The Morphosyntax of Romanian Cliticization

In this paper, motivations are presented to argue in favor of the affixal status of Romanian pronominal clitics. It will be suggested that they should not be considered lexical items, i.e. ‘signs’, which are located in a special position by rules of syntax, but a complex of syntactic and semantic information which is provided in the lexicon for the morphophonological realization of the cliticized verb form. Appropriate constraints are proposed to relate this bundle of features which is present on verbs to the actual phonological realization of the clitics. Clitics are thus the ‘spell-out’ of certain morphosyntactic features of the verb. It will be shown that this morphophonological approach can provide an answer to certain peculiar facts about Romanian clitic climbing. The analysis presented thus provides a comprehensive account of Romanian cliticization since it deals both with the morphophonological properties and with the syntax of Romanian clitics.