The first part of the course will provide a brief survey of the treatment of clitics in generative models. Topics covered include: (i) movement analyses (the clitic moves out of an argument position) vs. base-generation analyses (the clitic is merged in situ enters Agree with the argument); (ii) locality conditions on cliticization, whether under movement or Agree, and in particular the role of phase heads (v, C-I); (iii) the referential or referentially inert status of clitics (i.e. pronouns or object markers?). The basis for this part of the course will be Manzini (2025) and the works analyzed there; students may refer to Roberts (2010) for a movement analysis, to Angelopoulos and Sportiche (2022) for a base generation analysis, to Baker and Kramer for the pronoun/object marker divide.
The second part of the course will focus on an especially problematic clitic, namely the reflexive/generic clitic whose Romance exponent is si, se etc. This clitic is clearly involved in the expression of middle-passive Voice and has therefore generated its own vast literature quite separate from the literature on pronominal clitics. Yet, once superficial differences are removed, many of the issues being debated are recognizably the same for pronominal clitics and SE: is it moved or is it an affix? Is it argumental or just a grammatical marker of some Voice alternation? Is it a v- (object) clitic or an I- (subject) clitic? Most works on SE conclude in fact that these alternatives are not mutually exclusive, but hold of different interpretations of SE. I will suggest that there must be unified answer to all these questions – and that it should optimally be the same as for other clitics. As background reading, Dobrovie-Sorin (2006) provides an exhaustive survey of GB and early minimalist literature; Pescarini (2024) can be referred to for later minimalist work, focussing on passives and impersonals.

Course material

• Angelopoulos, Nikos & Dominique Sportiche. 2021. Clitic dislocations and clitics in French and Greek. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 39: 959–1022. DOI: 10.1007/s11049-020-09500-z
• Baker, Mark, and Ruth Kramer. 2018. Doubled clitics are pronouns. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 36(4): 1035–1088. pdf
• Manzini, M. Rita. 2025 [submitted]. Pronominal clitics in generative grammar. pdf
• Roberts, Ian 2010. Agreement and head movement: Clitics, incorporation,and defective goals. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. [Chapter 3: 41-156]

Background reading

• Dobrovie‐Sorin, C. 2006. The SE‐anaphor and its role in argument realization. In M. Everaert & H. Van Riemsdijk (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax (pp. 118– 179). Oxford, UK: Wiley.
• Pescarini, Diego. 2024. SE Constructions in the Romance Languages. In Mark Aronoff (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. publisher’s page