Clitic placement in Portuguese

Abstract

Abstract: In this paper I will examine the conditions on the positioning of non-reflexive clitic pronouns in Portuguese. I will argue that clitic pronouns can be reordered only inside the sentences where they are generated and that, consequently, they cannot be moved out their original sentences to be attached to a verb in a higher sentence. A grammar of clitic placement in Portuguese will be offered to generate only the grammatical sentences and to block the ungrammatical ones. I will argue also that those cases in Portuguese in which a pronoun originated in an embedded sentence appears in the surface structure as a clitic attached to a verb in the matrix sen tence do not get there via clitic movement, but by a different transformation, namely Raising from Subject to Object.