Specificities in Object Clitic Doubling in Balkan Romance and Balkan Slavic

Abstract

The present paper examines the specificities in object clitic doubling in two Balkan Romance languages, Romanian and Aromanian, and two Balkan Slavic languages, Macedonian and Bulgarian. Having illustrated, the conditions on clitic doubling in Romanian, Aromanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, we analyse and compare these conditions. It is pointed out that the conditions on clitic doubling in Aromanian and Macedonian are almost analogous – definiteness plays a central role in clitic doubling of the direct objects of the two languages, whereas the clitic doubling of indirect objects mainly depends on specificity. The conditions on clitic doubling in Romanian and Bulgarian differ substantially from the conditions on clitic doubling in the Balkan languages with which they are in close genetic relationships. In both Romanian and Bulgarian, clitic doubling depends on discourse factors, but the types and usage of these factors are idiosyncratic. In Bulgarian, all topicalized definite objects are clitic-doubled, while the indefinite topicalized objects are clitic-doubled only under specific conditions. In Romanian, the cliticization of both direct and indirect objects is typically triggered by topicality and specificity, while direct object clitic doubling is, in addition, triggered by humanness. We argue that object clitic doubling results from a centuries-long socio-linguistic contact in an environment in which direct inter-translatability is needed. Clitic doubling in Macedonian and Aromanian occurs under almost identical conditions, because the two languages have for a long time been in such an environment. When the object clitic doubling phenomenon spreads in areas where no direct inter-translatability is required, distinct phenomena appear.