Arbitrary SE and accusative clitics in Catalan: Resolving (mis)matches in the syntax

This paper is dedicated to co-occurrence restrictions induced by accusative clitics in contexts containing the SE marker with arbitrary interpretations. A less discussed pattern from Catalan is scrutinized in detail, through a comparison with Spanish data, which are better studied. Catalan is special in that accusative clitics do not uniformly produce ungrammaticality under arbitrary SE: the neuter ho clitic is not acceptable, while the l-clitic, restricted to individuation and/or animacy, is possible. We show that these splits are rooted in the syntax. Individuation and animate accusative clitics contain additional PERSON features which, due to their more extensive possibilities to get licensed, can avoid structural restrictions imposed by the presence of an impersonal/arbitrary structural component in the clausal configuration.