Abstract
Second position clitics in Serbian are informally characterized in terms of their hosts which correspond to either the first word or the first phrase within some clitic positioning domain. Serbian is a free constituent order language, with a default SVO order, but with predicate initial orders in the presence of pro-drop or postposed subjects. Earlier proposals range from those in which first phrase positioning is taken to be syntactic and first word to be prosodic, with the initial prosodic word hosting the clitics (Zec and Inkelas 1990; Halpern 1995), to those which analyze both FirstPhrase and FirstWord as a unified syntactic phenomenon (Franks and Progovac 1994; Bošković 2001). While we argue for the relevance of prosody in first word placement, we shed new light on the scope of its role.This article is part of the Special Collection: Prosody and Constituent Structure
Highlights
Second position clitics have long attracted attention as a window onto the interfaces between prosody and syntax
We close this discussion with further examples of the four types of cases that the DFZ study has established as essential for any approach to the second position clitics in Serbian; all are taken from the DFZ set of stimuli
4.2.1 prošle godine. Post-head (PP) headed by prepositions with the prosodic status of clitics Topicalized PPs in the argument case are like those in the predicate case in at least one respect: in PPs headed by a preposition that invariably corresponds to a clitic, the FirstWord clitic host includes the preposition prosodically attached to the following phonological word, just as in the predicate case
Summary
Second position clitics have long attracted attention as a window onto the interfaces between prosody and syntax. We will be focusing on three major issues The first of these is the choice of clitic host – what determines FirstWord vs FirstPhrase clitic placement? The second question is that of the impact of the initial constituent – predicate vs argument – on clitic placement in general, and the choice of FirstWord vs FirstPhrase in particular. In considering the actual placement possibilities (or cases) it is important to distinguish between focusing on the clitic host (as in (1a) below), and taking into account the initial constituent (as in (1b)).
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