Clitics in Dependency Morphology

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. Following Authors et.al. (in press), a word or a combination of words in syntax that are continuous with respect to dominance form a catena. Likewise, a morph or a 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.