engleski

On the Wackernagel rule in Croatian and Slovenian

This paper examines the problem of conventional interpretation of word order in Croatian and Slovene grammatical practice, as well as in the majority of linguistic papers. These claim that the word order is mostly free, but that there is an automatized or obligatory word order (commonly defined as mechanical, predictable or stylistically unmarked) that applies to the clitics. When describing the clitic position, as a rule, one covers the rules of their ordering among themselves and the requirement that they appear in a “ particular position predicted for them” (Katičić 1986). Following functionalist syntactic theories, I first question the status of word order as a syntactic and stylistic problem of linear organization. From that point of view, I argue that there is an extremely restricted number of ungrammatical positions for Croatian and Slovene clitics. Only the initial position is ungrammatical in Croatian and only splitting of a syntactic syntagm is ungrammatical in Slovene. In this light I will show that the verification of distributional restrictions of clitic placement in Croatian and Slovene, as closely related languages with so called free word order, should be treated as the basis for a discussion of the "stylistic potential” of clitic placement in these languages. Revision of existing explanations of Croatian and Slovene as second position languages will be given by selecting characteristic positions (one for each language) and testing them for the applicability of the original formulation of the Wackernagel rule. I investigate the following types of initial clitic placement in Slovene, explaining them as a syntactic reformulation of the Wackernagel rule: 1. ellipsis: 1.1. Me boš zbudil s poljubom? Are you going to wake me up with a kiss? 1.2. (Ali) me boš zbudil s poljubom? 2. inversion of a dependent clause: 2.1. Če kaj najdeš, mi sporoči! If you find something, let me know! 3. the position immediately following direct speech: 3.1. “ Zdaj si pa ti gospodar!” mi je rekla mama. “ You are the master now!” said the mum to me. 4. the position immediately following the conjunction in: 4.1. Tako mi je, kakor da so vsi odšli in me pozabili tu nekje. It is as everyone left and forgot me somewhere. 4.2. In mi je začel povedati o tem. And he started to talk to me about this. I also investigate the splitting phenomena in Croatian claiming that these examples show consistently prosodically conditioned application of an original rule, as in following examples: 5.1. Marko mi je Marković donio knjigu. Marko Marković brought me a book. 6.1. Marko mi Marković daje knjigu. Marko Marković gives me a book. In the end I discuss the grammaticality of “ delayed” clitic placement, such as: 7.1. Marko Marković donio mi je knjigu. Marko Marković brought me a book. Based on observed variations in the application of the Wackernagel rule, I establish parameters to verify all possible positions of clitic placement in Croatian and Slovene. These parameters will be exemplified by the analytic comparison of placement of clitic and nonclitic counterparts.

clitics; clitic placement; word order; Croatian; Slovene

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