Abstract Romance clitic pronouns appear to the left of the verb in I and to the right of the verb in C. This alternation correlates with: (a) allomorphy, specificallyl‐vs. zero; (b) stress shifts; and (c) reordering of the clitic string. The alternations in (a)–(c) are also observed between non‐negative and negative contexts. The key points of our analysis are: (i) thel‐ segment is associated with definite content; (ii) interpretively, pronouns scope out of modal/non‐veridical operators; (iii) syntactically, the exponent for modality/non‐veridicality may have the pronoun in its domain; (iv) externalization of thel‐segment is found when semantic scope (ii) and syntactic configuration (iii) are mismatched. Therefore allomorphies (including stress), far from being morphophonological quirks, contribute to the externalization of syntactico‐semantic notions of non‐veridicality. In dealing with clitic (re)ordering we propose a model based on the dissociation between Merge and linear order. Phrasal constituents are ordered to the right of the verb in Romance; clitics mirror them in that they are ordered to the left, while keeping the Merge relations constant.
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