Things you learn from Facebook

[muckefuck]

Yes, Friends, amid all the Farmville reports and invites to open eggs or whomp on Russian mobsters, there is the occasion nugget of interest. A Friend of mine recently wrote:

Si vienen a Chicago, me tienen que visitar en el [restaurante].

Pretty banal from a content point of view: "If you [pl.] come to Chicago, you have to visit me at the [restaurant]." But what caught my attention was the position of the "me". You see, I would've expected "Tienen que visitarme", with it tacked right onto the infinitive. But it's not, it's right at the beginning as if the meaning being expressed were really "You have me to visit at the restaurante". It's called "clitic raising" and I didn't know you could do it across que, a Spanish subordinating conjunction.

In retrospect, this shouldn't surprise me much. After all, I'd expect it in Catalan. "M'heu de visitar" sounds more natural to me than "Heu de visitar-me" (which, ironically, sounds castilianised). The crucial difference, however, is that the link in this case is de and I'm used to seeing clitics clamber over it. Me acaban de visitar sounds every bit as unexceptional as Acaban de visitarme. But what exactly is different about the role of que in tenir que from the role of de in acabar de or a in ir a? I should know much better than to get hung up on a word's function in constructions other than the one under consideration. Either way, we're dealing with an infinitive clause, right?

There's more to consider here, but I need a night's rest to do it.

Comments

[tisoi.livejournal.com]

Is "te quiero ver" clitic raising as well or does there have to be que/a/de?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

No, that counts as well. I think even "le he visto" may count, but I haven't actually read a formal description of the phenomenon. Certainly Wheeler et al. consider "Les vaig veure" an example of it.

[tisoi.livejournal.com]

Ok, my teacher back in high school explained that there were too choices. And to put it very simply, to break up the monotony of putting it after the infinitive all the time. Not a helpful answer, it'd be interesting to know the real reasons why.

Also, in European Portuguese the pronoun follows a verb. "Vejo-te," etc. If the utterance is negative or it begins with some kind of adverb, then you could say "não te vejo" or "ainda te vejo" - the clitic pronoun has to attach to something, basically.

In Brazilian Portuguse, however, the clitic pronoun is free to go before the verb like in other Romance languages as in "te vejo."

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Hé de cantar e de rir.