Suspended morphology in Serbian: clitics vs. affixes

Abstract

This article offers a case study of what appears to be an instance of “suspended affixation” in Serbian. The phenomenon in question is particularly interesting and potentially theoretically significant since it occurs in a language in which suspended affixation is generally impossible. The account I am led to suggests, however, that what is being “suspended” is not an affix but a second position clitic disguised as an affix. This is not a surprising outcome, since Serbian second position clitics, unlike ordinary affixes, can be elided quite easily. The phenomena examined in this paper provide further support to certain aspects of the theoretical model developed in Embick ( 2007; 2010) and offer new insights into the interaction between linearization, ellipsis and Local Dislocation. In particular, I show that the forms which allow ‘suspended affixation’ are formed in a special way, namely, via Local Dislocation, which affixes a second position enclitic to its host at PF under linear adjacency. Forms which are created by regular head movement, on the other hand disallow suspended affixation, on the assumption that elements that form complex heads (i.e., Subwords) cannot be elided.