CLITIC CLIMBING WITH DIFFERENT KINDS OF DA-COMPLEMENTS IN SERBIAN AND THE STATUS OF PROBABILISTIC RULES IN GRAMMAR
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Abstract
This paper addresses the problem of clitic climbing out of different da-complements in Serbian. Clitic climbing refers to a phenomenon where a clitic associated with an embedded clause is pronounced in the matrix clause. In previous literature (Aljović, 2005; Progovac, 1993; Stjepanović, 2004, etc.), various, sometimes contradictory, claims have been made about the (un)grammaticality of clitic climbing out of da-complements in Serbian. This paper provides experimental data on the acceptability of clitic climbing out of different kinds of da-complements in Serbian. We tested the predictions from Todorović & Wurmbrand (2020) by conducting a formal acceptability judgment experiment involving clitic climbing out of Proposition, Situation and Event-type embedded clauses. Although the results seem to generally follow the Implicational Complementation Hierarchy, the transitions between clause types are rather gradual. Following Bošković’s (2004) proposal that clitics surface in the second position in their Intonational Phrase, we analyze the optionality of clitic climbing as being the result of a probabilistic rule at PF which decides whether da will induce a prosodic boundary, which takes structural size of the complement clause as one of its factors.
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