A Syntactic Analysis of Object Pseudorelatives in Spanish

This study investigates the syntactic structure of pseudorelatives in Spanish, in particular focusing on object pseudorelatives, and addresses limitations in previous analyses. While Casalicchio & Herbeck (2024) effectively explain subject pseudorelatives via A-movement, their analysis falls short in accounting for accusative/dative clitic doubling observed in object pseudorelatives. Similarly, Carranza & Zdrojewski’s(2023) approach, which relies on an antilogophoric null operator, does not extend to object pseudorelatives. To address these issues, this study proposes a new analysis involving A’-movement of a null operator, explaining the obligatory clitic doubling in object pseudorelatives. Following Hicks’s(2009) proposal of complex null operator movement as a form of smuggling, this analysis enables the long-distance A’-movement of the null operator to the specifier of the embedded CP, establishing correference between the matrix and embedded objects. This approach provides a unified account of object pseudorelative structure in Spanish, resolving key issues with clitic doubling and syntactic dependencies.