The morphosyntax of -nde and post-verbal clitics in Cypriot Greek

Abstract

This paper explores pronominal clitic placement in a mixed clitic placement variety, Cypriot Greek, and the restrictions on it in the presence of the dialectal element -nde. -Nde appears as a verb suffix, but imposes syntactic and morphological restrictions in the clause. We argue that -nde is a borrowed element from Turkish and it behaves as a validational marker (Weber 1986) in Cypriot Greek, expressing the truth validity of the speaker’s judgment. Challenging the true nature of clitics and affixes, the discussion focuses on the possibility of clitic-like elements appearing as suffixes. The ungrammaticality yielded with both -nde and post-verbal object clitics leads to the observation that the two need to appear adjacent to the verb.