Enclisis/Proclisis Alternations in Romance: Allomorphies and (Re)Ordering

Romance clitic pronouns appear to the left of the verb in I and to the right of the verb in C. This alternation correlates with: (a) allomorphy, specifically l- vs. zero; (b) stress shifts; and (c) reordering of the clitic string. The alternations in (a)–(c) are also observed between non-negative and negative contexts. The key points of our analysis are: (i) the l- segment is associated with definite content; (ii) interpretively, pronouns scope out of modal/non-veridical operators; (iii) syntactically, the exponent for modality/nonveridicality may have the pronoun in its domain; (iv) externalization of the l- segment is found when semantic scope (ii) and syntactic configuration (iii) are mismatched. Therefore allomorphies (including stress), far from being morphophonological quirks, contribute to the externalization of syntactico-semantic notions of non-veridicality. In dealing with clitic (re)ordering we propose a model based on the dissociation between Merge and linear order. Phrasal constituents are ordered to the right of the verb in Romance; clitics mirror them in that they are ordered to the left, while keeping the Merge relations constant.