Obligatory dative clitic-doubling of type III experiencers in Bulgnais

Abstract

The correlation between the position of the Dative experiencer of a type III psych-verb relative to the verb itself and the obligatory vs. optional nature of an associated Dative clitic has seldom been noted in the literature, and it has never previously been explained. This paper presents relevant new data from Bulgnais (Bologna, Italy), and it proposes that these verbs, in the languages that require the Dative clitic with the preverbal Dative experiencer, have an additional strong lexical property beyond inherent Case licensing. Like Case licensing, this property requires feature checking, which is satisfied alternately by the clitic (unmarked word-order) or by the experiencer phrase. Only when the clitic checks the lexically required feature can the full experiencer move to the preverbal position, because otherwise, it is frozen in a postverbal position by its role in checking the mentioned strong lexical feature, which occurs lower in the verbal domain.