The first concern of this article is an analysis of locative sentences
in the Iberian
Romances. It is argued that both the existential (〈HAVE〉)
and the stative (〈BE〉)
construction derive from a single abstract verb. Their differences are
based in the
presence vs. the absence of an incorporation process over an otherwise
identical
lexical structure. The second topic of the paper is a study of the behavior
of
pronominal clitics within these sentences. It is observed that while Catalan
has a rich
paradigm of clitics (accusative, dative, locative, partitive), languages
like Asturian,
Galician and certain Spanish dialects resort to a ‘recycling’
strategy in order to
palliate the deficiencies of their clitic paradigms. In this respect, we
will show how
accusative clitics are used as partitive, locative, and even subject clitics.
We also
propose some of the principles which constrain the application of this
strategy.
Finally, an Appendix is devoted to certain uses of the accusative clitics
as modal
markers, also within locative sentences. These uses are closely related
with the
behavior of certain clitics in Northern Italian dialects.