A cross-dialectal study of cliticisation in Greek

In this paper, I present a dialectal typology of pronominal object clitics in Greek, and claim that clitic positioning can be subject not only to syntactic restrictions but also to prosodic ones. More specifically, on the basis of a cross-dialectal survey, I provide a range of templates, i.e. prosodic patterns which clitics participate in with other constituents of the clause. Furthermore, I show that there is a hierarchy among these templates that ranks them according to their relative well-formedness. The most well-formed templates are found in 2P dialects, in which the exact position of a clitic relies crucially on phonology. This particular claim acquires greater significance when dialects that are in a transition from a 2P to a non-2P system are taken into consideration. These dialects provide valuable evidence for the vital role played by prosodic factors in language change. In light of these cross-dialectal findings, I propose a possible path in the development of non-2P clitics from 2P ones.