¿Qué che femos con el che? : Some properties of the ethical dative ‘che’ in Asturian Galician

Abstract

This chapter is devoted to the pervasive use in Asturian Galician of a clitic token formally identical to the second person singular dative, albeit with different conditions of use and subject to very different placement restrictions. We claim that such item incorporates a ‘clusivity’ feature as an extension of the second person, compatible with its modal meaning, and that it benefits from the underspecification of the vocabulary item that also materializes the dative. We also claim that it belongs to a class different to ‘determiner-type’ clitics and ‘agreement-type’ clitics, which we deem ‘other-type.’ Despite its specificities, the chapter shows that it is not, however, a peripheric unit, inasmuch as its behavior is fully consistent with UG dictums.