Chapter published in:
Studies on Variation in Portuguese
Edited by Pilar P. Barbosa, Maria da Conceição de Paiva and Celeste Rodrigues
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14] 2017
► pp. 199–218

Chapter 8
Clitic climbing in the speech of Braga and Lisbon

| University of Minho, Portugal
| Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In European Portuguese, clitic pronouns can be attached to the highest verb in certain verbal clusters, a process known as clitic climbing (CC). According to some authors (Magro, 2005), CC is more productive in the Northern varieties of European Portuguese. In this chapter, we present and discuss the findings of a comparative analysis of Braga and Lisbon oral speech. Our main claim is that CC is a stable variation phenomenon. By means of a multivariate analysis, we show that CC is more frequent than attachment of the clitic to the infinitive in the two varieties. Moreover, we discuss evidence in favor of the claim that this syntactic variation presents the same configuration in both varieties: it is lexically constrained and not socially marked.

Keywords: restructuring, clitic climbing, linguistic and social factors
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Clitic climbing and Restructuring in European Portuguese
  • 3.Climbing in Braga and Lisbon
  • 4.The sociolinguistic nature of clitic climbing
  • 5.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 02 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.08bar
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