This paper is an extensively revised and expanded version of the first part of a broader paper that was circulated as Ormazabal & Romero (2002) and also included a syntactic analysis of the agreement restrictions discussed here. The syntactic proposal analyzed the properties of a series of ditransitive constructions that were shown to be subject to the restriction: dative Constructions, dative Clitic Constructions and Double Object Constructions, all in a broad variety of languages. Due to editorial requirements, we have extended the descriptive sections of the work, leaving the more theoreticallyoriented parts of our proposal for a forthcoming paper.

<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In this paper, we present empirical evidence showing </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">that</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> Differential Object Marking (DOM)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>in Spanish is determined by structural conditions related to Case and agreement. We also argue that semantic concepts </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">such as specificity, definiteness, animacy, or topicality, tightly connected to the presence or absence of <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">A</span>, </em></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">must be parasitic on the syntactic configurations where DOM is licensed.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; color: red; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We also present some consequences of our analysis for the general theory of agreement. We argue that the same structural relation is involved in all cases of DOM, as well as in Dative Clitic Constructions, where the</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> presence of the particle<em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> A</em> preceding clitic-doubled </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; color: windowtext; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">datives is syntactically unified with DOM phenomena. The accusative/dative distinction traditionally attributed to the Spanish pronominal system does not correspond, in synchronic terms, to different case relations, but distinguishes between agreeing and non-agreeing arguments. Similarly, the distribution of DOM corresponds to a Case-checked/Caseless difference. We extend the analysis to account for well-known restrictions on the co-appearance of two DOM</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> arguments, which <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>are analyzed as the consequence of a competition between two arguments for a single target. <br /></span>

This article presents an analysis of object clitics in Spanish and some of its consequences for the theory of agreement and Case. On the empirical side, we present syntactic, morphological and semantic arguments supporting a mixed approach to object clitics where 3rd person Direct Object (DO) cliticization constitutes a genuine case of Determiner movement, but other DO and Indirect Object (IO) clitics are agreement elements. Once third person object clitics are set aside, the emerging picture is a single agreement that does not discriminate between DOs and IOs in the syntax. This idea finds striking support in Basque Leísta Dialect, where there is a 3rd person DO agreement clitic that behaves in all relevant respects like all other agreement clitics. Moreover, the consequences of this analysis extend to other properties of the object relation in Spanish, such as Differential Object Marking (DOM), and dialectal variation in the clitic field. An interesting observation that arises from this study is that the agreement nature of 1st and 2nd person clitics and the whole series of IOs is extremely robust in Spanish and remains invariable across all the dialects analyzed. Variation is thus restricted to 3rd person DO objects, where in contrast the changes are diverse and take very different directions, a fact that raises interesting questions related both to the historical evolution of the clitic system and to the theoretical analysis of Case and agreement.

This paper argues for an updated version of the classical derivational approach to Double Object Constructions (DOCs) and parallel dative construction across languages. We extensively argue that the arguments to postulate a non-derivational approach to dative construction do not hold and that, in fact, such an approach runs into unsolvable problems. We argue that the structural alternation is triggered by Preposition (applicative) incorporation and Case/Agreement-relational considerations. We maintain a unified analysis of dative and PP constructions at the level of argument structure, while deriving the structural and Case differences as a consequence of the incorporation of P and its modification of the Case requirements. Combined with a non-symmetric theory of Case, this approach yields the right results for most of the properties traditionally associated to dative constructions. An obvious advantage of our approach with respect to both classical transformational approaches and polysemy analyses, is that it can account in a neat way for the -mixed‖ behavior of the applied and the second objects in dative constructions with regard to -direct object‖-hood, without the need for any stipulative move, completely separating Case relations from argument structure.

Most analyses of non-paradigmatic SE derive their agreement patterns structurally, forcing a passive/impersonal distinction against all evidence. Instead, we uniformly analyze them as regular sentences where the T-agreeing subject is se itself, an argumental clitic pronoun, with [person] but no number ϕ-features, and show that the overt argument, which has object properties, does not genuinely agree in syntax. We reveal a new asymmetry between postverbal and preverbal/null arguments, which conceals two postsyntactic processes with very distinctive properties: morphological clitic Mutation into number agreement, and T’s Number Harmony with a close DP, not ruled by syntax or morphology.