فاطمه نعمتی

Clitics at the syntax-pragmatics interface: The case of Delvari pronominal enclitics Delvari is an endangered West Iranian language spoken in Delvar and some neighboring villages near Bu?ehr on the Persian Gulf in Iran. Like the majority of West Iranian languages, Delvari makes extensive use of bound pronominal clitics expressing core arguments. The paradigm of transitive subject clitics (=AC) and object clitics (=PC) is given in Table 1 (the same clitics occur in other syntactic functions, which we ignore in this paper): SINGULAR PLURAL 1st =om =omu 2nd =et =etu 3rd =e? =e?u The basic architecture of Delvari clitic syntax reflects the “tense-sensitivity” (Haig 2008) typical of West Iranian, where the functions of clitics are dependent on the tense of the verb. For example, transitive verbs in past tenses obligatorily index the A-argument via a clitic pronoun, while in the present tense, an A-argument is never indexed in this manner. This kind of system is richly attested in Middle Iranian (Middle Persian and Parthian, cf. Korn 2009) and although it has since disappeared in modern Persian, it is still preserved in most of West Iranian e.g. Central and Southern Kurdish (Fattah 2000, McKenzie 1961/1962, Samvelian 2006, 2007, Opengin (in prep.), several varieties of Balochi (Dabir-Moghaddam 2008), Gorani (Mahmoudveysi et al 2012) or Talyshi (Stilo 2008). In Delvari, however, the system differs from the better-known examples in that first, the AC may, subject to pragmatic conditions to be outlined in the paper, still be realized in the Wackernagel-position, as shown in (1a-b). Note that unlike e.g. Central Kurdish, in Delvari the A-NP itself is a possible host for the clitic, as in (1b): (1) a. dig=e? xune xeri yesterday=3.SG.AC house buy.PST ‘S/He bought a house yesterday.’ b. eli=? mo ne-di, oma mo=m eli di Ali=3SG.AC me NEG-see.PST, but I=1SG.AC Ali see.PST ‘Ali didn’t see me, but I saw Ali.’ Second, Delvari has developed an innovation in the hosting of object clitic