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  • Clitics as Nonbranching Elements and the Linear Correspondence Axiom
  • Željko Bošković

Recent work on South Slavic cliticization standardly assumes that clitic ordering in Bulgarian (Bg) and Macedonian (Mac) is derived through rightward head adjunction, which is inconsistent with Kayne's (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA). In this squib I show that this potentially very serious problem for the LCA can be resolved if we adopt a particular approach to the structural representation of clitics, which is meant to hold crosslinguistically: namely, that clitics are syntactically defined as nonbranching elements (i.e., ambiguous X0/XPs), as suggested in Chomsky 1995a. To the extent that it is successful, the analysis presented here will provide evidence for the clitics-as-nonbranching-elements hypothesis. Below, I confine the discussion of Bg/Mac clitics to the issues directly relevant to my current theoretical concerns, a strategy that leads me to ignore a number of very interesting issues the phenomenon raises. For more comprehensive recent discussions of cliticization in Bg and/or Mac, see Alexandrova 1997, Avgustinova 1994, Boeckx and Stjepanović 2000, Bošković 2001b, Caink 1998, Čšule 1997, Dimitrova-Vulchanova 1995, Dimitrova-Vulchanova and Hellan 1999, Franks 1998, Franks and King 2000, King 1996, Legendre 2000, Penčev 1993, Rivero 1997, Rudin 1997, and Tomić 1996, 1997, among others.

The main verb and the clitic cluster consisting of auxiliary and pronominal clitics are standardly assumed to be located in the same head position in Bg and Mac constructions like (1a-b), because of their impenetrability and the fact that the verb carries clitics along when moving to a higher head.1 (I will refer to the clitic cluster+main [End Page 329] verb complex as the extended clitic cluster (ECC). Clitics are given in italics.)

(1)

  1. a. Petko mi     go     dade.

    Petko me.DAT it.ACC gave

    'Petko gave it to me.'

  2. b. Ti si     mu gi     dal. you are him.DAT them.ACC given

    'You have given them to him.'

To appreciate the impenetrability, consider first the ECC in Serbo-Croatian (SC), a closely related language. The main verb in SC (2) is clearly not located in the same head position as the clitic cluster. Unlike in Bg and Mac, the main verb can be separated from the clitic cluster in SC. Bg counterparts of SC (2a-b) are given in (3a-b).2

(2)

  1. a. Jovan mi     ga     juče     dade.

    Jovan me.DAT it.ACC yesterday gave

    'Jovan gave it to me yesterday.'

  2. b. Ti si mu     ih     brzo dao. you are him.DAT them.ACC quickly given

    'You quickly gave them to him.'

(3)

  1. a. *Petko mi     go     včera     dade.

    Petko me.DAT it.ACC yesterday gave

  2. b. *Ti si mu     gi     nabârzo dal. you are him.DAT them.ACC quickly given

Ćavar (1999), Stjepanović (1998a,b, 1999), and I (Bošković 2000, 2001b) show that even the clitic cluster itself can be broken by a variety of operations in SC. Thus, as shown by Stjepanović (1998a,b) and illustrated in (4), ellipsis can break the clitic cluster in SC.

(4)

  1. a. Mi smo mu     ga     dali, a i vi ste we are him.DAT it.ACC given and also you are mugadali (takodje).

    him.DAT it.ACC given too

    'We gave it to him, and you did too.'

  2. b. ?Mi smo mu ga dali, a i vi ste mu gadali (takodje).

Working under the standard assumption that only constituents can be elided, Stjepanović concludes on the basis of (4) that SC clitics are [End Page 330] not all located in the same head position.3 More precisely, she concludes that the auxiliary, the dative clitic, and the accusative clitic are located in different projections, with the auxiliary clitic being higher than the pronominal clitics and the dative clitic being higher than the accusative clitic. The contrast between (4b) and (5) confirms the latter conclusion.4

(5) *Mi smo mu ga dali, a i vi ste gamu dali (takodje).

Crucially, the counterparts of (4) and (5) are all ungrammatical in Bg and Mac, as Bg (6a-c) illustrate.

(6)

  1. a. *Nie sme mu     go     dali, i vie ste mu we are him.DAT...

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