The clitic doubling parameter

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to explain the emergence and distribution of clitic doubling (CLD) in Romance. On the basis of newly assembled diachronic and synchronic data, the chapter argues that the development can be analysed as a cycle of five different stages. The emergence of the CLD parameter (Fischer and Rinke 2013) is connected to the grammaticalization path of the clitic itself and the verb’s ability to move to the front of the sentence, which in turn affects the A’-positions in front of the verb that are available for the object. CLD in Spanish and Catalan is argued to have taken over partially the information-structural meaning expressed by word order in the Old Romance languages.