When Syncretism Meets Word Order. On Clitic Order in Romanian

Abstract

Romanian singular clitics are unique among their counterpars in other Romance languages in that they exhibit different forms for dative (mi, ţi) and accusative case (mă, te). In contrast, 1^st and 2^nd person plural clitics are case syncretic: the forms ne and vă are used both in the dative and in the accusative. Moreover, in non-finite environments, following gerunds and imperatives, non-syncretic (singular) clitics unambiguously exhibit the order dative accusative, while syncretic (plural) clitics show the reverse, accusative dative order. This paper focuses specifically on this correlation between case syncretism (or lack thereof) and the ordering possibilities of postverbal clitics, showing that the relation receives a principled syntactic explanation. The ordering of postverbal Romanian clitics, as well as the contrast between case syncretic and syncretic clusters are derived through the interaction between (i) morpho-syntactic effects due to case syncretism, (ii) remnant VP movement, and (iii) a representational view on locality, in the spirit of Rizzi (2001), Krapova and Cinque (2005).