Clitic cluster restrictions
Abstract
Clitic clusters are complex morphological objects that are penetrable by syntactic rules, but behave as (semi)-autonomous morphosyntactic constituents. Clusters are subject to various kinds of restrictions, which fall into three main types: a) Restrictions on linearization: clitic clusters tend to be rigidly ordered; clitics are ordered within a template on the basis of grammatical categories (e.g. auxiliary > pronominal clitics), case/function, or person; the interplay of these factors yields a multitude of possible ordering systems, which vary across languages without any clear link with other syntactic or morphological phenomena. b) Restrictions on exponence: certain clitic clusters are morphologically opaque; in particular, combinations of identical clitic exponents are often avoided by dropping one clitic element, whereas combinations of (third person) pronominal clitics are often realized by suppletive exponents or by a single portmanteau morpheme. c) Restrictions on agreement: clusters of clitic pronouns tend to be ungrammatical when they correspond to certain person/case combinations (the so-called Person Case Constraint or PCC); clitic combinations tend to be ungrammatical when a first/second person direct object clitic is combined with a (third person human) "dative" clitic; focusing on Romance data, I argue that i) the PCC is part of a wider set of agreement restrictions that do not target only clitics, but become particularly evident when arguments are cliticised; ii) the PCC is arguably linked to animacy and, more specifically, to the syntactic mechanism whereby animate and non-animate arguments are licensed in the clause and, consequently, mapped into clitics.
Domains
Linguistics
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