on well-justified arguments. It is claimed that the CLLD is different from the typical A-movement construction such as the Wh-question or the contrastive focus fronting, since the CLLD is not a quantificational movement that enters into the operator-variable configuration. Instead, CLLD in Spanish involves displacement of a referential DP to the left periphery of the sentence through its reduplicated pronominal clitic, characterizing this derivation as a non-quantificational A-movement.