Title: If a template fits...: Case studies in morphological cliticization
Abstract: One of the most pressing questions faced by linguistic theory in general, and in particular by any account of dialect variation within the Principles and Parameters (or any other) framework, is the division of labour between syntax and morphology. Previous analyses of clitic phenomena, for example, have tended to opt for one extreme position or another: either clitics are essentially syntactic, which inevitably contributes to the proliferation of functional categories, or they are purely morphological, in which case we lose some of the explicative value of X' structures. This study follows an approach which attempts to reconcile these two extremes by recognizing that both modules may play a role in different cases of cliticization. Since we believe in working from empirical data rather than from theoretical assumptions about the nature of cliticisation, we will begin with a presentation of a range of Romance facts which involve the behaviour of pronominal clitics in nonstandard varieties of Spanish, as well as Milanese, Portuguese and Franco-ontarian. For each case, it will be shown that a syntactic analysis of the clitic facts in question is either impossible or highly undesirable. In this light, we will conclude by suggesting how morphological templates could better account for the clitic facts in these cases.
Publication Year: 1993
Publication Date: 1993-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 5
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