Enclisis, mesoclisis and inflection in Italo-Romance varieties: A minimalist analysis

Abstract

This contribution addresses a central theme in morphological analysis, namely the relationship between clitics and inflectional elements. Important contributions on the point are due to Anderson (1992) and Marantz (1988), who, in different ways, connect clitics and affixes. We will propose a solution based on the idea that clitics are part of the inflectional arrangement of the verbal head. Specifically, we will investigate two types of data coming from some Romance varieties in which enclisis and mesoclisis phenomena interact with word formation. These phenomena affect the expression of the Internal Argument and lead us to rethink the analysis of enclisis and mesoclisis in terms of the ability of the inflected verb to realize Phasal domains. In other words, morphology is part of the syntactic computation, and morphemic elements, endowed with interpretable content, are introduced by the operation of Merge.

Explorations in Aromanian Morpho-Syntax: NPs, Prepositional Contexts and Infinitives

“…We assume that enclitic elements are part of the inflectional structure of the word, within which they are inserted on the basis of selection constraints of the type in (99c) (for this approach to enclisis, cf. Savoia and Baldi 2023). We note that the inflectional mark that is introduced, here -u, does not correspond to the class of the noun, in (99) the class III, nor to the inflectional system of the possessive.…”