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Clitic placement and the Anti-V2 effect in European Portuguese: Insights from uninflected verbs

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Michelle SheehanORCiD

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Abstract

Clitic placement with European Portuguese uninflected verbs is problematic for prosodic analyses. While ‘proclisis triggers’ give rise to obligatory proclisis with inflected verbs, they often lead to optional proclisis/enclisis with uninflected verbs (Raposo & Uriagereka 2008), except for aspectual/quantificational adverbials with head-like behaviour (Martins 2013a). These patterns provide support for a syntactic ‘Anti-V2 requirement’, whereby clitics usually raise to adjoin to T and either: (a) an XP raises to/through spec FinP and the verb stays in Asp (resulting in proclisis); or (b) the verb raises through T to Fin (resulting in enclisis); but not both (building on Fernández- Rubiera 2009, 2010). The special behaviour of uninflected infinitives can be explained by the possibility of clitics attaching to a lower verbal host and then moving with that host to T resulting in enclisis (Raposo and Uriagereka 2008). Aspectual/quantificational heads block verb movement to T, ruling out enclisis via ‘low fusion’.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Sheehan M

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Linguistic Variation

Year: 2026

Pages: epub ahead of print

Online publication date: 13/04/2026

Acceptance date: 17/02/2026

Date deposited: 17/02/2026

ISSN (print): 2211-6834

ISSN (electronic): 2211‑6842

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.24058.she

DOI: 10.1075/lv.24058.she

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