Clitics and the Structure-Function Mapping

Bresnan (1997) proposes a model of constituent structure revolving around two universal modes of organisation-endocentricity and lexicocentricity. For endocentric structures, a set of universal principles of structure-function association provides a canonical mapping from nodes to f-structures. This model proposes a highly constrained view of constituent structure, but does not take into account syntactic cliticisation. We ooer an account of Welsh pronominal cliticisation within this framework. We argue that the pronominal clitics in question are syntactically (rather than morphologically) positioned and provide a structure for them. We extend the universal principles of structure-function association to permit argument functions to be associated with clitic positions. We then turn to distributional questions concerning forms of pronominal expression in Welsh, demonstrating the relevance of the notions of mutual exclusion and pre-emption to cliticisation. The LFG account captures mutual exclusion phenomenon in a simple and straightforward way, Finally we show that the proposed structure goes some way to explaining the pre-emptive quality of cliticisation. 1