to pied-piper

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        A new book arrived at the library here recently: Clitic Phenomena in
European Languages.  (Somehow, I always take up books on this topic
anticipating philological erotica.  In this case I find something
else: a new verb -- new to me anyway.  Steven Franks, in the abstract
of his article "Clitics at the Interface" writes:

        "Clitics are treated as functional heads, consisting exclusively of
formal features, these being   pied-piped   along with the verb's
formal features under feature-checking verb movement."

        This seems to me to be a splendid verb.  How long has it been
around?  And since I rarely chat about feature-checking verb
movement, I will welcome suggestions as to how I might work it into
my ordinary conversation.

        The book is edited by Frits Beukema and Marcel Den Dikken,
and is published by John Benjamins (Amsterdam & Philadelphia).  I did
not notice when I photocopied the page that it did not carry a page
number.

GAT