Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2005: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Utrecht, 8–10 December 2005Edited by Sergio Baauw, Frank Drijkoningen and Manuela Pinto
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 291] 2007
► pp. 1–18
Adverbial participial clauses exhibit quirky case properties. The internal argument of a transitive verb may bear accusative or nominative morphological case in Romance. Unlike gerundivals, these clauses lack T and v*, among other heads, undermining a standard case licensing approach. We propose that absolutes are VPs that value the case of their internal argument. Other alternatives like a morphological default/inherent case fail to capture the paradigm in Romance. Our approach finds independent support in data from Medieval and Renaissance Italian, an accusative system, as well as the ergative system of Basque.