Clisis revisited

This paper contributes to the literature that discusses the trigger for enclisis and proclisis alternations. Empirically, this article presents new data from Asturian, a Western Iberian Romance language which, unlike Galician and European Portuguese, exhibits enclisis also in finite embedded contexts. I argue that this empirical evidence supports an analysis of enclisis/proclisis alternations in terms of syntactic A′- or X0-movement to Finiteness0. I illustrate the different interpretations that enclisis/proclisis alternations give rise to in the finite embedded context in Asturian, and I show how they are naturally captured by the proposed analysis. Moreover, the unavailability of embedded enclisis in Galician and European Portuguese can be easily explained, ultimately relating to differences in the complementizer system in this group of languages.

Published online: 27 June 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.206.03fer