Obligatory clitic expression, clitic omission, and the morphology-syntax interface

Abstract

In the Romance language Catalan, some verbs and some argument-structure configurations normally require the reflexive clitic; however, in certain constructions, the expected reflexive clitic is optionally missing; and, yet in other constructions, the reflexive clitic is obligatorily left out. The main theoretical claim is that so-called clitics in Romance, a special kind of affix, are licensed by syntax-morphology (SM) mapping principles so that a clitic is used if and only if it is required by an SM mapping principle. This approach has important implications for the syntax-morphology interface: words are not inserted in their inflected form in the syntax, contrary to standard LFG assumptions, but are inserted as lexemes and their inflected forms are licensed on the basis of the f-structure information