Clitic or Agreement Restriction in Santali: A Typological Analysis

Abstract

This paper investigates the syntactic configuration of pronominal number marking in Santali. Syntactic, morphological and prosodic restrictions show that pronominal number markers have properties of an affix as well as a clitic. A marker is an affix due to the fact that it cannot participate in a binding relation with other arguments. A pronominal number marker also functions as a clitic since it is attached to prosodically the most prominent constituent. The arguments that trigger object agreement do not manifest one particular case, but instead indicate a dissociation between a case and object agreement. On the other hand, the argument with subject agreement manifests nominative case only, indicating an association between nominative case and subject agreement. Both subject and object agreement are sensitive to case that indicates a property of an affix. Keeping in view the distribution of the pronominal number markers, we analyze feature checking of the two parameters, namely agreement and case in Santali.