Opposite tendencies of placement rules for P2 clitics and the position of the finite verb - Paper read at SYNTAX OF THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES 5 DUBROVNIK, OCTOBER 1 – OCTOBER 4, 2012 (original) (raw)

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This paper explores the opposing tendencies in the placement rules for P2 clitics and the positioning of finite verbs, drawing on examples from ancient Indo-European languages. It highlights how clitics can either select a specific host or a specific position, and examines the implications of these tendencies for syntactic and phonological structures in languages such as Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Hittite. The research provides insights into the interaction between clitic placement and sentence structure, contributing to a deeper understanding of syntactic theory in the context of historical linguistics.

On the relation between V2 and the second position cliticization

Lingua, 2010

Following the standardly adopted hypothesis of a uniform diachronic source of V2 in Germanic and second position cliticization (2P), the paper investigates both operations in order to verify common claims concerning the motivation for the V2 and 2P movement. It shows that neither of them can be analyzed as a PF-driven phenomenon, nor is it possible to attribute them to a uniform syntactic trigger, such as Tense or Illocutionary Force feature checking. Special attention is given to the 2P effect in Slavic, whose properties show that it is necessary to draw a distinction between the ''generalized'' 2P, which is a syntactic process but seems unrelated to any feature checking mechanism, and Force-related 2P, which occurs for Force/Operator feature checking. The findings concerning 2P are applied to draw conclusions about the trigger of V2 in Germanic. It is argued that V2 covers a number of unrelated cases of movement or base generation, whose only common property is the position of the verb after the first constituent. Therefore, it seems incorrect to attribute all cases of V2 to a uniform syntactic trigger, in particular to Force marking. # This paper investigates possible links between the V2 requirement in Germanic and the second position cliticization (2P) in Slavic. The hypothesis that the two phenomena are related has a long tradition in linguistics, and dates back to Wackernagel's (1892) study of word order in early Indo European languages. Wackernagel observed that the word order was rather free in these languages, but a number of unrelated categories, such as pronouns, auxiliaries, adverbs and discourse particles, always appeared after the first word in the sentence. These elements behaved like clitics, as they were unaccented and occurred together forming clusters. Wackernagel declared that this was the basic word order rule in early Indo-European languages and tentatively suggested that it is reflected in contemporary languages, either in the form of second position cliticization (Wackernagel clitics), or the Verb Second rule in Germanic.

The Position of Clitics in Phrases with an Infinite Verb Form in Romance Languages

HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business

It is generally held that the original Indo-European word-order is SOV 1 , but this changed over time, and SVO is now a common feature of Indo-European languages. J.H. Greenberg argued that "if in a language the verb follows both the nominal subject and the nominal object as the dominant order, the language almost always has a case system." 2 W. P. Lehman and others have long argued that prepositions have been introduced later to a VO + postposition system, thus undermining the case system by making the SVO order necessary to differentiate nominal subject from nominal object. 3 However, some linguists have suggested that in Proto-Indo-European there also existed prepositions and therefore the SVO possibility as well. 4 J. A. Hawkins has also stressed "that the existence of VO & + Case languages, such as Lithuanian, means that the loss of the case system is not a necessary cause of the OV to VO shift, since OV can shift to VO whether or not the case system is eroded, but it is certainly a sufficient cause." 5 93

Uta Reinöhl: Grammaticalization and the rise of configurationality in Indo-Aryan (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 20)

Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2018

This is an interesting study exploring in a considerable detail the rise of the lowlevel configurationality in New Indo-Aryan from the non-configurationality in early Indo-Aryan. The data were extracted from ca. 60 primary sources (Vedic, Pali, Apabhraṃśa and Old Awadhi). The author concurs with the general assumption that Vedic Sanskrit lacks any phrasal structures. As explicated in Chapter Two ("Grammaticalization and configurationality"), in addition to the free word order (basic SOV, and OSV and VSO making the VP discontinuous) there are no obligatory function words (articles, adpositions) in Vedic Sanskrit which impose phrasal constraints on nominal expressions. At the end of a development that lasted 2000 years, Hindi-while still allowing for free constituent order-has developed low-level configurationality in terms of postpositional phrases, accompanied by a rise of obligatory function words. Thus unlike Sanskrit, Hindi does not allow for discontinuity within the NP(Adj N) or free permutation with respect to the arguments denoting the beneficiary and direct object as in example (40), Raješ= ne (choṭe bacc)e=ko kitāb bhejī 'Rajesh sent the book to the little child' (p. 100). The author shows that in Hindi the "obligatoriness constraint" of the postposition requiring a dependent has no equivalent in Vedic *bacce choṭe ko, *choṭe ko bacce, *choṭe … bacce ko). Interestingly, within the NP adnominal elements (adjectives) do not show distinctive forms for direct and oblique cases in the plural (examples 44 and 46): (choṭ-e kamr-e) =mê 'in the small room' but (choṭ-e kamr-õ) =mê 'in (the) small rooms' (p. 101). In diachronic terms the postpositional phrases are traced back to "asymmetrical groups" consisting of a nominal (or verbal) head and a dependent; thus the above examples would start in Old Indo-Aryan with obligatoriness of AN and GN as (alp-asya veśman-as) madhye (small-GEN room-GEN) middle-LOC 'in the small room' and (alp-ānām veśman-ām) madhy-e (small-GEN.PL room-GEN.PL) middle-LOC 'in the small rooms'. The diverse origins of the Hindi simple postpositions are surveyed in Chapter Three ("The diverse origins of the Hindi simple postpositions") with

Clitic particles and the typology of 2P languages

Particle workshop. Cambridge, Downing College, 30-31 October, 2008.

The paper is devoted to the interactions of particle typology and clitic typology and discusses the role of clitic particles in clusterization processes characteristic of 2P languages. The cover term ‘particle’ results from a classification of word classes. It often remains vague, since many linguists define particles according to a ‘leftover principle’ as short functional words, which are neither conjunctions, prepositions, nor auxiliaries etc. For instance, in Dargwa grammars negation ak:u is labeled as a particle in spite of the fact it shows class-and-number agreement with the grammatical subject, It can also be the main predicate or adjoin to a lexical verb in tense forms. I follow the placement of clustering particles in clitic templates in a number of languages with 2P clitic clusters. In some cases, clustering elements can be identified as both phonetic clitics and syntactic clitics. In other cases. clustering elements do not exhibit some diagnostic features of phonetic clitics and can be identified as weak pronouns/particles.

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