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Syntactic Geolectal Variation: Traditional approaches, current challenges and new tools
Edited by Alba Cerrudo, Ángel J. Gallego and Francesc Roca Urgell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 34] 2021
► pp. 203–224

Chapter 7
Parameters of clitic combination

A case study in Eastern Iberian

| Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

This chapter presents the restrictions and alterations that object clitics show when they are combined (forming a ‘clitic cluster’) in different varieties of Spanish, Catalan and Aragonese. As it is well-known, the combination of a third person accusative clitic and a third person dative clitic is rejected [in these varieties]. The relevant point that I will explore is that there is, in fact, variation in the way that languages avoid these ungrammatical sequences. To show this, I consulted different databases that describe this combination (grammars, atlases and corpora). Furthermore, I offer a proposal that accounts for these restrictions, building on the conclusions presented in Colomina (2020).

Keywords: clitic clusters, Aragonese, Catalan, Spanish, dative clitic, accusative clitic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Clitic combinations in Eastern Iberian
    • 2.1Geographic distribution
    • 2.2Clitic combinations
    • 2.3Interim conclusions
  • 3.The distinctness condition
    • 3.1Combinatorial restrictions
    • 3.2Cross-linguistic variation
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.34.07col
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