Gemination and clitic order in Czech : historical development and theoretical insights
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This corpus study investigates the ordering of the second person auxiliary "s" and the reflexive "se", which together form the cluster "se=s", in Czech. This ordering is puzzling, as Czech auxiliaries typically precede the reflexive, not the other way around. Building on Sedláček's (1994) insights, I propose that, rather than syntactic factors, this ordering is more likely influenced by a phonological constraint against geminates such as /ss/ in Present-Day Czech. This constraint was not active in earlier stages of the language, where the cluster was ordered as "s=se". I support this thesis by presenting the identical development in historical geminated /ss/ formed at the boundary between prefixes/prepositions and the following NP/VP (e.g., ssaditi "take down", s synem "with a son"). These geminates were resolved in the 19th century ("ssaditi" > "sesadit", etc.), just like the auxiliary=reflexive cluster ("s=se" --> "ses"). Finally, I offer a tentative formal analysis of this diachronic phenomenon couched in mixed approach, employing a mixed approach that combines the Minimalist Program and Optimality Theory (cf. Franks and King, 2000). |
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