The L1 acquisition of clitic placement in Cypriot Greek

• Experimental investigation of clitic placement in CG in children aged 2;6 to 4.
• Enclisis contexts are adult-like from the onset of L1A.
• Enclisis-pro-proclisis in one third of children aged 2;6 to 3.
• Cliticisation in CG is interpreted as a syntax-PF interface phenomenon.
• Clitic misplacement is attributed to the Tobler-Mussafia properties of the language.

This paper investigates the first language acquisition of clitic pronouns in CG, focusing on an exceptional pattern of clitic (mis)placement attested in early data. An elicited production experiment is performed by 50 children from three age groups (age group A: 2;6–3;0, age group B: 3;1–3;6 and age group C: 3;7–4;0). The results obtained reveal that clitic placement in enclisis contexts is adult-like from the onset, whereas one third of the children aged 2;6 to 3;0 misplace clitics in proclisis contexts. Clitic (mis)placement in CG is interpreted within an interface account within which the syntactic outcome is filtered through a PF-controlled procedure. Clitic placement in CG is regulated by a PF filter that requires that clitic pronouns in CG are suffixes to the initial constituent within their Intonation phrase. Young CG-children originally misinterpret this requirement and assume that clitics obligatorily follow the verb within the verb-clitic cluster.