Abstract: 1. Introductory Remarks Our introduction to the present volume is divided into two parts, each with its own purpose. The first is specific: to raise questions and point out possible problems with the particular analyses offered in the five papers that follow. In doing so, we attempt neither to offer a comprehensive summary of the individual papers nor to reconcile their contentious aspects, but rather to highlight those issues which strike us as most worthy of more careful consideration. The purpose of the second part is more general: to lay out the major issues in the analysis of pronominal clitics in Slavic. Again, we do this with a particular bias about which concerns should be central and which can safely--at least for the time being--be put aside. Our primary aim is to draw attention to important puzzles in need of satisfying solutions. It is hoped that by surveying the problem areas presented by Slavic clitics, this introduction will not only help to place the articles in this issue in context, but will also pose a concrete set of conceptual and analytic challenges for future research. 2. Overview of the Volume The papers in this volume discuss a wide range of issues concerning the syntax of pronominal clitics. Given their complexity, it is not possible to address them fully here. Nevertheless, the papers manage well in selecting a few important problems that have far-reaching theoretical consequences and putting them in the context of current linguistic theory. The issues that they discuss range from the placement and clustering of clitics, to restrictions on clitic climbing, to the effect of prosodic requirements on clitic pronunciation. We turn now to the specifics of the papers. In his contribution, Andrew Caink discusses the nature of the lexicon and the syntactic categories that are found in natural languages. Building on work by Emonds (1999, 2000), he assumes a distinction between open, closed, and semi-closed class lexical items. The different lexical items are lexicalized at various points. Within this framework, Caink argues for a unified account of two apparently distinct types of clitic climbing in Czech and Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian (SCB). Both structures contain a head X1 with syntactic behavior that is a hybrid of lexical and functional characteristics, schematically [ [N.sub.1] [ [N.sub.2[ ]] (Czech) and [ [V.sub.1] [ [V.sub.2] ]] (SCB). For such heads, Caink has adopted the term semi-lexical, following van Riemsdijk (1998) and Corver and van Riemsdijk (2001). Semi-lexical heads in Czech and SCB as in other languages have the ability to form part of the functional hierarchy of a lower lexical head [X.sub.2]. Caink proposes that semi-lexical categories are optionally lexicalized either as open-class lexical items (fully merged in the syntax) or as closed-class functional items (phonologically lexicalized). This leads to different extended projections, defined at the PF interface, which varies the domain within which pronominal clitics may appear. Caink considers pronominal clitics as one example of a number of purely closed-class morphemes that spell-out the formal features of a node elsewhere in the syntax. As such, pronominal clitics are an instance of Alternative Realization (Emonds 1987, 1999). (1) For Czech, Veselovska (2001) distinguishes between fully lexical and semi-lexical heads. The latter comprise certain group nouns, quantifiers, and cardinals. Caink reviews some of the independent evidence in favor of the semi-lexical status of these heads. One of their properties is that they allow clitic climbing. Caink accounts for this as follows: as semi-lexical heads, they are able to merge with and form part of the extended projection of the lower lexical noun ([N.sub.2]). Structurally, the lower lexical head is therefore in the same relation to the V as a direct object DP. According to this account, the structural relation required between the climbed genitive clitic and the phonologically null phrase it licenses is identical to that required between, e. …
Publication Year: 2004
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 6
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