On the Syntax of Subnominal Clitics: Cliticization and Ellipsis

This article uses the properties of the French subnominal clitic en as a probe to explore various issues in current syntactic theory. Section 2 presents some of its chief properties; section 3 deals with the way they relate to the VP‐internal hypothesis for subjects; section 4 discusses the intricate ways in which the null subject parameter interacts with the syntax of en/ne in French and Italian; section 5 analyzes the contrast between “adnominal en”— as in J’en ai lu le premier chapitre (I en‐have read the first chapter) — and “quantitative en”— as in J’en ai lu trois (I en‐have read three) — with respect to preverbal subjects, and explores the respective properties of “en‐cliticization” and nominal ellipses in French and English. It will be shown that a natural extension of Kayne’s (1994:8.6) analysis of de to en sheds light on mysterious properties of en. From a more theoretical perspective, the article can be read as a fresh attempt to vindicate the view that the parallelism between the internal structures of IP and DP is closer than traditionally believed.