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Co-occurrence Strength and Transitivity Effects on Spanish Clitic Case Variation With Reverse-Psychological Predicates.

ABSTRACT: Although the most frequent psychological predicates in Spanish require the third-person clitic experiencer to appear in dative case, there is a well-known subclass of predicates for which the case of the clitic alternates between accusative and dative. This alternation has been previously accounted for by certain grammatical properties of the clause containing the clitic as well as elements of transitivity. However, since most studies on the subject have only looked at a subset of the elements comprising transitivity, it remains to be demonstrated whether the alternation in clitic case can reliably be reduced to a difference in transitivity. In this paper, I study the extent to which transitivity is the main predictor of clitic case alternation with reverse psychological predicates by comparing its effect with another potential predictor, namely the bidirectional association strength between the verb and the clitic. The results show that higher levels of association between the clitic and the verb favor the dative clitic, suggesting a higher degree of lexicalization of the dative clitic-verb pair. Furthermore, although it is found that higher levels of transitivity favor the accusative clitic, the effect is rather small compared to the rest of the predictors. All in all, the results support previous findings in the literature, but they also bring to the fore the importance of frequency of co-occurrence on Spanish clitic case alternation in particular, and language variation more generally.

SUBMITTER: Guajardo G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8330882 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundHosts and their parasites are under reciprocal selection, leading to coevolution. However, parasites depend not only on a host, but also on the host's environment. In addition, a single host species is rarely infested by a single species of parasite and often supports multiple species (i.e., multi-infestation). Although the arms race between a parasite and its host has been well studied, few data are available on how environmental conditions may influence the process leading to multiple infestations. In this study, we examine whether: (1) environmental factors including altitude, temperature, vegetation cover, human disturbance, and grazing by livestock affect the prevalence of two types of ectoparasites, mites and ticks, on their host (the common lizard, Zootoca vivipara) and (2) competition is evident between mites and ticks.ResultsWe found the probability of mite infestation increased with altitude and vegetation cover, but decreased with human disturbance and presence of livestock. In contrast, the probability of tick infestation was inversely associated with the same factors. Individuals with low body condition and males had higher mite loads. However, this pattern was not evident for tick loads. The results from a structural equation model revealed that mites and ticks indirectly and negatively affected each other's infestation probability through an interaction involving the environmental context. We detected a direct negative association between mites and ticks only when considering estimates of parasite load. This suggests that both mites and ticks could attach to the same host, but once they start to accumulate, only one of them takes advantage.ConclusionThe environment of hosts has a strong effect on infestation probabilities and parasite loads of mites and ticks. Autecological differences between mites and ticks, as indicated by their opposing patterns along environmental gradients, may explain the pattern of weak contemporary interspecific competition. Our findings emphasize the importance of including environmental factors and the natural history of each parasite species in studies of host-parasite coevolution.

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Co-occurrence Strength and Transitivity Effects on Spanish Clitic Case Variation With Reverse-Psychological Predicates.

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