Romance complex predicates: phrasal and functional structure

Recently there has been much work in surface constraint-based frameworks on complex predicate constructions (causative and light verb constructions), that are found in Romance and other languages. Manning et al. forthcoming). The enthusiasm for this area comes from the fact that these constructions contradict certain of the assumptions of early work in surface constraint-based frameworks. Nevertheless, recent work has provided clean, principled extensions to these frameworks that give good accounts of complex predicate constructions. In this paper I want to (i) present some of the relevant data, (ii) discuss the outlines of LFG approaches to the data, (iii) make some comparisons with corresponding work in HPSG, and (iv) look particularly at some of the ner points of clitic climbing. 1 1 Introducing the problem Complex predicates occur when two or more verbs become more closely associated than they are in an ordinary construction in which one verb takes a verbal complement as a sister. There are numerous diagnostics that point to this closer relationship, but perhaps the most salient one in Romance is clitic placement. With simplex verbs and normal clausal complement taking verbs we observe the following clitic placement behavior: 2 (1) a. Sp Luis Luis comii o eat.3sg.past las the manzanas apples amarillas yellow`Luis ate the yellow apples.' b. Luis Luis las 3pl.fem comii o atèLuis ate them.' c. Luis Luis insistii o insisted en on comer eat.inf las the manzanas apples amarillas yellow`Luis insisted on eating the yellow apples.' d. Luis insistii o en comer-las`Luis insisted on eating them.' 1 These notes are mainly extracted from Manning (1992) and Andrews and Manning (1993), although new material appears in various places, in particular, the nal section. 2 I use the standard orthographies for all Romance languages. In these orthographies, the proclitics are normally written as separate words while the enclitics are written joined to their hosts. I will sometimes set oo enclitics with a hyphen for clarity. The two bold letters before the rst sentence in each group of examples indicate the language: Full NP complements follow the verb they are an argument of, but clitics appear adjacent to the verb that they are an argument of. It is impossible for a clitictòòat' up onto another verb, as shown in (1e). The behavior of clitics with verbs forming a complex predicate diiers from what was shown above. 3 In these cases the clitic may appear on a higher …