Subject clitics and subject extraction in Somali

This item was digitized as part of a project to share McGill's intellectual legacy with the public. If you are the copyright holder or a relative of the copyright holder who is deceased, you may request withdrawal by emailing escholarship.library@mcgill.ca. The full policy for eScholarship may be accessed here: mcgill.ca This study applies Chomsky's Barriers version of government binding theory to subject clitic pronouns and subject-verb agreement processes in Somali. It is proposed that Somali has a contrast between strong and weak subject-verb agreement, indicated as AGR$ sb{ rm S}$ and AGR$ sb{ rm W}$ respectively. SCL is possible iff AGR = AGR$ sb{ rm S}.$ SCL is obligatory if subject is pro, the null pronominal. SCL is excluded in case of short subject extraction, which is only possible from the domain of AGR$ sb{ rm W}.$ The prohibition against short subject extraction from the domain of AGR$ sb{ rm S}$ is attributed to Principle B of Aoun's generalized binding theory. Long subject extraction from the domain of AGR$ sb{ rm S}$ is possible if an intermediate trace in (NP,CP) deletes before binding theory. The analysis is extended to subject extraction in Italian, including the Trentino dialect, and Modern Irish.