Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

Spanish:
a. Al llegar
At-the to-arrive
'In arriving'
b. El cantar de los pajaritos
Italian:
The to-sing of the birdies
'The singing of the birdies'
a. L'aver (lui) affermato questo
The-to-have (he) stated this
'(His) having stated this'
a. Lo svegliarsi della natura
The to-wake of-the nature
'The wakening of the nature'
Raposo (1987-a) argues, that Romance Infinitives' nominal properties account for the
apparent fact that they have to be Case-marked.
Even if, as I said, I cannot explain why enclisis and not proclisis takes place when there
is extra head movement, at least we can generalize the phenomenon to the case of French (and
Northern Italian) (complex) inversion, both being cases of extra head-movement which force the
proclitic of the lower head to become an enclitic of the upper head. Perhaps the reason of the
change of directionality of cliticization is a matter of diachronic change, having to do with the
'easiest' way a new generation can reanalyse the parents data when reanalysis takes place: for
instance Old French subject inversion in interrogatives had nothing to do with cliticization even
when the subject was a pronominal; when cliticization started to be active, the easiest way for the
new generation to accommodate facts was to assume right-adjunction of the subject clitic to C o .
Perhaps similar accounts could be given for Romance clitics, assuming their original position
1