Sententional Clitic Hosts in the Slavic Languages

This paper explores the behavior of clusterizing clitics in Slavic languages, examining their syntactic positioning within polypredicate structures. It outlines general principles that govern clitic ordering and distribution across different languages, contributing to the understanding of clitic interactions in syntax. Additionally, the study compares specific language examples to highlight variations and commonalities in clitic clustering.

I argue that Slavic languages pattern with other world's languages that have the option for attaching clause-level clitics and clitic clusters to the initial sentential constituent (IP or CP). The main theoretical goal of the talk is to show that a) sententional clitics hosts really exist in Slavic languages and beyond, b) that hosts of clusterizing clitics are not extraclausal, contrary to claims raised in [Agbayani & Golston 2010], c) the hypothesis on sententional clitic hosts can be incorporated into syntactic approaches to clitic linearization.