An Optimality Theory Approach

Abstract In Chapter 6 I described a complex set of descriptive rules that govern the positioning of the PM, as well as those that govern the placement of the clitic -q’a- SUBJV and the PAST clitic, -y/-i (henceforth -y PAST). (I ignore -gi- COND here, since it is obsolete in the dialect I am describing, and because it can easily be accounted for with a constraint similar to that formulated for -q’a- SUBJV.) In Chapter 6 we saw also that linguistic entities that we must recognize as clitics (Chapter 5) can occur inside sequences that we are forced to acknowledge to be single morphemes from a synchronic point of view (Chapter 4). This fact poses a serious challenge for linguistic theory. In this chapter I show that the placement of Udi PMs as endoclitics is similar to the more familiar placement of infixes. Udi clearly attests structures that have not been acknowledged to exist in natural languages, namely endoclitics. Because linguists have not believed that endoclitics existed, we have created linguistic theories that prevent the formation of such structures. It is therefore not surprising that current theories do not lend themselves to accounting for endoclisis. Among current theories known to me, it is Optimality Theory (OT) that best accommodates the facts of Udi endoclisis. No theoretical account of the order of morphemes in Udi will be simple (if it is accurate), since the facts of Udi morpheme order as described in Chapter 6 are not simple. The purposes of this chapter are first to explore the nature of the morphology – syntax interface on the basis of Udi data, second to show that Udi clitic placement can be accounted for within a framework independently proposed for universal grammar, even though, to the best of my knowledge, nothing like the Udi intramorpheme clitics has previously been described, and third to relate Udi endoclisis to what is known of infixes and other related phenomena in other languages.