On impersonal si constructions in Italian

Italian impersonal si constructions show a number of puzzling properties, which have been largely examined by Cinque (1988), Chierchia (1995) and Dobrovie-Sorin (1996, 1998, 1999) among others. In this paper, I consider the agreement patterns of impersonal si constructions. I show how these patterns follow easily from locality and intrinsic properties of si, such as, for instance, its clitic nature. There is no need to postulate special properties of si which are not shared by other clitics. Si can be considered as acting only at the syntactic level, and not, as has been proposed, in the lexicon.