In our paper testing the Cutler–Hawkins hypothesis that suffixes are easier to process than prefixes (Harris & Samuel 2025), we report little experimental support for the hypothesis. Several sources treat clitics as being similar to affixes (e.g. Himmelmann 2014, Asao 2015), and some argue that there is a parallel preference for enclitics over proclitics (Cysouw 2005, Dryer 2017). On this basis, we test an extension of the Cutler–Hawkins hypothesis to clitics because if true, that too could explain the suffixing preference (as well as the putative enclitic preference). Cutler et al. (1985) also state a hypothesis about the processing of infixes. Udi provides an excellent language for testing both hypotheses, since each person clitic in this language can occur before the verb, after the verb, between morphemes of the verb or inside the verbal root, under certain circumstances (Harris 2002). Although European Portuguese does not place clitics inside roots, it utilizes the other three placements. We have conducted three experiments on each language. The results demonstrate that an explanation for either the suffixing preference or the putative enclitic preference is unlikely to be grounded in the processing factors suggested by Cutler & Hawkins.

Expletive subject clitics (ESCs) are pronominal elements that occur in impersonal contexts with which no individual reference is associated. Their presence strikingly distinguishes northern Italo-Romance varieties from standard Italian. We target this structural incongruence by studying the occurrence of ESCs in present-day Opitergino, a virtually unstudied Venetan variety. We explore the question of whether, in the wake of a profound transformation in the sociolinguistic environment that occurred between the first half of the 20th century and early 2020 years, the contact between Opitergino and now-dominant Italian has induced change in the Opitergino ESC system. To test whether change has occurred and to what extent, we compare the results of an extensive online survey we conducted in 2022 with the baseline rules we extracted from speakers born before 1942. We observe that while the system is overall stable, a thread of change is ongoing and manifests in (a) rule weakening in declaratives and (b) erosion of the obligatoriness of ESCs in interrogatives. We argue that this change is likely to be an effect of contact, resulting in structural convergence but not in loss, and affected the part of the ESC system that features more optionality, namely, the domain of declarative clauses.

The current study investigates cross-linguistic influence of second language (L2) learning on native language (L1) processing of morphosyntactic variation in proficient L2 learners immersed in their L1. Despite Spanish pre- and postverbal clitic pronoun positions being grammatical in complex verb phrases, preferences of use have been well attested in naturalistic language production. To examine whether those preferences obtain for comprehension in monolinguals, as well as how those preferences might be modulated by learning an L2 with fixed pronoun positions, we administered a self-paced reading experiment to 20 Spanish monolinguals as well as 22 proficient learners English (L1 Spanish). The results of a Bayesian mixed effects regression analysis suggest that preferences in production are echoed in comprehension—but only for the monolingual group. We find support for facilitation in the bilingual group precisely where both languages overlap, as well as evidence that bilinguals may not use clitic position as a reliable cue at all. We interpret the results as evidence that learning an L2 that lacks variation for a particular feature may lead to reduced sensitivity to that feature as a cue in an analogous L1 structure. We situate these results in an experience-based, shared-syntax account of language processing.

The acquisition of a heritage language, normally the weaker language of early bilinguals, has been oftentimes defined as incomplete, especially for morphosyntax. As a result, these early bilinguals resemble late bilinguals more than native language speakers, calling into question the role of age of exposure. The effects of syntactic complexity on knowledge of morphosyntactic structures, however, have not been sufficiently considered hitherto. This study investigates age of exposure and syntactic complexity by comparing heritage, second language, and native language speakers on knowledge of Italian accusative clitics in three structures. An oral structural priming task and a speeded grammaticality judgment task find a discrepancy in the level of ultimate attainment heritage speakers reach for syntax and morphology. While their abstract representation of clitic structures approximates that of native language speakers more closely, their morphological knowledge of clitics aligns with second language speakers, suggesting early exposure has tangible effects only on syntactic knowledge. In turn, syntactic complexity affects the representation of clitic structures in a predictable manner, but is inconsequential to explicit knowledge of morphological forms in monolingual and bilingual speakers. Lack of age of exposure effects in the morphological domain are attributed to interface vulnerability.

This paper examines the nature of person complementarity in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut (Eskimo-Aleut), arguing that despite its apparent patterning as a Person Case Constraint (PCC) effect, it is not due to the presence of a defective intervener blocking person agreement with a lower argument, as is often the case in other languages. Instead, the observed effect is caused by a defective or missing person probe on C that cannot value local person features on absolutive arguments. Given the use of the PCC as a diagnostic for differentiating clitics and agreement, this result has implications for the proper identification of φ-marking in Inuktitut.

This squib discusses the clitic DU (-du/-ðu/-tu) in Icelandic and compares it with other reduced forms of personal pronouns, such as ’ann (for hann ‘he’) and ’ún (for hún ‘she’). We show that there are various restrictions found on DU which are not found on other reduced forms of personal pronouns in Icelandic. We argue that whereas reduced forms such as ’ann and ’ún are morphophonologically conditioned, DU is syntactically conditioned; it is not only clause-bounded but also phase-bounded.

In this paper we provide a novel and unified formal analysis of the stress microvariation found in verb–enclitic groupings in Barcelona Catalan, with stress stability, in Formentera Catalan, with stress shift to the penultimate and the last syllable of the whole sequence, and in Mallorca and Menorca Catalan, with stress shift to the last syllable. We argue that stress shift in Formentera Catalan conforms directly to the unmarked pattern of nominal stress in Catalan, that is, a right-aligned moraic trochee, with the constraint All-Feet-Right undominated, leading to final and penultimate stress. In Barcelona Catalan, the effects of this constraint are inhibited by an anti-alignment constraint prohibiting the right edge of a foot from coinciding with the right edge of a clitic. In Mallorca and Menorca Catalan, stress shift is also understood as a strategy to meet the unmarked nominal stress pattern of Catalan, although in these dialects the anti-alignment constraint is also undominated, leading to catalexis, in this case a melodically empty mora, and thus to final stress.

This paper focuses on genitive interrogatives in Iraqi Arabic. I argue that these constructions are inherently D-linked (Discourse-Linked). Similarly to D-linked interrogatives, when genitive interrogatives appear in content questions in which both the resumptive strategy and the gap strategy are possible, the genitive interrogatives have a D-N structure when the gap strategy is employed and a D-φ-N structure when the resumptive strategy is employed. I then propose the following hypothesis: what defines D-linking is the presence of a domain restriction in the form of an overt noun.

This paper focuses on the linguistic competence of adult Portuguese–German bilinguals in their heritage language, European Portuguese (EP), which they acquired at home in early childhood in the context of German as the majority language. Based on a grammaticality judgment test, we investigate their morphosyntactic knowledge of clitics. The central questions are whether possible deviations from native monolinguals may be traced back to a) lack of contact with the formal register; b) reduced input after preschool age; and c) cross-linguistic influence. The results reveal qualitative differences between the heritage speakers and a group of monolingual controls in almost all test conditions. We conclude that although the linguistic knowledge of the heritage bilinguals investigated in this study differs from that of monolinguals, it is not “deficient” but “different” and “innovative”, because it is primarily based on the spoken variety of the language and because it promotes linguistic changes which are inherent in the speech of native monolinguals.

The present study examined the language development of children adopted from China to examine possible early age effects with respect to their use of complement clitics, lexical diversity and verb morphology. We focused on these aspects of French because they distinguish second language learners of French and native French-speaking children with language impairment from children learning French as a native language and, in the case of object clitics and certain verb tenses, are relatively late to emerge in native speakers. Thus, it might be expected that they would be susceptible to the delayed onset of acquisition of French experienced by internationally adopted children. Language samples of twelve adopted children from 3;6 to 4;8 living in French-speaking families were analyzed and compared to those of non-adopted monolingual French-speaking children of the same age, sex and socio-economic status. The adopted and control children had similar levels of socio-emotional adjustment and non-verbal intellectual abilities. The adopted children exhibited accelerated language development in general, and there were no significant differences between the internationally adopted and control children with respect to lexical diversity and verb tense. However, the adopted children made significantly more errors using complement clitics, and in particular object clitics, compared to the non-adopted children. The results are discussed in terms of possible effects related to delayed age of acquisition of French.