Clitics

This is the revised version of my seminar presentation at the St. Climent University of Sofia at the seminar on the "Evolution of the grammatical structure in Russian and Bulgarian. A contrastive perspective: corpus analysis and formal grammars'.  (Sofia, 15 October 2018) Several typos and mistakes are fixed.

В статье обсуждаются значение морфологических работ А. А. Зализняка для русской и общей морфологии, анализируется ценность его исследований с точки зрения истории лингвистики и возможности развития его теоретических идей.
The paper is devoted to the contribution of morphological works by the outstanding Russian linguist A. Zalizniak to Russian and general morphology and to possible ways of the development of his ideas.

While matrix clauses pronouns are almost never dropped in matrix clauses in Russian, silent pronouns are licensed in almost all kinds of embedded clauses. Null pronouns in such positions share similarities with PRO, but they also differ from PRO in many respects. In this paper, I show that there are two kinds of environments in which such pronouns can appear. The first kind of environment includes complements of attitude verbs, where there is strong evidence for a syntactic relation between the null pronoun and its antecedent. In the second kind of environment, which includes sentential adjuncts and embedded wh-questions, the nature of this relation seems to be different. I propose that Russian possesses a minimally specified silent pronoun which is phonologically deficient and must cliticize onto a higher projection and thus can only be found in the presence of an overt complementizer. I adopt the proposed in Holmberg (2005) that a major feature of pro-drop phenomena is the valuation of the D feature of the null pronoun. I propose that in Russian the null pronoun is unable to value this feature inside the clause where it is merged and therefore needs to probe outside the clause to get the D feature valued. The difference between properties of silent pronouns in the two kinds of environments is derived from the exact mechanism by which the valuation takes place. In the case of complements of attitude verbs, the valuation takes place as a result of an agree relation, in other cases the valuation takes place via a topic-chain.

Cast in Functional Grammar (FG), this chapter considers the syntactic placement of pronominal clitics in European Portuguese (EP), contrasting these with comparable phenomena in Castilian Spanish (CS). It emerges that EP constituent order results from the interplay of (at least) a single, minimally specified structural pattern, a principle of increasing syntactic weight, and the independently required principles of restrictive apposition and adverbial insertion. The specific difference between EP and CS reduces to the insight that EP allows placement of the verb in clause-initial position, whereas this is excluded in CS; verb position determines the occurrence of proclisis and enclisis, which we analyse as syntactic rather than morphological in EP. The chapter illustrates the applicability of FG to the comparison of languages.

The Formosan languages are the languages of the Aboriginal peoples of Taiwan. These languages are part of the Austronesian language family, and represent all but one primary branch of this family of 1,200+ languages. The Formosan languages are endangered, some critically so. While these languages have seen attention in the literature for their syntactic and phonological systems, little work has been done on their prosodic structure or intonation.

This dissertation analyzes the prosodic structure and intonational phonology of Mantauran Rukai, Budai Rukai, Tsou, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua, Sandimen Paiwan, Piuma Paiwan, Kavalan, Amis, Bunun, Tgdaya Seediq, Truku Seediq, and Pazeh, based on original fieldwork. In addition, archival materials are incorporated into analyses of Tsou, Truku Seediq, Tgdaya Seediq, and Puyuma.

This study finds that the Formosan languages show rich tonal phonologies in their intonational systems, and have complex interactions between stress assignment and morphology. Some examples include the following: Mantauran Rukai, previously described as an initial-stress language, actually has a complex stress assignment system with an alternation between first- and third-syllable stress, which as a system is unique in descriptions of stress assignment in the world’s languages. Hla’alua (Saaroa), previously described as having free variation between antepenultimate and penultimate stress, actually has an accent system in which some lexical items are consistently produced without an accented syllable, while others are. Hla’alua also has a rich tonal phonology assigned at two higher levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Kavalan has a unique rule that causes spreading tones to shift to the opposite domain edge when a certain number of tonal elements are aligned to the same boundary. Elements of the intonational phonology in Amis and Kavalan include glottal stops in addition to tonal elements. Bunun has distinct pitch accent melodies for words vs. clitics.

In addition to the unique features found in individual Formosan languages, this dissertation’s comparative study finds at least two geographic areas within Taiwan in which features of prosody and intonation cluster. One is southwestern Taiwan, including Tsou, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua, and Rukai, which share features including a lack of glide-vowel contrasts and variability of initial H vs. L elements in certain prosodic domains. The other is eastern Taiwan, including Amis, Kavalan, and Puyuma, which share features including suppression of non-IP-final pitch accents, alternations between ultimate and pre-ultimate F0 peaks across intonational contours, and interactions between glottal stop epenthesis and intonational phonology.

Datives at Large, Cuervo 2003, MIT

This dissertation is a study of the syntactic and semantic properties of dative arguments. The main source of data is Spanish, where dative arguments can appear with all types of verbs, and can have a wide range of meanings: goal, possessor, source, experiencer, affected object, causee, location, benefactive, malefactive, ethical dative. The challenge for a theory of dative arguments, which form a natural class morphologically, is to explain both what they have in common and how they differ syntactically and semantically. I argue that dative arguments have structural meanings, i.e., the meaning of a dative DP can be derived directly from the position in which it is licensed. To be able to predict the possible meanings of dative arguments, it is crucial to take into account the details of the syntactic configuration, which include the properties of the head that licenses the dative DP and of the functional heads  that construct the event structure.
Dative arguments are not direct arguments of the verb; they are, like subjects, licensed syntactically and semantically by a specialized head. This argument introducing head, the Applicative, licenses the dative DP as its specifier and relates this DP to the structure it takes as a complement. The range of possible meanings of a dative DP is predicted from the range of possible complements an applicative head can take (i.e. a DP or a vP), and from the range of heads that the applicative phrase can be a complement of. Applicative heads are also sensitive to the type of event expressed by the vP (e.g., dynamic or stative, activity or causative). The theory provides a set of positions into which an applicative head can merge and license an argument DP, as well as the set of interpretations the argument can get in each position. The set of positions is universal, but languages can differ with respect to the positions into which an applicative head is allowed to merge. These predictions generalize to applied arguments in languages in which they are not marked by dative case (e.g., English and Bantu languages).

This paper discusses pronominal clitics in Ketama Berber (Western Rif, Morocco). Ketama Berber is usually considered as a variety of Senhaja Berber. It is the westernmost and the most divergent Senhaja variety. The paper is based on fieldwork data collected by the author during several fieldwork trips in 2013-2016 and on Lafkioui 2007. After a general introduction to Ketama Berber (Section 1), its pronominal clitics are discussed (Section 2): clitic pronouns of the direct object (Section 2.1) and of the indirect object (Section 2.2). Special forms of clitic pronouns and their origins are explained. Clitic pronouns in Ketama/Senhaja are compared with Ghomara (based on Mourigh 2015) and Tarifit (based on Lafkioui 2007). Section 3 draws conclusions and summarizes the study.

Системы порядка слов с цепочками клитик могут быть описаны в терминах синтаксических ограничений. Все известные системы порядка слов с клитиками могут быть отнесены к одному из четырех типов, называемых в статье W-системами, W+-системами, W*-системами и V-системами. Кластеризуемые клитики обычно являются элементами уровня предложения: образование цепочки происходит в определенной синтаксической позиции. Выделяются правила барьера, порождающие порядки слов, где вся цепочка или часть клитик цепочки стоят вне канонической позиции кластеризации: такие порядки слов трактуются в работе как производные.

Este libro ofrece las claves que permiten comprender mejor varios de los fenómenos tratados en Los pronombres átonos (le, la, lo) en el español publicado en esta colección. Efectivamente, de manera sencilla y resumida en este libro se describen aspectos relacionados con la historia del leísmo, el laísmo y el loísmo, como las teorías sobre su origen, la actitud de los gramáticos ante estos fenómenos y la manifestación textual de los mismos en España y América hasta el siglo XIX. Asimismo, se explican los cambios en la colocación de los pronombres átonos de tercera persona tanto con formas verbales finitas como no finitas. También desde una perspectiva histórica, se aclaran cuestiones relativas al doblado de los objetos y su relación con la estructura informativa. El lector podrá lograr, por tanto, un doble objetivo: por un lado, disponer de una actualizada síntesis sobre la evolución de la variación de caso en los pronombres átonos y sobre los cambios en su posición y, por otro lado, acceder a los resultados de las investigaciones diacrónicas más recientes sobre doblado y estructura informativa.

This dissertation explores Subject Pronoun Expression (SPE) in Cabo-Verdean Creole (CVC), a Portuguese-based language spoken in the Republic of Cabo Verde. The CVC subject domain has at least three types of nominative anaphora: a subject clitic, a null subject, and a double-subject construction. This study is the first to examine the distribution of these subject categories by combining a quantitative methodology with formal syntactic theory, as well as insights from functionalist, usage-based, cognitive linguistic, and typological approaches. In so doing, it offers a new perspective on this issue that is intended to move the field past protracted theoretical debates over the morphosyntactic status and discursive functions of these grammatical elements. For instance, the formal category underlying subject clitics has been contested in CVC and cross-linguistically; some have claimed that they are independent pronouns that cliticize at the phonological level (Déprez 1994; De Cat 2005; Costa & Pratas 2013), others have identified them as inflectional affixes in the VP layer (DeGraff 1993; Baptista 1995; Culbertson 2010), while in language typology they are analyzed as ‘person markers’ that can engage in local grammatical agreement or nonlocal anaphoric agreement (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987; Zribi-Hertz & Diagne 2002; Siewierska 2004; Creissels 2005; Kari 2017). Sociolinguistic interviews and picture description narratives were collected from native speakers of CVC from the islands of Santiago and Maio. Sampled speech was transcribed prosodically (Chafe 1993; Du Bois et al. 1993; Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2019) in order to evaluate several aspects of discourse organization. Data were submitted to descriptive and inferential inspection in four analyses using R (R Core Team 2019): one was an exploratory test that served to delimit the variable context for SPE in CVC, the second involved a fixed-effects multinomial logistic regression, and the third and fourth were based on mixed-effects binomial logistic regressions. Results revealed highly significant effects for linguistic structural priming: double-subject and singleton tonic pronouns primed subsequent double-subjects, while null subjects primed additional null subjects. Lexical Determiner Phrase (DP) antecedents that were semantically referentially deficient (i.e. they bore inanimate, indefinite, or nonspecific reference) also promoted anaphoric zeros. These results lend partial support to the claims regarding the semantic properties of strong pronominals proposed under the Typology of Structural Deficiency (Cardinaletti & Starke 1994, 1999), and suggest that, as in Brazilian Portuguese, there is an “avoid referentially deficient pronoun” constraint (Kato & Duarte 2003, 2005; Duarte & Soares da Silva 2016) that is probabilistically active in CVC. The zero-to-zero priming effect and the favoring effect from referentially deficient lexical DPs were only active at short anaphoric distances, and were promoted when adjacent intonational units were prosodically linked or simultaneously prosodically and syntactically linked (Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2019). The priming effect for double-subjects obtained at longer anaphoric distances; they are promoted when their antecedent is in a non-adjacent clause. Results suggest that double-subjects function as switch-reference devices, can establish contrastive focus, and reintroduce old discourse referents. These are much the same functional and discursive values that singleton tonic pronouns have cross-linguistically (Givón 1976; 2001[1984]; 2017). The realization of zero subjects is mostly contingent on antecedent accessibility (Givón 1976; 2017, Ariel 1990), but is also modulated by the aforementioned “avoid referentially deficient pronoun” constraint. Inferring from the results for zero and double-subjects, it appears that CVC subject clitics are ‘ambiguous person agreement markers’ (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987; Siewierska 2004): like independent pronouns, they engage in nonlocal anaphoric agreement, but like inflectional affixes, they also engage in local grammatical agreement. This in-between morphosyntactic status is related to the infinitival origin of CVC verbs (Quint 2008b): the absence of bound person-number inflection is likely to have initiated grammaticalization on tonic pronouns, causing them to be eroded into subject clitics, and eventually become ambiguous person agreement markers, which are probabilistically dropped according to the properties of their controllers and the dynamics of antecedent accessibility. In line with Wratil’s (2011) ‘Null Subject Cycle’, it could be argued that CVC subject clitics are grammatical elements that have stagnated at an early stage of a grammaticalization cline, which entails the transformation of independent pronouns into clitics, and then eventually into bound affixes.

La siguiente tesis estudia un amplio número de construcciones del español rioplatense que contienen un clítico marginal de acusativo femenino (la y las). Adoptando el marco de la Morfología Distribuida (Halle & Marantz, 1993 y trabajos posteriores), perseguimos dos objetivos centrales. En primer lugar, nos proponemos llevar a cabo una descripción morfosintáctica, semántica y pragmática de los 452 verbos que integran el corpus diseñado, el cual está organizado en tres grupos con propiedades y comportamientos definidos: (i) verbos transitivos (e.g. sacarla barata, cortarla); (ii) verbos inergativos (e.g. matearla, caretearla); (iii) verbos inacusativos (e.g. pirarla, morirla). En segundo lugar, la propuesta incluye un análisis morfosintáctico del clítico marginal en relación a su interpretación semántica y su morfología de género, número y caso, y realiza un abordaje composicional y sintactista de la totalidad de las construcciones, a diferencia de la mayoría de los antecedentes en la bibliografía, que suelen ubicarlas dentro del ámbito de la lexicografía al considerarlas sintagmas (semi)lexicalizados, locuciones o unidades fraseológicas. Amén de que abarca en simultáneo tres tipos de estructuras que hasta el momento han sido estudiadas por separado (i-iii), una de las contribuciones de la tesis constituye el análisis de construcciones que no han sido exploradas en la literatura, dentro de las cuales se destacan casos de extraposición similares al inglés (e.g. No me la esperaba que Juan sea un facho), verbos meteorológicos (e.g. La re llovió anoche) y, fundamentalmente, verbos inacusativos con clítico acusativo marginal (e.g. La re murió Harry al final). En conclusión, mostramos que la gran mayoría de las secuencias estudiadas constituyen un fenómeno productivo regido por los principios de la sintaxis.

本稿の目的は，現代日本語（共通語）における「した」を形態論，活用論の観点から見た際の問題点について，先行研究と関連現象を中心に整理することである。具体的には，A) 現代日本語（共通語）のタ形の形態論的性質をアクセントの観点から分析しているOshima (2014)とその批判が提案されているNishiyama (2016)の議論を概観・整理し，B) タ（形）の扱いについて形態論的な観点から問題提起をしている岩崎 (2000)の主張をどのように位置付けることができるのか整理・検討する。

Slavic word order systems are compared with typologically similar systems attested in other areas. Slavic word order systems with clitics are classified on the basis of syntactic constraints without sticking to hypotheses about language-specific properties of prosodically deficient elements and to provide a viable typological classification, which can be verified by data from other world‘s languages. A salient characteristics of South Slavic, West Slavic and Old East Slavic languages are constraints on the placement of the so called clusterizing clitics. Clusterizing clitics make up strings arranged in a rigid order according to a principle called Clitic Template, the permutations are excluded as ungrammatical. In Slavic languages, only clause-level clitics have clusterizing properties. Slavic clusterizing clause-level clitics are represented by the following categories of elements: 1) short forms of argument and reflexive pronouns 2) auxiliaries 3) particles. Strings of clusterizing clitics have a fixed position in Slavic main and subordinate clauses and tend to take clausal-second position (2P). There is an important research line basing on the hypothesis that prosodically deficient elements, proclitics and enclitics, are also syntactically deficient and constitute a natural class definable in UG. Recent studies of the syntax/prosody interface show a gradual increase of the emphasis made on the prosodic component at the expense of syntax. However, some constraints on the placement of clitics directly or indirectly entail constraints on the placement on non-clitic sentence categories. If constraints of the latter type are straightforwardly explained as an outcome of the allegedly purely prosodic ordering of clitics, there is a risk to overlook syntactic mechanisms of linearization. I argue that most Slavic languages lack grammaticalized constraints on the placement of (non-clitic) verbal forms in sentences with the basic word order but such constraints tend to arise in sentences with derived word order, producing non-initial sequences [Verb–Clitic] and [Clitic–Verb] in main clause declaratives.

This entry has been prepared for the Historical Encyclopedia of the Russian Language. Энциклопедический словарь. / В.Б. Крысько (ред.) М.: Азбуковник, 2020. ISBN 978-5-91172-192-3.
The References section is deliberately minimized, according to the format of this edition. I give an account of phonetic and syntactic clitics in Old Russian, with focus on the clustering enclitics. Towards the end, I discuss the remnants of the Old Russian systems of enclitics in the later periods of Russian.

NB! The correct pages in the final edition are pp. 478 - 494. The year of the publication is 2020.

El libro examina la promoción de clíticos en el español y el portugués en el período desde la Edad Media tardía hasta el renacimiento temprano, insertándose en una importante y fecunda tradición de investigación. El trabajo se basa en una abundante recogida de datos procedentes de las lenguas romances antiguas, que son estudiados a través de la aplicación de las argumentaciones desarrolladas por la larga tradición de estudios mencionada. Se presenta que la promoción de clíticos en las lenguas romances antiguas no es una función del estatus de perífrasis/complejo verbal de las formas verbales en las que los clíticos se apoyan, como en las lenguas modernas, sino depende de la diversa naturaleza que las construcciones subordinadas de modo no finito tenían en la fase medieval de las lenguas romances y, más generalmente, de una diversa estructura de la frase. Se asbe que todas las lenguas romances abandonarán tarde o temprano estas características para asumir su estructura moderna, muy
diferente de la antigua; el presente trabajo recoge y discute, dentro del dominio más estrecho analizado en este estudio, los primeros indicios de este gran cambio.

"Fonologia catalana" is a comprehensive classical account of the phonology of Catalan, written in the 1990s within the tennets of the standard generative phonology theory, with some additional information  cast in autosegmental theory. The book includes chapters on vowel phenomena, syllable structure, consonant word-final phenomena, assimilatory and other consonantal contact phenomena,  pronominal clitics, and suprasegmentals. Each chapter includes some exercises.

This article discusses the choice of the past tense forms in the Rusyn dialect spoken in the village of Novoselycja in Zakarpats'ka oblast' of Ukraine. The past tense forms for the 1 st and 2 nd person in Rusyn are formed by a participle accompanied either by an enclitic auxiliary or by a fully stressed subject pronoun (the former construction occurs more often), but not by both. The factors influencing the choice of one over the other have not been clear. I claim that in Novoselycja Rusyn the factor that influences the choice of an auxiliary or a subject pronoun is a discourse factor. The choice between auxiliaries and pronouns generally depends on the position in discourse: the pronoun codes the first mention of the 1 st and 2 nd person subject, the auxiliary-subsequent mentions. The exceptions, auxiliaries in locally initial positions and pronouns in locally subsequent positions, show dependence on the speech genre: speakers prefer pronouns at the beginning of episodes in classical narratives, and auxiliaries, in genres closer to interactional conversation.

This book examines second position effects in syntax, the V2 order in Germanic and second position cliticization in Slavic. These are unique syntactic mechanisms, which seem to be constrained only by the requirement that an element, a finite verb or a clitic, occurs after a category-neutral, clause-initial constituent, with few restrictions as to what this constituent might be. The main aim of this work is to establish a parametric property that triggers V2 and second position clitic placement. Both effects were hypothesized to be related phenomena already in their first analysis due to Wackernagel (1892), but so far they have not been examined in a comparative way in detail, especially in a diachronic perspective. This work shows that neither of them is a uniform syntactic operation, and it is necessary distinguish between Force-related and generalized second position placement. What unifies them is Tense dependency: V2 structures are restricted to tensed environments, whereas the development of second position cliticization in Slavic is shown to have been contemporaneous with the decline of morphological tense marking on the verb, analyzed as the loss of TP.
The book can be ordered from the publisher:  http://ebooki.wuwr.pl/category/628 (e-book, pdf format); http://www.wuwr.com.pl/products/1855.html (paper version)

In this project I make a micro-parametric analysis analysis of the “leísmo”. First, I present the phenomena, its manifestations and its geographical distribution. Finally, I propose that what we call “leísmo” is the result of three different manifestations for the “person-leísmo” (leísmo de persona) and another different for the “thing-leísmo” (leísmo de cosa) based on a feature structure proposed. In that structure, I distinguish the “thing-leísmo” because of the feature of no animacy, and the different types of “person-leísmo” according to the additional features that are lexicalized.

L’oggetto del presente lavoro sono i verbi procomplementari, definizione coniata da De Mauro nel Grande Dizionario Italiano dell’Uso (GRADIT, 1999). Si tratta di una categoria di verbi all’apparenza molto eterogenea, all’interno della quale De Mauro inserisce verbi quali cavarsela, smetterla, avercela, volerci, metterci, starci, andarsene, ecc. per un totale di 157. Tali verbi, o almeno – come vedremo – gran parte di essi, presentano la particolarità di contenere uno o più clitici incorporati nella propria struttura, con conseguenze, rispetto al verbo di base – privo della componente clitica – che si manifestano a livello sintattico, semantico e pragmatico. Per fare un esempio, un verbo procomplementare come finirla differisce da finire sul piano semantico, con mutamento di significato, da ‘portare a conclusione (qualcosa)’ (finisci di scrivere) a ‘smettere di fare (qualcosa)’ (finiscila di scrivere), e su quello pragmatico, con l’aggiunta di una valutazione negativa da parte del parlante, rispetto alla stato di cose di cui si richiede la fine; o, ancora, nel verbo procomplementare vederci, il clitico ci agisce a livello sintattico, rendendo intransitivo il verbo di base vedere, e a livello semantico, modificandone il significato: ‘ci vedo’ è infatti soltanto parafrasabile come ‘possiedo la capacità di vedere’, mentre ‘vedo’ può solo marginalmente avere tale significato. Già tali esempi ci aiutano a cogliere il significato del termine coniato da De Mauro per tali verbi: “procomplementari” nel senso che accettano (pro: ‘in favore di’) a complemento del proprio significato uno o due clitici (Viviani 2006).
La tesi è articolata in otto capitoli. Nel Capitolo 1 mi occuperò di presentare i verbi procomplementari, illustrandone le principali proprietà sintattiche, morfosintattiche e semantiche; fornirò inoltre una lista dei verbi procomplementari che sono risultati essere i più frequenti dall’analisi di due corpora di italiano contemporaneo, il PEC (in prevalenza scritto), e il LIP (esclusivamente parlato). Tale lista sarà ampliata al Capitolo 8, dove tenterò di delineare una proposta di didattica dei verbi procomplementari più frequenti.
Nel Capitolo 2 farò un passo indietro e mi occuperò di definire, per sommi capi, cosa sono i clitici per poi analizzare nel dettaglio i pronomi clitici dell’italiano, illustrandone le proprietà sintattiche e le principali funzioni svolte.
Nel Capitolo 3 introdurrò il fenomeno della grammaticalizzazione, un processo diacronico per il quale un elemento lessicale assume statuto grammaticale. La grammaticalizzazione può interessare anche un elemento (già) grammaticale, il quale può assumere ulteriori funzioni grammaticali. Ad illustrazione del fenomeno della grammaticalizzazione porterò come esempio – a mio avviso paradigmatico – la genesi del futuro sintetico romanzo, che presenta all’opera i principali meccanismi messi in atto dal processo di grammaticalizzazione. Discuterò poi brevemente il ruolo della metafora e della metonimia nel processo di grammaticalizzazione ed introdurrò il concetto di lessicalizzazione. Grammaticalizzazione, e, in minor misura, lessicalizzazione, ci saranno utili per comprendere e analizzare in che modo si siano originati i verbi procomplementari: di questo mi occuperò nei Capitoli 5, 6 e 7. Ma prima, nel Capitolo 4, tratterò alcuni fenomeni di grammaticalizzazione che sembrano aver agito diacronicamente nella formazione del sistema dei pronomi clitici dell’italiano contemporaneo, per discutere infine l’ipotesi che l’italiano stia sviluppando una coniugazione oggettiva realizzata per mezzo appunto dei pronomi clitici, i quali segnalerebbero sul verbo l’accordo con l’oggetto diretto e l’oggetto indiretto, oltre a quello con il soggetto che già è realizzato in italiano.
Il Capitolo 5 sarà dedicato ai verbi procomplementari con clitico ci (metterci, volerci, ecc.); il Capitolo 6 ai verbi con clitico (o clitici) la (finirla, smetterla, ecc.), si + la (cavarsela, prendersela, ecc.) e ci + la (avercela, mettercela tutta, ecc.), e il Capitolo 7 ai verbi con clitico (o clitici) ne (volerne, andarne, ecc.), si + ne (andarsene, guardarsene, ecc.) e ci + ne (corrercene). In ciascuno di questi tre capitoli cercherò di individuare la funzione svolta dai clitici in alcuni verbi procomplementari, sostenendo, come Russi (2008), che alla base dell’incorporazione della componente clitica nella struttura di tali verbi – e alla base dunque della loro genesi – sia stato all’opera un processo di grammaticalizzazione per cui i clitici sono divenuti elementi obbligatori, la cui omissione restituisce verbi inesistenti, oppure comporta agrammaticalità o, ancora, produce frasi accettabili ma di significato differente. Vedremo quindi come gran parte dei verbi procomplementari siano da considerarsi vere e proprie entrate lessicali spesso semanticamente distanti dal verbo che, ipoteticamente, ne costituisce la base.
Infine, nel Capitolo 8, dapprima riporterò i risultati dell’indagine che ho svolto sui corpora Perugia Corpus (PEC) e Lessico Italiano Parlato (LIP), nei quali ho ricercato i 157 verbi procomplementari individuati da De Mauro nel GRADIT, più alcuni altri verbi notevolmente frequenti che sono a mio avviso da ritenere procomplementari a tutti gli effetti. Partendo dai verbi procomplementari che saranno risultati più frequenti dall’indagine nei due corpora, fornirò alcuni spunti per il loro insegnamento, focalizzandomi in particolar modo sul confronto tra i verbi procomplementari e i verbi con clitici pronominali, i quali possono risultare formalmente indistinguibili dai primi.

This thesis presents a polylectal study of Senhaja Berber varieties (Northwestern Morocco), underlining the differences and commonalities between them. The thesis is based on fieldwork data, issuing from seven varieties. Three varieties-Ketama (West), Hmed (Center), and Zerqet (East) are focused on to cover Senhaja most fully and accurately. The studied varieties are important for the understanding of the linguistic variation and history of the region. Senhaja shows some similarities to the Ghomara language (spoken to its West), and to Tarifiyt (spoken to its East), but there are also substantial differences. Senhaja and Ghomara might share a common origin.

The thesis covers the major domains of the language (phonology, morphology, morphosyntax) and pays attention to the contact linguistics phenomena. Senhaja has been heavily influenced by Arabic in its lexicon, morphology, and syntax. Arabic patterns are found, for example, in verb derivation and derivation of diminutives. In Senhaja, adjectives form a distinct class, which is not common in Berber. Some Senhaja varieties allow for adjectives to be conjugated, which makes them similar to verbs. Another special feature of Senhaja is the divergent behavior of the verbal clitics. Across Berber, clitics are fronted under specific syntactic conditions. In Ketama, clitic fronting can be incomplete, and the deictic clitic may be doubled. In other parts of Senhaja, clitics can remain postposed, where they normally should be fronted. It is argued that the main driving forces behind the divergent clitic behavior in Senhaja are reanalysis, grammaticalization, and the drive to avoid ambiguity.

In my PhD thesis on the development of the ergative construction, I investigated the function of enclitic pronouns in Bactrian, Parthian, and Persian. Among the various functions, I also described the Placeholder Construction, but I did not offer a historical explanation for it. I would like to take the occasion to summarise the main points concerning the positions Middle Persian enclitic pronouns can occupy and to attempt an explanation for the Placeholder Construction.

In this paper, I will examine a number of less well-studied phenomena in Georgian over the course of its long written history, as well as a number of highly divergent nonstandard dialects of the modern language. This will look at both features that lead to an aggregate increase in morphological complexity, such the decline of tmesis in preverbs and their ultimate grammaticalization onto the verb, allowing for the possibility of ‘trapped morphology’ in the terms of Harris and Faarlund (2006). While such processes result in a net increase of morphological complexity, there also exist countervailing declines in morphological complexity in other ways, such as with the loss of –(e)n plural number agreement. Then there are cases of ‘ambivalent’ grammaticalization, such as clitic agreement and aspectual-modality markers (=q’e, =mca, =dzi) which never quite ‘made it’, as well as various phonological changes in dialects which have had some rather serious knock-on effects to verb morphology. Georgian verbal morphology will be seen to be not a fixed unchanging template, but a kaleidoscope of multisystemic, ongoing morphological change.

Linguistic generalizations, e.g. about phenomena labeled “clitics”, presuppose that we identify classes of phenomena in a consistent way. But many grammatical terms (including the term “clitic”) are used for quite different phenomena in different languages. This is sometimes obvious, and sometimes less so. In this paper, I contrast two views about categories and their cross-linguistic applicability: The restrictivist approach assumes that there is a universal set of features and categories from which languages may choose, while the non-aprioristic approach makes no such assumption and proposes to compare languages on the basis of a special set of comparative concepts that are not closely related to language-specific descriptive categories. On the restrictivist view, categories exist independently of individual languages (as they are innate and thus given in advance). Thus, they can be identified by diagnostics, much like diseases are identified through their symptoms, and different languages could exhibit different diagnostics. However, for clitics this approach fails demonstrably, as there is no agreement on how to distinguish clitics from affixes or free words. This approach allows no way to go beyond subjective judgements. The non-aprioristic view is that linguistic classes should be defined and thus identified rigorously and objectively. This applies both to language-specific descriptive categories and to comparative concepts. To illustrate this, I propose two new comparative concepts, plenimorph and minimorph, for making a few readily falisfiable claims about the “clitic” domain.

Este estudio se divide en cinco partes: en la primera se hace el planteamiento teórico sobre los clíticos en español, con especial atención a las distinciones que se utilizan en el resto; a continuación se habla de la relación entre apócope y leísmo, donde se estudia estadísticamente la teoría previa. Sigue a esta parte un apéndice en el que se tienen en cuenta datos de carácter panorámico, pero que, por razones que se creen justificables, no se han incluido en la estadística previa. El tercer lugar lo ocupa el estudio de la redundancia o duplicación pronominal, separándose los casos en los que el miembro duplicado es un relativo. La cuarta parte es la más extensa; en ella se analizan los fenómenos a lo largo del tiempo, según distintas obras cuyo carácter es más o menos literario, puesto que van desde obras fundamentales de la literatura española, pasando por géneros menores, hasta el lenguaje periodístico. La quinta y última parte es la que integran las
conclusiones.
Aunque predominan los ejemplos de la lengua escrita, hay referencias a la lengua hablada, cuando ha sido posible. El
hecho determinante en un estudio histórico lingüístico es que el peso cronológico de la lengua escrita es abrumador.

This paper joins Campbell (2001), Campbell & Janda (2001), Joseph (2001, 2003, 2004, 2011), Norde (2009, 2011), and Willis (2007, 2017) in their calls to delegitimize grammaticalization theory (GT) as “pseudo-” historical linguistics. Specifically, I challenge statements made by proponents of GT, including Kuteva (2001), Haspelmath (2011), and Wiemer (2011) that the South Slavic future developing from PSl *xъtěti ‘want’, represents an instantiation of grammaticalization. While the Bulgarian and Macedonian future appears to obey the basic tenets of GT, including undergoing semantic bleaching and phonetic reduction along a unidirectional cline to zero (Givón 1979: 209; Haspelmath 1999; Heine 2003: 579), Štokavian (the dialect basis for modern literary BCMS) does not, as it has continued the volitional meaning of *xъtěti alongside the auxiliated future, which comprises both reduced (clitic) and long forms. Furthermore, evidence from comparative Slavic and BCMS diachrony clearly indicates that the phonetic reduction of *xъtěti (whether by ablaut or regular phonetic processes) preceded the semantic bleaching, a direct contradiction of GT. In addition, the auxiliation of *xъtěti may have been calqued on the Balkan Sprachbund model (Joseph 1983, 2011), leading to the restructuring of full and reduced forms of *xъtěti as clitics, likely in analogy to 'biti' (Pennington 2007; Kapović pc). Finally, discomfort with the functional and semantic ambiguity of hteti is evidenced in Western Štokavian, as speakers have innovated a metatony towards disambiguating the ‘volitional’ 'hteti' from the ‘future’ (Kapović 2018: 277).

Nota de față examinează tiparele de cliticizare pronominală din limba română veche și aduce argumente distribuționale pentru a susține ipoteza că în faza sa veche, româna dispunea de o poziție de cliticizare mai joasă. Fenomenele relevante în această direcție sunt: alternanța procliză/encliză și encliza în contexte nonspecifice (din punctul de vedere al românei moderne) și dubla realizare a aceluiași pronume clitic, proclitică și enclitică, în cadrul aceluiași complex verbal. Dând naștere la fenomenul de ambiguitate parametrică, poziția joasă de cliticizare a devenit inactivă în trecerea de la româna veche la româna modernă, însă este activată în mod excepțional în limba modernă de cliticul de acuzativ feminin singular o.

Postpositional suffix (enclitic) is the structure that phonetically connects to the element coming before itself and affects it in various ways such as emphasis, limitation, metaphor, affirmation, separation, and estimating; and, while it limits the structure it is connected in some cases, it can enhance the structure in other cases. In Turkish grammar, different terms such as postpositional suffix, post-suffix, post-coming, emphatic, and intensifier are used for this postposition. The same structure is called loading in Uzbek grammar.
In this paper, the structure of –å®/-yå® in Uzbek Turkish, which is the extension of emphatic postposition of ok/ök that was densely used in Old Turkish, is analysed. In the scanning for the identification of this structure, six works from Uzbek literature is selected. These works are selected from different years, and the usage rate of this structure in these years is determined. The analysis part is carried out in accordance with historical periods as being Orhon-Uyghur, Karakhanid, Khorezm-Kypchak, Chagatay, and Old Anatolia; and then, the situation of the suffix in Uzbek language, which is successor of Chagatai that is one of the old dialects, is identified. In addition to this, the profile of this postpositional suffix in contemporary dialects is briefly mentioned. After the historical process of the suffix is given in this way, the changes occurred in the field of usage in the mentioned periods are identified; and, it is compared to the field of usage in Uzbek language. In the last part, functions of the analysed structure both in historical and contemporary periods, and the functional differences in the usage of this suffix in these periods, as far as it is confirmed, are emphasized.

В монографии дается полное описание синтаксиса порядка слов и синтаксиса субъектно-предикатных отношений в пяти современных языках скандинавской группы германской семьи - датском, норвежском, шведском, исландском, фарёрском, а также в языке древнейших скандинавских рукописных памятников и языке континентальных скандинавских текстов переходного периода. Описание опирается на единую сетку параметров, значения которых проверяются в корпусе памятников. Обосновывается новая классификация систем порядка слов в языках мира: языки с предикатными энклитиками, где действует закон Ваккернагеля, выделены в особый тип. Впервые строго доказывается факт действия закона Ваккернагеля в древних германских языках. Обсуждается гипотеза о неуниверсальности синтаксического членения и рассматриваются формы реализации категории подлежащего. Выделяется четыре типа двусоставных конструкций без подлежащего в имен.п. Доказывается наличие слов категории состояния в древнескандинавских языках и исследуется связь между семантикой предиката и структурой предложении. В Приложении помещен Словарь древнеисландских предикативов (стр. 789-845), где собраны ок. 700 именных форм, используемых в корпусе памятников исключительно в функции сказуемого.

In this dissertation, I provide an analysis for word level prosody in Cherokee, a Southern Iroquoian language spoken in Northeastern Oklahoma and Western North Carolina. Focusing on Cherokee as it is spoken in Oklahoma, I analyze right edges of Cherokee words, showing that the boundary tone is predictable, though its distribution is conditioned by lexical tonal phonology and other word-final phenomena. In order to account for the distribution of the boundary tone, I must first provide an analysis of lexical tone in Cherokee. There have been previous comprehensive tone analyses (Lindsey 1985; Wright 1996; Uchihara 2013), which argue for a tonal inventory with two underlying tones (high and lowfall), a superhigh accent, and a default low which does not interact with the tonal phonology. I summarize these previous analyses and discuss what generalizations they can and cannot account for. I also argue that some low pitches in Cherokee are the surface realization of an underlying low tone. By including an underlying low tone in the tonal inventory of Cherokee, problematic surface pitch sequences from previous research can be explained. Before analyzing the boundary tone, I show all possible syllable shapes and discuss Word-Final Vowel Deletion, an optional fast speech process which often results in non-canonical word-final codas. I argue that there is a prosodic word which maps to a morphosyntactic word, as well as a larger prosodic word which includes enclitics. I also describe clitic linearization and attachment, and discuss how Cherokee clitics show a number of typologically unusual properties. Finally, I describe all possible alignments of the boundary tone. While mentions of the boundary tone in previous literature claim that the boundary tone only appears on word- final vowels, I show a much wider range of possible surface positions for the boundary tone: 1) the boundary tone appears on word-final vowel, 2) the boundary tone appears on a non word-final vowel, and 3) the boundary tone does not appear at all. I use a Stratal OT framework to account for the alignment of the boundary tone, as well as interactions between the surface position of the boundary tone and lexical tonal phonology, clitic attachment, and Word-Final Vowel Deletion.

Some influential studies about medieval northern Italian dialects argue that if a subject pronoun occupies the first position in a sentence it should not be regarded as clitic, because of the Tobler Mussafia law. However, evidence suggests that Tobler Mussafia law did not apply to subject clitic pronouns, but only to object ones. It is therefore worth inquiring when a subject pronoun may be seen as clitic in medieval northern Italian dialects: four criteria are set forth.