Strong and Weak Pronouns in Russian: Lexical, Structural, or

The theory of structural deficiency (Cardinaletti, Starke 1999a) suggests a tripartite typology of pronouns (and apparently not only pronouns): clitics vs. weak vs. strong elements. Clitics are deficient with respect to weak pronouns which are in turn deficient with respect to strong pronouns. The differences involve syntactic distribution (only strong pronouns can be coordinated or modified by adverbs; only clitics occur in head positions, etc.), semantics (strong pronouns denote human referents only, weak pronouns and clitics must have an antecedent prominent in the discourse, may be impersonal, or expletive), morphology (more reduced as deficiency increases), and prosodic features (restructuring like liaison or reduction is found only with clitics and weak pronouns; clitics cannot bear lexical word stress). In Cardinaletti & Starke’s analysis, deficient pronouns correspond less to syntactic structure than strong pronouns. Strong elements have a CP (the topmost part of the traditional DP), but deficient elements lack it; clitics, unlike weak pronouns, are categories of the X0 level. Only full, i.e. strong, structures are generable; the existence of deficient structure is attributed to a reduction process in syntax motivated by a general Minimize Structure principle. Demonstrative pronouns stand apart from the tripartite classification: they have a special morphological marker (like th- in English); they must be disjoint from any c-commanding antecedent (while personal pronoun