Cliticization and Abstract Case Assignment in Spanish.

Building on recent work that argues in favor of a return to movement analyses for clitics (Uriagereka & Raposo 2005, Boeckx & Gallego , Roberts , ; Gallego), this paper explains why object clitics need to engage in probe/goal relations with agreeing verbs to value their Case features. A Case‐based account within Phase Theory (cf. Chomsky , ,) allows us to account for previously difficult to explain intervention and other displacement effects associated with these elements, and it also predicts clitic placement in a wide variety of ECM and causative constructions. Clitics in these constructions are sensitive to the timing and location of Case‐assigning mechanisms on the finite embedding verb, highlighting the importance of Case theory in deriving 'raising to object' phenomena in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]