Ssul s se 'you collapsed': reordering of the Czech clitic cluster
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
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| Description | One of the properties of clitics is that they often cluster together rather than being dispersed in the clause. Within the cluster, the clitics are arranged in a fixed order, specific for each language and language variety. In Czech, auxiliary and pronominal clitics cluster together following this sequence: AUX >> REFL >> DAT >> ACC. However, the 2nd person auxiliary [si s] does not precede the reflexive, as predicted by the sequence, but follows it, and only in a non-syllabic form [s]. In my talk, I confirm Sedláček's (1994) observation that in historical Czech texts, the regular ordering AUX.2SG >> REFL was attested, and it is still reflected in some Present-Day Czech (PDCz) dialects. I argue that the reversed ordering, REFL >> AUX.2SG, attested in some PDCz dialects as well as Standard Czech, is a result of the emergence of the *ss constraint in the 19th c., a constraint less dominant in the earlier stages of the language. The analysis is couched within Optimality Theory. |
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