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Spanish datives:remarks on the information-structure side of the story

valeria a. BelloroUniversidad autónoma de Querétaro

1. Introduction

most current studies on Spanish datives are primarily concerned with the syntac-tic and semantic aspects of the constructions in which these arguments may inter-vene, but much less importance has been given to the pragmatic function of the grammatical alternatives by which datives are encoded. this article examines thethis article examines the three most frequent ones; namely, the cases where (i) the dative is encoded exclu-sively by a lexical phrase; (ii) the dative is encoded exclusively by a clitic; and (iii) the dative is encoded via a so-called “clitic doubling” construction.

In which natural contexts does each formal alternant occur? What does it serve to express? How are the alternants functionally related? are they related with the encoding alternatives available for accusative arguments? It is these questions which this paper seeks to address. most of the data will be drawn from a corpus of oral interactions among native speakers of the Buenos aires dialect, to which I will refer as the “Buenos aires” corpus (Barrenechea 1987), as well as from previ-ous studies based on mexican Spanish. the analysis will be formalized within the model of Role and Reference Grammar, as presented in van valin (2005) and van valin and LaPolla (1997).

Let us start by defining so-called “dative doubling” constructions. as under-stood in this paper, these constructions are those in which a lexical dative argu-ment in canonical position co-occurs with a dative clitic, e.g. le, les or its allomorph se, as in the following examples.

(1) a. Eva le dio una manzana aAdán. ‘EvagaveanappletoAdán.’

b. Eva les dio uvas alasmujeres. ‘Evagavegrapestothewomen.’

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c. Eva se las dio alasmujeres. ‘Evagavethemtothewomen.’

the dative clitic inflects for number but not for gender, as illustrated in (1a) and (1b). the allomorph se occurs when the third person dative and accusative clitics co-occur. this form is invariable for both number and gender (1c). on the other hand, lexical datives are always marked by a.

Spanish datives are often ascribed to one of two basic groups. Following de-monte’s (1994) classification, the first one involves those datives occurring with verbs of transfer, such as dar ‘give’ or donar ‘donate’, whereas the second concerns datives associated with verbs of creation such as hacer ‘make’ or cocinar ‘cook’.1 this distinction is relevant to our purposes because even though both groups allow clit-ic doubling constructions, only verbs of the first type may be associated with a “recipient” encoded exclusively as a lexical phrase (Strozer 1976, demonte 1994, 1995, among others), as illustrated in (2b).

(2) a. El Sr. Hydele donó su cuerpo alaciencia. ‘Mr.HydedonatedhisbodytoScience.’

b. El Sr. Hyde Ø donó su cuerpo alaciencia. ‘Mr.HydedonatedhisbodytoScience.’

For verbs which do not belong to this group, on the other hand, the alternative to a lexical dative is a prepositionally marked adjunct:

(3) a. Rodrigo les cocinó tamales asusamigos. ‘Rodrigomadetamalesforhisfriends.’

b. Rodrigo cocinó tamales parasusamigos. ‘Rodrigomadetamalesforhisfriends.’

Based on cases like (3a), it has been proposed that the Spanish dative clitic should be analyzed as an applicative morpheme, licensing the occurrence of a third

1 In distinguishing different types of datives, some classifications rely on the inherent se-mantics of the predicate (e.g. demonte 1994), and others on its syntactic transitivity (e.g. or-dóñez 1999). For a survey of different approaches and the issues involved, see Company (2006).

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participant with argument status (Cuervo 2003, Ibáñez 2003). this is consistent with the fact that, with verbs like cocinar, the occurrence of a lexical dative in fact requires the co-occurrence of the clitic (4a), which is in turn incompatible with a coreferential interpretation of a prepositional phrase (4b).

(4) a. *Rodrigo cocinó tamales asusamigos. ‘Rodrigomadetamalesforhisfriends.’

b. *Rodrigo les cocinó tamales parasusamigos. ‘Rodrigomadetamalesforhisfriends.’

one of the challenges this hypothesis faces is explaining what the function of the dative clitic is when it is associated with verbs like dar, since in these cases the third lexical argument seems to be able to occur independently of the presence of the clitic (cf. (2) above). Current analyses propose that the a marking the third participant in those cases should be analyzed as a preposition akin to the one in (3b). Hence, these sentences would not involve a nominal dative argument, but a prepositionally marked oblique (demonte 1995, Cuervo 2003; but see Strozer 1976, Suñer 1988, Campos 1999).

on the other hand, in analyzes based, for instance, on the Principles and Pa-rameters framework, it is normally assumed that in the instances where there is a dative clitic but no coreferential phrase, the argument is realized by a phonologi-cally silent category (i.e. pro).

note that, together, these two assumptions justify the common claim that da-tive doubling is always obligatory (masullo 1992, demonte 1995, Cuervo 2003, among others). this is so because, under these approaches, a structure such as (5a) constitutes a case of dative doubling on a par with (5b), whereas examples as (6) are excluded as alternants since they are not considered to involve a dative-marked nP but a prepositional phrase (cf. e.g. Cuervo 2007:587).

(5) a. Eva le dio una manzana Ø. ‘Evagave(him/her)anapple.’

b. Eva le dio una manzana aAdán. ‘EvagaveanappletoAdán.’

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(6) Eva Ø dio una manzanaaAdán. ‘EvagaveanappletoAdán.’

I take here a more conservative stance, considering as proper doubling struc-tures only those examples in which both the clitic and the dative phrase are mor-phosyntactically realized in the clause (e.g. (5b), but not (5a)). on the other hand, I regard both (5a) and (6) as functional alternatives for doubling structures or, to use Lambrecht’s (1994) terms, as their “allosentences”. I will refer to cases like (6), where the object argument is encoded exclusively as a lexical phrase, as “nP-ex-clusive” or “nP-only”;2 whereas I will refer to cases like (5a) as “clitic-exclusive” or “clitic-only”.

the aim of this paper is to examine the information structure of these func-tional alternants, and to propose a grammatical formalization of them within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG, van valin 2005, van valin and LaPolla 1997). With these goals in mind, the organization of this paper is as follows. In the next section I summarize the main aspects of the RRG treatment of information structure. In section 3 I present the analysis of the data, and argue that the selection among the allosentences analyzed here is motivated by differ-ences in the pragmatic properties of the relevant discourse participants (i.e. their cognitive states). In section 4 an RRG formalization of the data is advanced. the conclusion in 5 briefly summarizes the main arguments presented in this paper and proposes some avenues for future research.

2. Information-structure in Role and Reference Grammar

defined from its outset as a structural-functionalist model taking a “communica-tion-and-cognition” perspective to linguistic analysis, one of the basic tenets of RRG is that morphosyntactic forms cannot be analyzed without reference to their use in particular contexts. accordingly, the RRG model puts special emphasis on accounting for the interaction between structure, meaning and communicative function. the interface between these components is determined by a set of rules,

2 For simplicity, both “doubled” and “not doubled” a-marked lexical phrases will be re-ferred to as nPs, in order to distinguish them from phrases marked by para or other more contentful prepositions, which cannot be clitic doubled.

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called “linking algorithms”, which are meant to represent the production (i.e. “se-mantics-to-syntax”) and comprehension (i.e. “syntax-to-semantics”) aspects of language use. Besides semantic and morphosyntactic categories, the linking algo-rithms make reference to discourse-pragmatics ones, and it is these which I will focus on here.

Following Lambrecht (1994), RRG recognizes two aspects of discourse-prag-matics as influencing sentence structure. the first concerns the pragmatic rela-tions established among referents in terms of their communicative dynamism, and is expressed in a “focus structure” which segments the morphosyntactic string into topical and focal components. an important distinction in the theory is that be-tween “potential focus domain” (PFd) and “actual focus domain” (aFd). the first refers to the syntactic domain where focus may fall, whereas the latter targets the actual focal elements in a specific utterance. this distinction makes possible to capture, for instance, the motivation for word-order differences that may be ob-served between a language such as Spanish, in which the PdF is assumed to co-incide with the whole clause and, say, Italian, where preverbal elements inside the core are banned from bearing focus. Compare the structures in Figure 1.

the examples in Figure 1 show that in Spanish it is possible to adapt the focus structure to an unmarked word order, with the result that the first element in the core may in fact be topical (a) or focal (a’) (Zubizarreta 1999: 4225). this is not an option in Italian, where focal status cannot be assigned to the core-initial position. thus, in Italian it is the syntax (word order) which has to adapt to the focus struc-ture. the difference between the two languages can be accounted for in terms of the potential focus domain in each language, as the comparison of the representa-tions illustrate.

Besides the pragmatic relations manifested by focus structure, the second in-formation-structure aspect which RRG recognizes to influence morphosyntax is the pragmatic properties of the discourse referents at a given point in the com-municative exchange. By “pragmatic properties” is meant the degree of easiness or difficulty that the addressee may have in accessing or building a representation of the referent the speaker denotes. this is of course dependent not only on the addressee’s knowledge, but also on their attentional state. entities which are as-sumed to be known by the addressee are considered “identifiable”. those which are further in the focus of the addressee’s consciousness are “active”. “accessible” referents are those which are peripherally activated (e.g., via their prior mention a few clauses back in the text), and “inactive” referents are those which are not fo-

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Figure 1. Representation of the Potential and actual Focus domains in RRG.

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cally nor peripherally active at the current point in the interaction. Building on the works by Prince (1981), Chafe (1987) and Lambrecht (1994), among others, RRG recognizes the five cognitive states illustrated on the third row of Figure 2 (from van valin and LaPolla 1997: 201).

Figure 2. Cognitive states of discourse referents

as it would be expected, there is a natural interaction between focus structure, cognitive state and formal encoding. In RRG, the interface between pragmatic function (i.e. topic or focus) and encoding form is represented by the markedness hierarchy in Figure 3 (from van valin and LaPolla 1997: 205, based on Givónón 1983, Levinson 1987, and ariel 1990, among others). this hierarchy captures the. this hierarchy captures the fact that attenuated forms of encoding, such as zeroes or clitic pronouns, are typi-cally used to target topical participants (and, conversely, that topical elements tend to be coded with attenuated forms). analogous correlations are normally found between focal and formally more complex elements.

Figure 3. Pragmatic function and form of encoding

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the relationship between pragmatic function and cognitive states, in turn, can be expressed by a scale of topic acceptability. this scale (from Lambrecht 1994: 165) indicates that active referents are the most acceptable topics, with more marked choices as the referents’ activation decreases.

Active>Accessible>Inactive>Brand-newanchored>Brand-newunanchored

Figure 4. Pragmatic function and activation level

Finally, the emphasis may be put more directly on the relationship between form of encoding and cognitive state. an illustration of this approach is presented in Figure 5 (from Gundel et al. 1993: 275), which captures the relative accessibility associated with different (pro)nominal forms:

Figure 5. Form of encoding and activation status

the interaction between these different scales captures the expected correla-tions between attenuated forms (e.g. zeroes, bound pronouns), sentence topics (i.e. constituents denoting entities about which some new information is asserted), and active referents (i.e. entities which the speaker assumes are the current focus of at-tention for the hearer). Likewise, there is an expected correlation between more complex, semantically richer forms (e.g. modified nouns), sentence focus, and ref-erents which are not assumed to be currently active in the mind of the addressee. It is however important to distinguish between the three factors, since the antici-pated correlations do not always hold. For instance, it is not necessary for a focal element to be inactive or unidentifiable (Lambrecht 1994). In the reply in (7), the nP Eve is focal, as it provides the correct value for the variable in the presupposi-tion speaker will invite x. Yet, it cannot be claimed to be inactive, since it was just mentioned in the preceding context:

(7) Q:-Will you invite Eve or Lilith? R:-I will invite Eve.

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as illustrated in Figure 1, focus structure constitutes its own projection, which is motivated and formally derived from discourse representation (see van valin 2005 §5.4 and Shimojo, this volume). the activation level of the referents en-coded in the clause, in turn, is indexed in each of the argument positions in the appropriate semantic representation. Consider again the reply in (7). the pronoun I refers to a participant that is maximally “active”: the preceding question has se-lected it as the topic, and it is expected to be on the current focus of attention of the interlocutors. Eve, on the other hand, is one step removed from this status, and it can merely be considered “accessible”. thus, following RRG’s approach to semantic decomposition, the logical structure of the reply in (7) should be repre-sented as in (8), with the first argument marked active (aCt), and the second marked accessible (aCS):

(8) do’([1sg]act

[invite’([1sg]act

,Eveacs

)])3

the mapping between these logical structures and the final morphosyntactic string, as determined by the linking algorithms, will be illustrated with Spanish examples in the final section of this paper.

3. Dative arguments in three morphosyntactic flavors

It was mentioned in the introduction that in Spanish there are two groups of verbs which differ on the morphosyntactic properties of their (potentially) associated dative arguments: one group, with verbs like dar ‘give’, which allow datives to oc-cur in “clitic-only”, “clitic doubling” or “nP-only” structures; and the other, with verbs like cocinar ‘cook’, allowing only “clitic-only” and “clitic doubling”, but ban-ning the “nP-only” alternative.

the question then arises of what other verbs belong to each type. Intuitions about the inherent semantics of the predicate do not provide conclusive results, as the same verb may be adscribed to different classes based on slightly different criteria. an additional difficulty comes from the fact that different verbs of trans-fer included in the dar-group exhibit different frequencies of dative encoding of

3 abbreviations: acs= accessible, act= active, ina= inactive, m=masculine, pl= plural, sg= singular.

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any type. a search on the adeSSe database4 shows that dar ‘give’ takes a dative argument in 98.8% of the clauses where it occurs (1328/1344), whereas for ofrecer ‘offer’ this percentage falls to 56.5% (140/248); and for vender ‘sell’ the encoding of a dative only occurs in 23.1% of the cases (27/117).

thus, in order to track possible occurrences of datives encoded in exclusive nominal form in the Buenos aires dialect (the main variety studied in the research from which this work is part), I selected the 12 verbs of transfer of knowledge, possession and information that appeared as the most prototypical, based on the relative frequency with which a dative argument occurred with them, as well as the overall number of tokens available.5 the resulting data are presented in table 1.

encoding

verb clitic-only cl-doubling np-only totals

decir ‘say, tell’ 52 7 0 59dar ‘give’ 43 7 1 51contar ‘tell’ 26 2 0 28preguntar ‘ask’ 15 2 0 17pedir ‘ask for’ 7 0 1 8enseñar ‘teach’ 4 0 0 4regalar ‘give’ 3 1 0 4pasar ‘pass’ 2 1 0 3entregar ‘deliver’ 1 1 0 2mostrar ‘show’ 1 1 0 2comprar ‘buy’ 0 0 1 1recomendar ‘recommend’ 0 1 0 1totals 154 23 3 180percentages 85.6% 12.8% 1.7% 100%

table 1. Percentages of encoding forms for dar-type verbs

4 alternancias de diátesis y esquemas Sintáctico-Semánticos del español. developed at the Universidad de vigo. http://webs.uvigo.es/adesse/enlaces.html. accessed June 16, 2007.

5 the total numbers reflect the Buenos aires corpus captured in adeSSe. When a verb returned no instance of dative encoding in this dialect, I replaced it with the next best alternative.

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this table shows that, in fact, the most frequent type of dative encoding occur-ring with transfer verbs in the Buenos aires corpus is by means of a clitic alone (154/180=85.6%). Whereas there is some incidence of clitic doubling structures (23/180=12.8%), nP-exclusive encoding is extremely low (3/180=1.7%). these frequencies are similar to the ones reported in Weissenrieder (1995), based on analysis of the novel El beso de la mujer araña, by the argentinean author manuel Puig. the relevant data appears in table 2 (adapted from Weissenrieder 1995: 173):

Form total /% exampleclitic-only 632/75% Le pide disculpas.clitic-doubling 130/16% Le grita de todo a la chica.nP-only 38/5% Pide al ordenanza un café doble.

table 2. encoding frequencies in El beso de la mujer araña

an additional search for occurrences of the dative clitic le in the Buenos aires corpus confirmed the preeminence of clitic-only structures in oral interactions. From a total of 780 clauses, this time combining verbs of the two groups, in 76% of the instances (593/780) the dative argument is minimally realized with a clitic form.

the prevalence of clitic-only is far from surprising. In effect, there is extensive evidence that the dative case-role is associated entities which are topical, and have high degrees of individuation and discourse saliency (Greenberg 1974, Givón 1984, 2001), all factors which justify attenuated forms of encoding. typical ex-amples of this class involve instances where the referent denoted by the clitic has been mentioned in the preceding clause, as in the sentences presented in (9) (the antecedents appear underlined).

(9) a. El tipo llega y le abre la puerta esta mujer.(hc:xxx) ‘Theguyarrivesandthiswomanopensthedoorforhim.’ (lit.‘opensthedoortohim’)

b. Ya he dicho muchas veces que la originalidad no tenía el valor en aquel entonces que se le atribuye hoy.(hc:xx)‘Ihavesaidmanytimesthatbackthenoriginalitydidn’thavethevaluethatisat-tributedtoittoday’

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c. …estuve hablando con---Susi y le contaba mis angustias.(hc:xxiv) ‘…Iwastalkingto---SusiandIwastellingmyconcernstoher.’

after clitic-only, the next most frequent type is clitic-doubling. typical exam-ples of clitic doubling occur when the target participant was mentioned farther away in the discourse context, or when it is identifiable but discourse-new. Con-sider the following examples:

(10) a. ¿Pedro Páramo? Eh... escuchame, Pedro Páramo, mirá--- yo lo leí este año cuando fui a la facultad. Eh... es la historia de un tipo--- cuya madre al momento de morir--- le dice que vaya--- a un pueblo donde vive--- Pedro Páramo. Pedro Páramo es su padre, él es hijo de Pedro Páramo. Entonces el tipo le cierra los ojos asumadre--- y va a ese pueblo.(hc:xxx)‘PedroPáramo?Eh…listentome,PedroPáramo,look---IreaditthisyearwhenIwasincollege.Eh…itisthestoryofaguy---whosemotheratthetimeofdeath---tellshimtogo---toatownwhere---PedroPáramolives.PedroPáramoishisfather,heisPedroPáramo’sson.Thentheguycloseshismother’seyes(lit.‘heclosestheeyestohismother’)---andgoestothattown.’

b.Lo para un momento así le doy orden alasecretaria de que no me interrumpa ni quince minutos…(hc:ii).‘Willyou[theinterviewer]stopit[thetaperecorder]forasecondsoIordermysecretarynottobeinterruptedforevenfifteenminutes…’

It is clear that in these examples exclusive pronominal encoding would have failed at helping the hearer establish the intended reference. In (10a) this is due to the presence of competing participants (i.e. the protagonist, his mother, Pedro Páramo), diminishing the relative activation of the target referent. In (10b), ex-clusive pronominal encoding would have been insufficient because the referent is discourse-new (although “situationally accessible”, as it is formally signaled by the definite article that introduces it).

We can now consider the least frequent pattern: nP-only. From the 180 da-tive forms presented in table 1 (i.e. forms associated with the most prototypical verbs which are predicted to allow nP-only encoding), there are only three such cases, only two of which count, since the third appears to be due to a processing error, as manifested by the speaker’s repeated hesitations. the three instances are presented in (11).

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(11) a. Hay que dar oportunidades atodos.(hc:xxi) ‘Opportunitieshavetobegiventoall.’

b.Nosotros no habíamos querido pedir el auto prestado anadie.(hc:xxii) ‘Wehadn’twantedtoborrowthecarfromanyone.’

c. Ayer a las seis de la tarde salí a comprar ....eh... eh... unas cosas ... eh... eh... u... unas cosas aAlvarito.(hc:xxxii)‘YesterdayatsixintheafternoonIwentouttobuy…eh…eh…somethings…eh…eh…s…somethingsforAlvarito.’

excluding the anomalous utterance in (11c), these examples suggest that nP-exclusive encoding correlates with non referential entities. this trend is also ob-served by Ibáñez (2008), who reaches a similar conclusion based on the mexican dialect, associating nP-exclusive with the denotation to “non referential generic entities”.

data presented by maldonado (2002: 18), also from mexican Spanish, can be interpreted in analogous fashion. analyzing the phenomenon within the frame-work of Cognitive Grammar, maldonado argues that the omission of the clitic marks a weaker conceptual linkage between discourse-participants. Based on ex-amples from a corpus of newspaper articles, he notes that this weaker linkage finds expression in third-person plural-impersonal constructions (12a) and in reference to generic participants such as institutions, groups, or masses (12b); contexts in which the clitic can be left out. (the translations have been slightly modified from their original rendition).

(12) a. Dieron un día extra de asueto alostrabajadoresdelEstado. ‘TheygaveanextrafreedaytotheStateemployees.’

b.Corresponderá alasautoridades vigilar el caso. ‘Itwillcorrespondtotheauthoritiestoexaminethecase.’

although Ibáñez and maldonado do not provide data about the relative fre-quency of nP-exclusive encoding in the mexican dialect, results presented by Bo-gard (1992) indicate that it is also very low, accounting, in his corpus, for less than 8% of the cases (38/491).

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the low frequency of nP-exclusive examples manifested in actual corpora con-stitutes a significant result in itself, given the attention usually given in the litera-ture to these forms. In effect, in most of the studies on Spanish datives there is the underlying assumption that nP-only structures represent the “basic” form which a clitic may optionally “double”. It is from this perspective that it is held, for in-stance, that the addition of the clitic marks a greater degree of “affectedness” of the dative participant. Interestingly, given the scarcity of nP-exclusive structures, this perspective leads to the conclusion that “dativeness” and “affectedness” are virtually coextensive. However, whereas the view of lexical phrases as the “basic” expres-sion of dative arguments makes sense in diachronic terms (see for instance Flores and melis 2004), it does not reflect the unmarked choice in the current state of the language, where it is clitics -“doubled” or not-, which most often appear in connection with dative arguments. thus, from a purely synchronic perspective it seems that the burden should be put on accounting for the marked contexts where the clitic is omitted more than on those where it appears.

If it is the case, as the examples above suggest, that nP-exclusive tokens are re-served for dative participants which are either non-referential or non-identifiable, then the scarcity of this encoding type in actual corpora follows naturally from the typical association of the dative case-role with definite, identifiable referents. In effect, it has been independently noted that datives usually refer to singular defi-nite entities, and datives realized as indefinites or with generic reference are often unattested in corpora (Company 2006: 503).

note that it is possible to reconcile the trends examined so far if we re-interpret the data in terms of a scale of cognitive accessibility. From this perspective, a pat-tern emerges in which clitic-only is used for maximally active referents, doubling is selected when the referent in question is less active, and nP-exclusive encoding, lying one step further on what we may think of as a functional continuum, withwith non-referential (and thus unidentifiable) participants, or with those whose identi-fiability is considered irrelevant.

as a result, a clear correspondence emerges between form and function, on the one hand, and form and frequency on the other. In other words, we may posit a continuum based on the frequency of each encoding type going from clitic-exclu-sive to clitic-doubling to nP-exclusive, and a parallel continuum in terms of the level of cognitive accessibility of the participants encoded with a dative case. this can be represented as in Figure 6.

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Figure 6. markedness relations for dative arguments

note that the correspondence between the two types of markedness relations is not a given. It does not apply, for instance, in the case of accusatives. Consider the following Figure:

Figure 7. markedness relations for accusative arguments

“direct objects” are typically associated with new referents and expressed as nominals. thus, the series starts from the opposite end, with “least active” and “nP-only” as the unmarked forms. If the expected correspondence obtained, we would find the next step up in the cognitive continuum to be expressed by the next most frequent encoding type. this is, however, not the case, as “accessible” (i.e. “less active”) referents correlate with clitic-doubling constructions (Belloro 2007), which is formally the most marked type. this “crossing” is partly due to the interaction between activation and focus structure. Lexical datives and accusatives in canonical position are normally focal, and focal constituents normally denote least active referents. In the case of dative doubling, the association between a fo-cal nP and a least active referent fits nicely with the interpretation that “dative doubling” constructions occur when the target referent is not as active as expected,

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and a lexical phrase has to be added to the structure to help establish reference. on the other hand, in accusative doubling constructions the expected lexical phrase in focal position encodes a referent that is nevertheless relatively active (specifi-cally, “accessible”), and this contrary-to-expectation fact is marked by adding to the structure the accusative clitic. this violation of the default expectations, in ad-dition to the availability of alternative structures for expressing potentially analo-gous pragmatic meanings (e.g. topicalization), as well as the long history of pre-scriptive stigmatization that holds over accusative doubling constructions, are all factors which conspire for making these structures relatively infrequent in actual corpora.

the situation with datives, as we saw, is more straightforward: the most fre-quent alternant is used with the most active referents, the less frequent alternant with the less active referent, and the least frequent alternant with the least active referent. Let us provisionally adopt RRG’s three-way distinction between “active”, “accessible” and “inactive” as corresponding to the three activation levels encoded by the dative alternants analyzed here. the next question is how dative doubling constructions and their allosentences should be represented, and how each encod-ing type could be derived. the next section, therefore, advances a Role and Refer-ence Grammar analysis of the constructions at hand.

4. Putting it all together

In section §2 it was mentioned that sentence structure may be affected by two in-formation-structure components; one concerning the cognitive state of discourse referents and the other dependent on the pragmatic relations (i.e. topic and focus) established by the phrases used to denote those referents.

We mentioned that even though there are expected correlations between fo-cus structure and cognitive states, these are not categorical. this was illustrated with an example of an accessible referent encoded within the focal domain (7). a similar mismatch may apply in Spanish. It is clear that in clitic-only structures the dative referent must be active and must belong to the pragmatic presupposi-tion (i.e. it must be topical), so that the expectations associated with focus struc-ture and activation status coincide. But this does not need to be so when there is a lexical phrase occupying the unmarked focus position, as it is the case with clitic doubling and nP-only structures. In §3 it was argued that the pragmatic distinc-

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tions encoded by these formal alternatives concerned the cognitive accessibility of the target participant. now we can provide an independent motivation for why an approach in terms of accessibility is to be preferred over one based exclusively on focus structure, as it becomes clear by comparing two of the examples presented below:

(13) a. Entonces el tipo le cierra los ojos asumadre =(10) ‘Then the guy closes his mother’s eyes’ (lit: ‘closes the eyes to his mother’).‘Thentheguycloseshismother’seyes’(lit:‘closestheeyestohismother’).

b.Hay que dar oportunidades atodos=(11) ‘Opportunitieshavetobegiventoall.’

In both the clitic doubling structure in (13a) and the nP-only structure in (13b) the dative phrase belongs to the focal constituent: in the first case, along with the rest of the predicate, as this is a “predicate focus” construction. the second exam-ple involves “sentence focus”, since there is no presupposition. (For definitions and cross-linguistic examples of the different focus types recognized in this theory see Lambrecht 1994 and van valin 2005; for some Spanish examples see Belloro 2007). Since in both clitic doubling and nP-only structures the dative phrase is part of the focus domain, a pragmatic analysis of dative alternants in terms of fo-cus structure can only account for part of the phenomenon, as it cannot be used to distinguish between clitic doubling and nP-only constructions.

Yet a different partial classification arises with approaches based on affected-ness, where the division would be established between nP-only ([-affected]) and[-affected]) andaffected]) and non-nP-only alternants (i.e. clitic-only and clitic-doubling, both [+affected]). the main distinctions captured by a pragmatic approach based on the focus structure and a semantic approach based on affectedness can be represented as in Figure 8.6

6 note that most current studies of do-doubling also take a binary approach, propos-ing, for instance, that it can only occur if the “doubled referent”, so to speak, is topical (as opposed to focal), specific (as opposed to non-specific), or discourse-old (as opposed to discourse-new). again, whether these features may be invoked to distinguish, with different degrees of success, between nP-only and clitic doubling structures, neither of them can be used to motivate the functional distinction between clitic-only and clitic-doubling since, under this approach, the doubled phrase has the same semantic/pragmatic features associ-ated with “zeroes”. In other words, clitic-only structures, regardless of whether one consid-ers the clitic or a pro as the manifestation of the argument, are expected to associate with

508 spanish datives

Figure 8. alternative classificatory criteria

as argued above, these should be complemented with a classification based on the cognitive states of discourse referents, resulting in an interaction of parameters that can be represented as in Figure 9.

Figure 9. topicality, affectedness and cognitive states

at the beginning of section §2 we referred to RRG’s linking algorithm as the set of rules which govern the mapping between semantic-pragmatic and morpho-syntactic structures. Based on the discussion above, here we can finally introduce

topical, specific, discourse-old participants just as much as clitic doubled ones. an approach in terms of cognitive states, on the other hand, allows us to distinguish between the three al-ternatives available in the grammar. moreover, it also makes it possible to generalize over the functional motivations which affect the encoding of both dative and accusative arguments, since in both cases doubling constructions mark the deviation of the target referent with re-spect to the activation level typically associated with the case-role chosen to encode it: more active than expected for accusatives, less active than expected for datives (Belloro 2007).

valeria a. belloro 509

a (simplified) version of the linking algorithms that govern the mapping from semantics to syntax in Spanish, and which incorporate the pragmatic information determining the appropriate encoding for the dative argument (for the complete version and for the syntax-to-semantics algorithm, see Belloro 2007).

(14) SpanishLinkingAlgorithm:SemanticsSyntax(simplified): 1.Construct the semantic representation of the sentence, based on the logical

structureofthepredicatorandselecttherealizationofeachargumentbasedontheactivationlevelofitsreferent:a. Ifactive,fillintherespectiveargumentpositionwithrelevantbundleofpro-

nominalfeatures.b. Ifaccessible,fillintherespectiveargumentpositionwiththecorresponding

nominal,plusitspronominalfeatures.c. If inactiveornon-identifiable, fill intherespectiveargumentpositionwith

thecorrespondingnominalexclusively. 1.Determinetheactorandundergoerassignments,followingtheactor-undergoer

hierarchy(VanValin2005:61). 2.Determinethemorphosyntacticcodingofthearguments:

a. SelectthePSA,basedonthePSAselectionhierarchy(VanValin2005:100).b. AssigntheXPstheappropriatecasemarkersand/oradpositions(Belloro2007:165).

1.Selectthesyntactictemplate(s)forthesentencefollowingtheappropriatetem-plateselectionprinciples(GonzálezVergara2006,Belloro2007:185).

2.Assigntheelementsineachargumentpositionstotheappropriateslotsinthesyntactictemplate:a. AssignpronominalfeaturestotheAGX.b. Assignnominalstotheappropriatepositionsintheclause,subjecttofocus

structure.i.Assignfocalelementstothelastpositioninthecore(default)

c. Assignany[�WH]argumentstotheprecoreslot.

We can now illustrate how these linking rules work, based on one of the ex-amples presented above. Let us select a simplified version of the sentence in (12a), along with its potential “allosentences”, as below:

(15) a. Dieron un asueto alostrabajadores. ‘Theygavetheworkersadayoff.’

510 spanish datives

b. Les dieron un asueto alostrabajadores. ‘Theygavetheworkersadayoff.’

c. Lesdieron un asueto. ‘Theygavethemadayoff.’

We need to create an appropriate logical structure for each sentence. all in-volve a predicate of transfer; in RRG terms, a causative accomplishment, of the type do’ (x, Ø) cause [become have’ (y, z)]. We argued that each of the sentences in (15) differ on the relative activation of the dative argument, and we said that in RRG this information is indexed in each argument position. therefore each logi-cal structure will also differ on how the position for this argument is filled. the resulting structures are presented in (16).

(16) a. [do’([3pl]ACT

,Ø)]CAUSE[BECOMEhave’(trabajadoresiNA

,asuetoiNA

)]7

b.[do’([3pl]ACT

,Ø)]CAUSE[BECOMEhave’(trabajadores[3m.pl]ACs

,asuetoiNA

)]

c. [do’([3pl]ACT

,Ø)]CAUSE[BECOMEhave’([3m.pl]ACT

,asuetoiNA

)]

the structures in (16) count as the output of the first step of the semantic-to-syntax linking. the second step is to determine the actor-undergoer assignment. Following RRG’s aU-hierarchy, the first argument of do’ (x, y) is selected as the actor macrorole, and the second argument of become have’ (y, z) as the undergoer, leaving the remaining argument as a non-macrorole. the third step in the linking involves the selection of the PSa and the assignment of case. PSa status falls on the first argument of do’ (x, y), which is assigned nominative case. there is no lexi-cal PSa, and thus the case features are assigned exclusively to the pronominal fea-tures. Following the appropriate case assignment rules, the highest ranking core

7 Considering the actor participant of so-called “third person impersonal constructions” as “active” is an oversimplification, since it cannot be identified. one of the characteristics of the construction is precisely that encodes it as if active, and thus I will code it thus here, leaving for further studies a more insightful account of its cognitive status. the “direct ob-ject” realized as the indefinite un asueto is inactive in all three cases, which accounts for the fact that it will be encoded exclusively as an nP (i.e. not in a do-doubling construction).

valeria a. belloro 511

macrorole (i.e. the actor) receives nominative case, the other macrorole receives accusative, and the non-macrorole receives dative.

the fourth step in the linking entails the selection of the appropriate syntac-tic templates. the three sentences contain three specified argument positions in their semantic representation. In (16a) and (16b), however, one of these argument positions is filled exclusively by feature bundles, and thus for these two structures we must select core templates with only two syntactic slots (Belloro 2004, 2007; González vergara 2006). the structure in (16c) contains two argument positions filled exclusively by feature bundles, and therefore for this structure we select a core template with just one syntactic slot.

the final step in the linking implies the assignment of the elements in each of the argument positions to the appropriate slots in the syntactic template: the pronominal features to the aGx, and the nominals to the nP nodes. the dia-grams that illustrate the result of the linking for the three structures are pre-sented below.

Figure 10. Linking diagram for a nP-only structure (15a)

512 spanish datives

Figure 11. Linking diagram for a doubling structure (15b)

Figure 12. Linking diagram for a clitic-only structure (15c)

valeria a. belloro 513

as the Figures above illustrate, the application of a consistent set of linking rules based on RRG’s syntactic, semantic and pragmatic categories makes it pos-sible to advance a systematic formalization of the different morphosyntactic reali-zations of dative arguments in Spanish, which is at the same time sensitive to the pragmatic distinctions that these constructions serve to encode in naturally occur-ring texts.

5. Conclusions

In this paper I examined the information structure of the three most frequent grammatical alternatives available for encoding dative arguments in Spanish, based on examples from interactional corpora. It was suggested that these three alterna-tives can be conceived of as a small system, with each member representing a dif-ferent point on a markedness hierarchy based on correlations between frequency of occurrence and the prototypical cognitive state associated with the dative case. Specifically, it was argued that clitic-only, clitic doubling and nP-only structures correlate with most active, less active and least active participants, respectively.

It was shown that the kind of approach to discourse-pragmatics incorporated in the model of Role and Reference Grammar can consistently capture the func-tional differences unveiled by the empirical data.

there are two issues which were not dealt with in this study, and that deserve careful attention. the first concerns the comparison of the pragmatic status of lexical phrases marked by a versus those marked by (other) prepositions (e.g. para). the second concerns the analysis of lexical datives which occur by default in topi-cal positions, such as those associated with psych-verbs. the role of accessibility scales in determining the conditions of use of these two extra types, and the extent to which affectedness, focus structure or other factors to be uncovered need to be invoked, are issues that I have to leave here open, in the hopes of addressing them adequately in future research.

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