Productivity and pragmatics in the syntax of pronominal clitics in old catalan

Abstract

In Old Catalan, like in the rest of the Romance languages, the position of weak pronouns with finite verbs was motivated by pragmatic-syntactic restrictions (Batllori et al. 2005). Gradually, there was a process of fixation (see Lehmann 1985: 306-307) of these pronouns in the preverbal position. The aim of this paper is to quantify and date this change from the 13^th century to the 16^th century considering both the frequency of use of the different positions of weak pronouns (token frequency, Bybee 2003) and the variety of environments in which proclisis becomes possible (type frequency, Bybee 2003).