Processing and production of clitics in Udi and European Portuguese: Testing a processing account of an extension of the suffixing preference

Abstract

In our paper testing the Cutler–Hawkins hypothesis that suffixes are easier to process than prefixes (Harris & Samuel 2025), we report little experimental support for the hypothesis. Several sources treat clitics as being similar to affixes (e.g. Himmelmann 2014, Asao 2015), and some argue that there is a parallel preference for enclitics over proclitics (Cysouw 2005, Dryer 2017). On this basis, we test an extension of the Cutler–Hawkins hypothesis to clitics because if true, that too could explain the suffixing preference (as well as the putative enclitic preference). Cutler et al. (1985) also state a hypothesis about the processing of infixes. Udi provides an excellent language for testing both hypotheses, since each person clitic in this language can occur before the verb, after the verb, between morphemes of the verb or inside the verbal root, under certain circumstances (Harris 2002). Although European Portuguese does not place clitics inside roots, it utilizes the other three placements. We have conducted three experiments on each language. The results demonstrate that an explanation for either the suffixing preference or the putative enclitic preference is unlikely to be grounded in the processing factors suggested by Cutler & Hawkins.