Non-verbal predicate proforms : Category, case and φ-feature concord

Dikken, Marcel den (2025) Non-verbal predicate proforms : Category, case and φ-feature concord. ISOGLOSS: OPEN JOURNAL OF ROMANCE LINGUISTICS, 11 (7). pp. 1-12. ISSN 2385-4138

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Abstract

Throughout the Romance languages, a definite clitic serving as a pro-predicate for an adjectival or indefinite nominal predicate is insensitive to the category and φ-features of its antecedent and local subject, resisting concord. This is remarkable in light of the obligatory φ-feature concord with its antecedent when the clitic serves as an argument, and the robustness of φ-feature con­cord between a [+N] full predi­cate and its subject in Romance. In this short paper, Déchaine & Wiltschko’s (2002) analysis of French le will be amended for Romance pro-predicate definite clitics, which will be shown to be best treated as pro-N rather than pro-φ elements. The Romance data are analysed here against the background of the properties of predicate proforms in Hungarian.

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