Clitic pseudo-climbing out of dependent infinitive phrases in Serbian

Abstract

The paper describes the linear placement of Serbian clitics syntactically depending on an infinitive in the role of verbal, nominal, or adjectival complement (for short, infinitive clitics). Two linear placement options are in principle available for the infinitive clitics: local placement (in the second linear position [2P] of the infinitive phrase, where they form a cluster of their own) and clause-level placement (in the 2P of the clause, where they join clause-level clitics). Syntactic and prosodic conditions licensing these placement options are discussed and the corresponding clitic linearization rules proposed within a Meaning-Text dependency-based approach to syntax (Mel′čuk 1988, 2013; Polguère and Mel′čuk 2009). It is shown that clause-level placement of 2P clitics (unlike that of ad-verbal clitics of the Romance type) does not require the change of the syntactic governor of the clitics and should therefore be set apart from  genuine clitic climbing. This is why the corresponding phenomenon is termed “clitic pseudo-climbing”.