Clitics in dependency morphology

Abstract

Clitics are challenging for many theories of grammar because they straddle syntax and morphology. In most theories, cliticization is considered a phrasal phenomenon: clitics are affix-like expressions that attach to whole phrases. Constituency-based grammars in particular struggle with the exact constituent structure of such expressions. This paper proposes a solution based on catena-based dependency morphology. This theory is an extension of catena-based dependency syntax. A syntactic catena is any word or any combination of words that are continuous with respect to dominance. Likewise, any morph or any combination of morphs that is continuous with respect to dominance form a morph catena. Employing the concept of morph catena together with a hyphenation convention leads to a parsimonious and insightful understanding of cliticization.

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