An experimental study of ne-cliticization in Catalan

Abstract

The Latin adverb inde, meaning ‘from there,’ has evolved into the partitive clitic ne/en in several Romance languages. While ne-cliticization has been extensively studied in Italian, research on its use in Catalan is both scarce and lacks empirical evidence. This study addresses this gap through two experiments involving acceptability tests and judgment tasks. The experiments challenge two established claims in the literature: (1) that ne-cliticization is dependent on the unaccusative status of the verb, and (2) that the presence of a locative element can cause unergative verbs to pattern like unaccusatives, thereby licensing ne as the main argument of the verb. The findings refute these claims, showing that ne can serve as the main argument of all intransitive verbs, irrespective of their unaccusative or unergative classification, and that locatives do not influence speakers’ choices regarding ne-cliticization.