Moving from theta-positions: pronominal clitic doubling in Greek

This paper re-examines the doubling of pronominal clitics in Greek. It is argued that clitics are not affixes but full words which move in the syntactic component and (ultimately) target the head of T. As for their position in the phrase marker, it is claimed, following Kayne, R., 1975. French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and (Philippaki-)Warburton [J Ling 13 (1977) 259], that clitics do not head a functional (clitic) projection [in the sense of Sportiche, D., 1992/1996. Clitic Constructions. Ms, UCLA/In: Rooryck, J., Zaring, L. (Eds.), Phrase Structure and the Lexicon. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, pp. 213–276, for instance], but are merged in the internal argument position(s) of V. Being both X0 and Xmax (Chomsky, N. 1995. Bare phrase structure. In: Webelhuth, G. (Ed.), Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 383–439), clitics can undergo movement avoiding the Head Movement Constraint. Two alternative solutions of how this movement proceeds are examined and they are both shown to be consistent with our proposal. Furthermore, it is proposed that the relation between the clitic and its DP-double is that of coindexation, with the double occupying an adjunct position, either a remote one (clitic left/right dislocation), or a vP-internal one (doubling without comma intonation). In fact, we attempt to unify the Clitic Left/Right Dislocation and clitic doubling in the sense that both of them involve an argumental clitic. Finally, we show that despite the fact that Greek has clitics in argumental positions, it does not display a number of properties characteristic of polysynthetic languages.