Dr MA BA Jorge Agulló

My main research interests lie in grammatical variation and syntactic theory in Ibero-Romance and beyond. More specifically, he has worked on the following topics:

1. Resumptive pronouns from a variationist and theoretical perspective. Resumptive pronouns have proven to be essential for two different subfields: grammatical variation and syntactic theory. My research thus aims to contribute to both. Some of my previous publications assumed a diachronic and variationist perspective to tackle the grammatical and social variation resumptives are subject to—based on data from Spanish corpora. Most (not all) of this research remains unpublished, as it is currently on preparation for publication as a monograph titled The Syntax of Resumption in Spanish. The book draws heavily on data from Spanish, Galician, and Catalan, on the one hand, and Farsi (Persian), Tagalog (Filipino), and Bisaya/Visaya (Cebuano), on the other. I put forth the hypothesis that 1) resumptives in these languages are syntactically inactive resumptives in Asudeh's (2012) typology and that 2) resumption can (and must) be derived via movement in these languages, i.e., Internal Merge. I use diagnostics like primary and secondary Weak Crossover, Principle A and B Reconstruction effects, quantifier-variable binding and the like to support the hypothesis—a short, preliminary version can be found in this abstract for a talk in Cambridge Linguistics Forum. Lately, in joint work with Leonardo Russo Cardona, I have switched from Ā- to A-Dependencies to show how the movement approach to resumption can also account for A-resumption.
2. The diachrony of relative clauses. I have published several papers about the diachronic development of relative clauses in Spanish, the grammatical variation they are subject to, and the geographical distribution of some of its variants. Specifically, I have tackled the diachronic evolution of cada (vez) que lit. 'each (time) that' and Case and prepositional mismatches in semi-free and free relative clauses in Spanish.
3. Unagreement phenomena. I have recently submitted two papers about so-called unagreement phenomena, i.e., an apparent mismatch in person and sometimes number features between the verb and its subject. Simply put, languages like Catalan, Galician, and Spanish allow for (mostly plural) subjects to unagree. For instance, a noun phrase like els catalans '(the) catalans' can trigger first, second, or third person plural agreement: Els catalans {estem / esteu / estan} farts '{We catalans / You catalans / Catalans} are fed up'. My work is mainly based on Galician, Catalan, Spanish, and Slovenian, which readily allows for unagreement. In recent work with Marco Losavio (University of Vienna, Austria) I have studied unagreement patterns in Brazilian Portuguese.
4. Upward Case-attraction phenomena. Quite recently, I have published some works about upward Case attraction phenomena, that is, prepositions that "hop" from the relative clause to the matrix clause. The phenomenon was thought of as belonging only to past stages of Indo-european languages, so Spanish lacked a proper description of the phenomenon.
5. Existential Constructions and the Definiteness Effect. Several fieldwork campaigns in Catalan-speaking regions of Spain (see a complete list here) made me realize that existential constructions in the different varieties of Spanish spoken in these regions do not observe the Definiteness Effect, i.e., a prohibition against definites in the existential: *Hay Jorge, lit. 'There is Jorge', is not grammatical in Spanish, but can be attested in these varieties. This phenomenon remained unnoticed. After noting the phenomenon in a book for the general public, I have developed different grammatical and quantitative analyses—showing clear-cut dialectal results.
6. Clitics in Existential Constructions. I have devoted some attention to the properties of clitics in the existential construction in Spanish, their derivation and their cross-linguistic correlates.