36.2955, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2026: Clitics, Clitic Placement, and Cliticisation (Germany)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2955. Fri Oct 03 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2955, Confs: Workshop at SLE 2026:  Clitics, Clitic Placement, and Cliticisation (Germany)

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Date: 02-Oct-2025
From: Marc Olivier-Loiseau [marc.olivier-loiseau at tcd.ie]
Subject: Workshop at SLE 2026: Clitics, Clitic Placement, and Cliticisation


Workshop at SLE 2026:  Clitics, Clitic Placement, and Cliticisation

Date: 26-Aug-2026 - 29-Aug-2026
Location: Osnabrück, Germany
Contact: Marc Olivier-Loiseau
Contact Email: marc.olivier-loiseau at tcd.ie
Meeting URL: https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2026/

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories;
Phonology; Syntax; Typology

Submission Deadline: 17-Nov-2025

We invite abstract submissions for a Workshop on ‘Clitics, clitic
placement, and cliticisation’ as part of the 59th Annual Meeting of
the Societas Linguistica Europaea. Each oral presentation will be
assigned a 25-minute slot (20 min. presentation, 5 min. discussion, 5
min. room change).
Provisional abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and focus on
an aspect relevant to the study of clitics. The deadline submission is
November 17th 2025. Abstracts should be sent to the convenor:
marc.olivier-loiseau at tcd.ie.
This is a shortened version of the CFP -- the full version with
references and examples can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d5fqxEzvxh-g_fL-lrDLDbPlnUyIDWsW/view?usp=sharing
1. Clitics
Linguistic research on clitics has produced significant empirical and
formal studies. These elements qualify neither as 'words' nor as
'affixes' and showcase striking characteristics across morphology,
syntax, prosody, and phonology.
The hallmark of clitics is their deficient nature. However, well-known
tests like "a clitic cannot be stressed" or "a clitic cannot be
coordinated" only capture broad generalisations and fail to capture
micro-issues. The literature offers evidence of stressed clitics and
clitics with disjunction, suggesting that usual tests need refinement.
This raises the question: if not all clitics are clitics in the same
way, should we consider a spectrum of cliticness? Are there clitics
that are more clitic-y than others? Non-European data adds complexity:
Makassarese appears to differentiate 'affixal clitics' from 'free
clitics', while Mapudungun has morphemes dubbed 'anti-clitics' that
syntactically incorporate into a host yet maintain some phonological
dependence.
Structural questions remain contested. Some authors analyse clitics as
heads, some as phrases, and some as both simultaneously. Does this
vary across languages? Is it only a formal question, or is it
supported by empirical evidence? Regarding the morpheme itself,
approaches differ on whether Romance pronominal clitics should be
analysed as simplex or complex elements containing multiple features
(person, gender, number, and possibly determiner elements).
>From a diachronic perspective, clitics result from weakening. Latin
strong pronouns gave rise to Romance clitics. Pronominal clitics exist
in a wide variety of unrelated languages, leading to questions about
their genesis: why are pronouns susceptible to becoming clitics, and
how does it happen? From the viewpoint of language change, clitics
must be considered in the light of grammaticalisation.
2. Clitic Placement
The most striking observation is that clitics appear in a derived
position across languages. In Standard Modern Greek and most Romance
varieties, full objects follow the finite verb whereas object clitics
precede it. In Old Hittite and in the diachrony of Bulgarian, clitic
elements necessarily appear in second position of the clause.
The generative literature broadly distinguishes three approaches:
- Base generation approach: clitics are generated in the position in
which they appear
- Movement approach: clitics are generated in an argumental position
and move to the position in which they appear
- Agree approach: clitics are generated in an argumental position and
are realised as agreement morphemes
Each approach opens formal questions. Are Clitic Phrases universal
projections in a fixed order? If clitics move, do they do so as
phrases, heads, or both, and where do they land? What featural makeup
allows clitics to be realised through agreement? Should we strive for
a one-size-fits-all analysis, or are different approaches better
suited for different languages?
Clitic placement issues also involve phenomena including:
- Second-position clitics: What 'counts' as second position?
- Clitic doubling: Why and how do some languages double their object
with a clitic?
- Clitic climbing: Why do some predicates allow clitics to appear in a
different clause than the one they originate in?
- Clitic reduplication: What leads to the same clitic being pronounced
twice?
The workshop welcomes studies that question, revisit, and update the
formal mechanisms of clitic placement, as well as new empirical
descriptions and generalisations.
3. Cliticisation
Further prosodic and phonological requirements apply on top of clitic
placement rules. Because clitics are dependent elements, they must
find another element to lean onto. Cliticisation specifically refers
to the mechanism(s) through which clitics attach to their prosodic
host.
The differentiation between clitic placement and cliticisation is
crucial: in some languages the prosodic host and the syntactic host
are the same element, whereas in others they are distinct. French and
Romanian illustrate this contrast, with French clitics leaning right
onto the verb and Romanian clitics leaning left onto a preceding
element. Interestingly, French once behaved similarly to Romanian
before shifting its cliticisation pattern.
In languages where clitics must find a prosodic host to their left,
clause-initial position is illicit. In Amazigh languages, if no
prosodic host precedes them, clitics swap positions with the verb.
Does this mean cliticisation impacts clitic placement? Several
solutions involving phonological mechanisms have been proposed,
including prosodic inversion, interface-driven verb movement, and copy
deletion. These approaches share the involvement of phonology/prosody
in word order.
Furthermore, 'attaching to a host' may oversimplify what clitics do.
Clitics can attach to either a prosodic word or a phonological phrase,
contributing to crosslinguistic variation. The question becomes: what
constitutes a host?
4. Potential research questions:
The aim of the workshop is to explore clitics from all possible
perspectives, from methodological matters to theoretical ones, and
case studies. Both synchronic and diachronic studies are welcome, and
those working on under-explored languages are encouraged. We invite
abstracts engaging with the following research questions and related
issues, as well as those mentioned throughout the call:
1. What is a clitic?
2. Can we strictly define a clitic category? Should we talk about
subcategories of clitics?
3. What drives clitic placement? Are there different mechanisms, or is
it a universal phenomenon?
4. How do clitics attach to prosodic hosts? Are there different
mechanisms, or is it a universal phenomenon?
5. How does cliticisation influence clitic placement?
6. How do current methodological and theoretical advances allow us to
approach the study of clitics? What improvements are needed?
7. How does language change give rise to clitics? What about clitic
loss?
8. What other linguistic phenomena (broadly defined) do clitics
interact with?
9. What can we learn from comparative analyses of clitics?



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