| Abstract: | This study proposes an Optimality-theoretic model through which the various grammar components--semantics, syntax, the lexicon, morphology, and prosody--jointly determine the placement of clitics with a phrasal positioning domain, which is either a nominal expression or a clause. In order to render scope, such clitics must be phrase-initial. However, the morphology, carrying out subcategorization encoded in the lexicon, requires many such clitics to be suffixes. A third constraint prohibits affixation across certain syntactic boundaries. These three constraints require conflicting outputs, and cannot all be satisfied simultaneously. Depending on a particular language's constraint hierarchy, at least one constraint must be violated. Thus, a typology of clitic-placement strategies is predicted. This theory of cross-linguistic variation is based on conflicting requirements imposed by the aforementioned components of the grammar. In addition to an overview of clitic phenomena in Slavic and elsewhere, this paper demonstrates the proposed typology primarily using a clitic phenomenon in Russian in comparison to those in Tagalog and Warlpiri. In addition, these proposals make specific predictions about which kinds of clitic positioning can and cannot occur. Namely, these constraints predict an asymmetry in clitic-positioning types, excluding penultimate clisis. |
