Clitics at the interfaces of grammar: Defining the “first position” in Czech

Nina Adam
University of Göttingen

Abstract. This paper is concerned with the nature of the “first position” in Czech, i.e. the position preceding second-position clitics. Although the first position is determined by syntactic constituency, independent of clitic requirements, clitic placement itself cannot be captured purely in the syntax. Even approaches which assume an influence of PF face serious problems. Instead I propose an OT analysis, showing how the first position results from clitic-specific constraints referring to syntactic constituents, as well as from independent syntactic constraints. The prosodically-determined clitic placement in BCMS can be explained using exactly the same constraint types, only referring to different constituents.

Keywords: Czech, Slavic, clitic, second position, auxiliaries, participles, optimality, syntax, PF

For citation: Adam N. Clitics at the interfaces of grammar: Defining the “first position” in Czech. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2019. Vol. 2, iss. 1. Pp. 11–27.