Linguistics, Vol. 25. No. 2., 2024.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.29162/jez.2024.7
Accusative clitics in the Bosnian language. Second position and the phase theory
Elmira Resić
; Institut za jezik Univerziteta u Sarajevu
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
In this paper we analyze accusative clitics (e.g. me, ga, ih) in the Bosnian language within the so-called Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2001). We assume that syntactic structures are built by operations Merge and Agree. At the same time, we adopt the so-called Phase Theory (Chomsky 2001), which postulates that the derivation of syntactic structure occurs in phases, allowing minimal chunks of the structure to be successively sent to Spell-out. The paper suggests that the transfer of accusative clitics to the PF and LF component occurs in the vP phase, which implies that these clitics become unavailable for syntactic operations when the complement of the v0 head is sent to Spell-out. In this regard, accusative clitics in the Bosnian language do not syntactically merge with the verb in V0 position because the incorporation of the clitic into the verb is not syntactically motivated. Also, the so-called second position of accusative clitics (e.g. Selma ga voli) is the result of their post-syntactic movement to the second position within their intonation phrase (IP) since cliticization is not conditioned by the syntactic status of the clitics, but by their prosody.
Keywords
accusative clitics; Bosnian language; Phase Theory; second position
Hrčak ID:
325040
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2024.
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