Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

The Socio-Syntax of Bilectal Grammar: Clitic Placement and ‘Free’ Grammatical Variation

Kleanthes K. Grohmann
University of Cyprus & CAT Lab

Typical phenomena that seem to display ‘free’ operations or ‘optional’ variations in grammar are, for instance, the first constituent in V2 structures or constituent ordering in scrambling. Less obvious examples would be speakers that seemingly switch between a pre- and a postverbal placement of a pronominal object clitic. The rationale why this would not really be expected is clear: Languages pattern as either proclitic or enclitic, possibly allowing the other under certain syntactic conditions. For example, Cypriot Greek sets the default in indicative declarative clauses to enclisis, with proclisis reserved for specific syntactic environments. We also know from child language that (i) not only are clitics acquired quite early (around the age of 2), but (ii) once acquired, children do not make placement errors. That is, children do not go through a stage in which they would produce proclisis where enclisis is required or vice versa.

In this talk, I will provide an overview of vast research on the acquisition, development, and use of pronominal object clitics we have carried out in the CAT Lab for subsets of several speaker communities: bilectal Greek Cypriot adults, bilectal Greek Cypriot children compared to their bidialectal Hellenic–Cypriot and monolingual Hellenic Greek peers, as well as Russian–Greek bilingual children. In addition, we tested developmentally impaired bilectal Greek Cypriot children to compare (types of) errors to their typically developing peers as well as to bilingual children. Emphasis will be put on the different cliticization sites in the two Greek varieties, proclisis in Standard Modern Greek indicative declarative contexts vs. enclisis in their Cypriot Greek counterparts. I will report findings from our studies and put forth the Socio-Syntax of Development Hypothesis to address grammatical variation in post-critical period language development: Children growing up in diglossia take on properties of the sociolinguistically H(igh) variety in the speech of their L(ow) variety in unstable environments.These environments include competing motivations, competition of grammars, and, primarily, the transition into formal schooling—crucially, they do not involve ‘free’ choice of clitic placement site or ‘optional’ cliticization rules. Implications for the parameters approach to language acquisition will round off the talk.