Optimal clitic positioning in Czech and beyond. Clitic syntax, morphology, and prosody from a constraint-based perspective.

Nina Adam

Abstract:

This thesis treats the placement of clitics in Czech from a constraint-based perspective. After having established the set of unambiguous second-position clitics in the language, the placement patterns and their interaction with information-structurally induced movements are described. Based on this data, it is argued that Czech clitics cannot occupy a fixed syntactic position. Instead, conflicting constraints lead to varying output positions depending on the syntactic context. Since Czech clitics do not require a prosodic host, these constraints refer only to syntactic domains. The analysis is extended to further Slavic languages, including Serbo-Croatian. It is shown how the constraint-based approach can be applied to this language, where prosodic domains do play a role for clitic placement.

Keywords: Czech; Slovak; Upper Sorbian; Serbo-Croatian; clitics; Optimality Theory; syntax; morphology; alignment