The grammaticalization of Italian clitics

This dissertation offers a detailed account of the overall grammaticalization of the Italian pronominal clitic system, giving particular emphasis to grammaticalization processes that characterize contemporary standard Italian. After reviewing the central theoretical assumptions grammaticalization processes, this study discusses the differences between the clitic systems of Old Italian (13 th and 14th centuries) and that of Modern Standard Italian with respect to clitic placement, outlines the more general grammaticalization processes that took place in the clitic system of Modern Italian, and looks in detail at more recent developments in the grammaticalization of Italian clitics, namely the neutralization of gender and number distinction in 3 rd person indirect object, and specific grammaticalization processes involving lexicalized clitics. The morphosyntactic function and status of Italian clitics are also examined in order to establish whether Italian clitic pronouns are more appropriately analyzed as affixes. With respect to the morphological status of clitics it is shown that the diagnostics traditionally employed to discriminate between clitic-hood and affix-hood turn out to be debatable when considered from a diachronic perspective, so that attributing affixal or 'clitic' status to Italian pronominal clitics seems to be more a matter of 'choice' than a theoretical requirement, in that it can be determined by the aspect/s of clitics under investigation and/or the kind of framework adopted. More importantly, it is proposed that grammaticalization allows the portrayal of a more extensive and thorough account of the morphological status and function of Italian clitic pronouns by revealing a continuum of morphosyntactic functions, which further highlights the difficulty of 'fixing' their morphological status. It is thus argued that Italian clitics do not constitute a unified morphosyntactic class and that, although a basic distinction can be drawn between clitics retaining anaphorical and discourse pragmatics function and clitics that have come to fulfill a more strictly grammatical function, these two major classes are by no means discrete. On the contrary, they are to be taken as the two (opposite) ends of morphological function and status continua.