Past Participle Agreement in Majorcan Catalan: the Relevance of Inner Aspect

Abstract

This paper aims to explain, from a theoretical point of view, the behaviour of past participle agreement with the object in situ (PPAOIS) in Majorcan Catalan. It is possible in perfect telic dynamic events, but not in Kimian and Davidsonian states —except for certain telic dynamic constructions built with Kiparsky (1998) and Jaque’s (2014) high pure stative verbs—, nor in some atelic dynamic constructions (like those ones with NP objects bounded by a D or Q), although it is perfectly grammatical with bare plurals and with bare mass nouns. In order for PPAOIS to be possible, it is proposed that a specific functional head (Asp, that is to say: Proc[uq][uϕ]), related to so-called inner aspect, must be present in the event structure. Asp establishes a double Agree relation with the object, in order to get its quantisation and [uϕ] features valued. It is also explored the possibility that the [q] feature of Asp be interpretable. If Asp is not present in the structure, the impossibility of PPAOIS follows. Moreover, PPAOIS will be only materialised if a pro object co-referent with the full NP object moves through a LowTop position —similar to the AgrO projection proposed by Kayne (1989).

Keywords

• past participle agreement
• (direct) object in situ
• inner aspect
• (a)telicity
• stativity
• quantisation