Second position clitic phenomena

[Ilana Mushin]

Dear Funknetters,

I'm working on a typology of second position clitic/auxiliary phenomena in
Australian languages (=Wackernagel's position). These typically include some
person/number/role (ie. Bound pronouns) and also some tense/aspect/mood
information as a clitic complex that prosodically attaches to the 'first'
constituent or word. I'm aware that such phenomena are relatively common
cross linguistically.

While there is lots of literature in the formal syntactic tradition, there
does not appear to be much in the cognitive-functional tradition on this
subject.

My question for you all is: What kinds of functional explanations exist for
grammaticalisation of second position phenomena? (including verb second,
second position pronominal clitics and second position other grammatical
material). Has there been much typological work in this area?

You can respond directly to me (ilana.mushin at arts.usyd.edu.au) and I'll post
a summary and list of references, if there is general interest.

Thanks
Ilana Mushin