The Agreement of Structural Obliques Parameter. Pseudopartitives, DOM and partitive articles in Romance

Abstract

The core proposal of this contribution is that in [P DP] or [K DP] structures, where K, P are oblique prepositions or cases, either P/K or DP can label the resulting constituent. If PP/KP is the resulting label, the constituent does not provide a goal for Agree. If DP is the resulting label, the constituent behaves like any other DP, providing a goal for Agree. This is what we call the agreement parameter for structural obliques. Inherent obliques, i.e. those selected by a predicate, obligatorily project as PP/KP. In section 1 we use this hypothesis to explain variation in the agreement pattern of pseudopartitives, in section 2 we institue a parallelism with Differential Object Marking (DOM). In section 3, we illustrate a consequence of the same labelling algorithm independent of agreement, arguing that so-called Romance partitive articles include the partitive preposition di ‘of ’, but at the same time project as DPs.