Enclisis and proclisis in coordination

Abstract

In European Portuguese the unmarked pattern of clitic placement in finite sentences is enclisis, proclisis occurring under the local scope of specific items, namely overt CPs or items with negative, quantificational and focus content. In this study we will propose an analysis of proclisis in sentence coordination, an issue that only recently has received some attention in the field (Martins 2013, Matos & Colaço 2013). We will claim that proclisis in coordination may be induced either by the features of some single and correlative conjunctions, or by the discourse value of some correlative coordinate struc- tures. Proclisis in coordination may also occur with a conjunction that is not a proclisis inducer, if this one is itself under the scope of a proclisis trigger. This fact suggests that there are contexts of long-distance proclisis in European Portuguese. However, we will show that all these cases may be subsumed under local proclisis, taking into account the properties of Conj as an underspecified category that, by Agree, shares the categorial nature of its specifier.The optionality of proclisis in long-distance contexts may also be explained. In fact, this optionality is only apparent and is an effect of the sentential level involved in coordination.