Chapter 7
Little words, small moves
Clitic placement and syntactic change
This paper explores clitic placement in two different varieties of Greek, Standard Modern Greek and Cypriot Greek,
and it is argued that, under heavy influence from the standard variety, the Cypriot variety is undergoing change as regards a
core property of its syntax, namely the placement of pronominal object clitics, since alongside structures where object
clitics appear in second position in the clause, they also tend to appear in the immediately preverbal position, as in
Standard Greek, the roofing standard for the Cypriot koine. An overview of existing studies is provided, after which the
argument is made for competing grammars; the availability in the Cypriot koine of the Standard Greek as well as the Cypriot
clitic placement strategy is accounted for on the basis of successful second dialect acquisition.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Clitics in Greek
- 2.1Three types of clitic placement
- 2.2Exceptional clitic placement
- 3.Sociolinguistic studies of clitic placement in Cypriot Greek
- 4.Competing grammars and the nature of the competition
- 4.1Code-mixing and/or competing grammars?
- 4.2Approaches to clitic placement in Standard and Cypriot Greek
- 4.3The Interface Hypothesis
- 5.Conclusions
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Acknowledgments
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Notes
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References