The prosody of German clitics

Abstract

In this paper I discuss the prosodic representation of clitics in Standard German and in some German dialects.
The paper is organized as follows: first, I introduce the assumptions on clitics this paper is based on. In 2 I give the data on the different types of clitics that will be discussed and I show that clitics in German require the assumption of a special prosodic domain. In 3 I discuss the nature of this prosodic domain: is it the.clitic group or some kind of recursive structure? The different prosodic representations are applied on the German data. Finally, the correct representations for enclitic and prociitic forms will be defended. I show that there is evidence from phonological processes that proclitic and enclitic forms have two different prosodic representations. Assuming this, some asymmetries in the phonology of clitics can be explained.