Abstract
This dissertation investigates the grammar of object clitic-doubled constructions in Spanish. Specifically, this study develops what is known as the Agreement Hypothesis. The main insight of this approach is that Spanish object clitics should be analyzed as object agreement morphemes on the verb, and not as pronominal arguments that are phonologically dependent. In this way, it is argued that the different properties of object clitics as well as those of clitic-doubled noun phrases are borne out from the morphosyntactic agreement head status of Spanish clitics.
Chapter 1 outlines the theoretical framework assumed throughout the thesis, namely the Principles and Parameters framework and its later development, the Minimalist program. Special emphasis is given to the articulation of functional categories in the "old" IP node. Also, a concise critical overview of previous analyses of clitics in Spanish and in other Romance langugages that represent the main stream proposals is provided in this section. Chapter 2 examinse and contrasts the morphosyntactic characteristics of Spanish clitics with those of agreement morphemes and clitics in other languages. The results of the comparison show that Spanish object clitics exhibit many of the properties of agreement systmens, whereas other clitic systems follow behind in the number of similarities with agreement systems. Chapter 3 integrates a novel analysis of the syntax of clitic doubled constructions with some of the pnets of the Minimalist Program. Traditional problems posed by these constructions such as Case assignment, semantic restrictions on the doubled element and asymmetries in clitic doubling between indirect and direct objects are uniformly accounted for by the claim that the AgrDO-P and agrIO-P projections are respectively headed by accusative and dative clitics whose corresponding "strong" and "weak" values for NP features force different derivations, hence, different surface outputs turn out.
Chapter 4 and 5 exploit the AGR-o analysis of clitics and the structural configuration of a three-way agreement system to propose a natural account of two complex phenomena in Spanish, that is, in this order, the absence of direct object clitic past participial agreement, and the Case alternation of the Causee and word order in causative constructions.
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