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Points of Convergence in Romance Linguistics: Papers selected from the 48th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 48), Toronto, 25-28 April 2018
Edited by Gabriela Alboiu and Ruth King
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 360] 2022
► pp. 11–34

Chapter 1
Picard subject clitics

An analysis at the interface of syntax, phonology, and prosody

| Université de Montréal

This paper argues that the analysis of Picard subject clitics and lexical subjects greatly benefits from considering syntax, phonology, and prosody. Specifically, the status of pronominal clitics as arguments or agreement markers must be determined on the basis of syntactic criteria, while the determination of their status as clitics or affixes necessitates phonological arguments. My analysis shows that Picard subject clitics behave like agreement markers but that they retain the status of clitics, thus providing evidence for the Clitic Group as proposed by Nespor & Vogel (1986). I also provide evidence that other grammatical monosyllables do not create clitic groups.

Keywords: subject clitics, subject doubling, clitic group, vowel epenthesis, prosodic hierarchy, agreement marking, grammaticalization, colloquial French, dislocation, stylistic inversion
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Subject clitics: Syntactic subjects or agreement markers?
  • 3.Lexical subjects: Syntactic subjects or dislocated phrases?
    • 3.1Vowel epenthesis in Picard
    • 3.2Subjects and epenthesis
  • 4.Subject clitics: Affixes or clitics?
    • 4.1Phonological phrase and clitic group
    • 4.2Phonological word and clitic group
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.360.01aug
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