by Amela Camdzic and Richard Hudson
last changed 19 Dec 2007This paper has been growing since early 2002, and an early version was semi-published in UCL Working Papers in Linguistics; but it has now been published in Research in Language (University of Lodz), vol 5, 2007, 5-50.
Serbo-Croat has a complex system of clitics which raise interesting problems for any theory of the interface between syntax and morphology. After summarising the data we review previous analyses (mostly within the generative tradition), all of which are unsatisfactory in various ways. We then explain how Word Grammar handles clitics: as words whose form is an affix rather than the usual 'word-form'. Like other affixes, clitics need a word to accommodate them, but in the case of clitics this is a special kind of word called a 'hostword'. We present a detailed analysis of Serbo-Croat clitics within this theory, introducing a new distinction between two cases: where the clitics are attached to the verb or auxiliary, and where they are attached to some dependent of the verb.