Logo image
Bulgarian Clitic Phenomena
Thesis   Open access

Bulgarian Clitic Phenomena

Dya Grace Bhatt Acharjee
Bachelor of Arts (BA), Brandeis University
05/07/2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48617/etd.1624

Abstract

Linguistics Bulgarian Clitic Syntax

This paper revisits placement of Bulgarian clitics—namely the pronominals, the auxiliaries, the future tense particle šte, and the question (and focus) particle li. The pronominal and Aux clitics are argued to move to the end of the nearest prosodic word one by one through Prosodic Inversion, modifying the account from Franks (2006). I update a proposal by Rudin et al. (1999) for (non-focus) li, adopting V to C movement. The negation particle ne is shown to block V to C movement, so Prosodic Inversion must step in. The future šte, previously disregarded in the literature, complicates the V to C movement analysis. Possibilities and implications of this data are discussed. Finally, I propose that puzzling data with focus li involves syntactic phrasal movement by default, but I suggest that Prosodic Inversion may be used as a repair mechanism in case the focus is not a phrase.

pdf
Acharjee_BulgarianCliticPhenomena1.84 MBDownloadView
Open Access

Metrics

1 Record Views

Details

Logo image