THE ROLE OF CLITICS IN SERBIAN PRESENTATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

Research in Language, 2007

Serbo-Croat has a complex system of clitics which raise interesting problems for any theory of the interface between syntax and morphology. After summarising the data we review previous analyses (mostly within the generative tradition), all of which are unsatisfactory in various ways. We then explain how Word Grammar handles clitics: as words whose form is an affix rather than the usual ‘word-form’. Like other affixes, clitics need a word to accommodate them, but in the case of clitics this is a special kind of word called a ‘hostword’. We present a detailed analysis of Serbo-Croat clitics within this theory, introducing a new distinction between two cases: where the clitics are attached to the verb or auxiliary, and where they are attached to some dependent of the verb.

Linguistica, 2016

2009

I investigate the phonology of prosodic clitics-independent syntactic words not parsed as independent prosodic words-in Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian. I ask, first, how clitics are organized into prosodic structures, and second, how this is determined by the grammar. Following Zec (1997, 2005), I look at several clitic categories, including negation, prepositions, complementizers, conjunctions, and second-position clitics. Based on a reanalysis of word accent (Browne and McCawley 1965, Inkelas and Zec 1988, Zec 1999), I argue that in some cases where a preposition, complementizer, or conjunction fails to realize accent determined by a following word, it is not a procliticthat is, prosodified with the following word-but rather a free clitic parsed directly by a phonological phrase. Conversely, the second-position clitics are not always enclitic-that is, prosodified with a preceding word-but are sometimes free. Their second-position word order results not from enclisis, but from the avoidance of free clitics at phrase edges, where they would interfere with the alignment of phonological phrases to prosodic words. vii Regarding the determination of clisis by the grammar, I argue for an interface constraint approach (Selkirk 1995, Truckenbrodt 1995), whereby prosodic structures are built according to general constraints on their well-formedness, and on their interface to syntactic structures. I contrast this with the subcategorization approach, which sees clisis as specified for each clitic (Klavans 1982, Radanović-Kocić 1988, Zec and Inkelas 1990). The comparison across clitic categories provides key support for the interface constraint approach, showing that their prosody depends on their syntactic configurations and phonological shapes, rather than on arbitrary subcategorizations. Prosodic differences across categories are a derivative effect of their configuration in the clause, and of the division of the clause into phonological phrases. The relevance of phonological phrases consists in how their edges discourage some kinds of clisis, blocking, for example, proclisis of complementizers and conjunctions to their complements. Free clisis is disfavored at phrase edges, producing the second-position effect. Thus, the interface constraint approach leads to a unified account of word, phrase, and clitic prosody.

Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1994

This paper discusses the two alternating syntactic patterns of Polish past and conditional sentences from a Slavic perspective. We argue that what are often referred to in Polish as past tense verbs, for example widziale.s 'you saw', are in fact combinations of a past participle and a perfect auxiliary, e.g., widzial 'seen' and s 'you have'. These combinations are the result of syntactic Incorporation in the sense of Baker (1988). When not combined with the participle, the auxiliary can appear almost anywhere to the left of the participle within the same clause. We argue, however, that it always occupies the same syntactic position, only to undergo PF-cliticization. The auxiliary combines with a variety of elements because phrasal frontings such as Wh-movement and Scrambling allow a variety of categories to immediately precede the I-node occupied by the auxiliary. The proposal that the auxiliary appears in the I-node alone or incorporates the participle explains why certain items can host a clitic auxiliary while others cannot. A second auxiliary that incorporates a participle is the conditional auxiliary, as in widzial + bys 'you would see'. However, the conditional auxiliary is not a clitic and hence, unlike the perfect auxiliary, can appear in initial position. We argue that Polish is unique among West and South Slavic languages in having Incorporation. Bulgarian sentences like cel sum 'I have read' and counterparts in Czech, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovak appear similar to Polish examples involving Incorporation. However, they are the product of Long Head Movement, i.e., the movement of the participle directly to the C-position across the auxiliary. We argue that Polish sentences involving Incorporation differ in syntactic properties from Long Head Movement constructions in the other languages. * Research for this article has been partly supported by the European Science Foundation under the Eurotyp Project, and by Grants 410-88-0101 and 410-91-0178 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the second author. Preliminary versions were presented to the joint meeting of the Clitics and the Complementation groups of the Eurotyp Project in Vienna in October 1991, and to the Linguistic Association of Great Britain in Brighton in April 1992. We thank Ewa Jaworska and Jacek Witkos for help with the Polish data, Riny Huybregts and Henk van Riemsdijk for helpful comments, Danijela Kudra and Ljiljana Progovac for discussion of the Serbo-Croatian data, three anonymous reviewers for insightful criticism, and Frederick Newmeyer for very useful editorial advice. Usual disclaimers apply.

2001

Purpose This article discusses some of the similarities and differences between Romanian and Slovenian regarding their inventory, distribution, and use of clitics in various syntactic contexts and the syntactic and semantic interpretation of the most productive patterns by examining their structure, the order of clitics in their specific groups (clitic clusters), and the different ways of encoding similar meanings in both languages in syntactic structures. It briefly defines the notion of clitic, focusing on pronominal clitics, concisely analyzes the clitic inventory specific to each of the languages, which belong to different families (Romance and Slavic), and syntactically and semantically interprets the patterns in which pronominal clitics occur, especially the verbal group. Pronominal clitics As a result of grammaticalization (Zwicky 1977, 1983: 502–513; Hopper 1991: 80–82; Mel′cuk 1993 I: 225–233), clitics represent a class of grammatical forms present in many languages, charac...