Abstract:

Greek exhibits dialectal and diachronic variation in the cliticization pattern of weak pronouns. In Standard Modern Greek, clitics are strictly preverbal with finite non- imperative verb forms, whereas in the southeastern dialects, as well as in Byzantine and Medieval Greek, clitics seem to obey a second position requirement, since they are preverbal when a function word precedes the verb and postverbal otherwise. A comparison with the adverbal Romance cliticization system and the second position cliticization system of Slavic languages reveals that Greek clitics are neither C- nor v*-related elements and cliticization involves clitic movement to the T-layer. We further argue that the attested variation results from the ways PF (Phonetic Form) processes the syntactic output of this movement. Finally, we show that the two systems are diachronically related to each other by means of a prosodic reanalysis that resulted in the evolution of the non-second position system of Standard Modern Greek from the second position system of Medieval Greek.