Clitics and Phrasal Affixation in Constructive Morphology

Rob O'Connor

Abstract

To date LFG approaches to clitics have viewed them as independent c-structure entities, hence representing them as separate terminal nodes. However, the literature on clitics also includes work like that of Anderson (1992, 2000) and Legendre (2000), among others, in which clitics are treated as phrasal affixes. In this paper I apply the idea of clitics as phrasal affixes to Serbian auxiliary and pronominal clitics and adapt the phrasal affix approach to LFG through the use of Constructive Morphology (Nordlinger 1998). In this way grammatical function and other information associated with clitics is contributed to the clause at the right level of c-structure while avoiding the need to represent clitics (phrasal affixes) as separate c-structure nodes.