Clitics in idioms: Properties of morphosyntax and reference

This paper discusses the morphosyntactic properties of clitics that occur in [VP CLACC/GEN V] and [VP CLGEN CLACC V] idioms in two varieties of Modern Greek. Previous work on this type of idioms captures idiomaticity by proposing inactiveness of Agree and distinguishes between levels of idiosyncrasy by claiming that in Standard Modern Greek, these are determined by the gender morphology of the clitic, its case, and the transitivity status of the verb. We explore the insufficiency of these factors and suggest that the only relevant factor is the presence of semantically identifiable equivalents across domains of interpretation, that is, subparts of the idiom that carry similar meaning and/or reference in the idiomatic and the non-idiomatic interpretation of each idiom. Investigating idiomatic expressions in a second variety, Cypriot Greek, aims first to contribute to the cross-linguistic study of clitics in idioms by drawing a comparison between the two varieties and second, to shed light on aspects of Cypriot Greek syntax which, unlike Standard Modern Greek, has genitive-selecting monotransitive verbs that in certain cases are quite revealing on why gender, case, and transitivity cannot adequately define different levels of idiomaticity. Observing the semantic and syntactic behavior of these clitics in doubling and dislocation environments, it is argued that (i) there is nothing idiosyncratic in the derivation of idioms (all syntactic operations remain active and idiomaticity arises post-syntactically by mapping the computational outcome with entries in the Encyclopedia in a framework like Distributed Morphology) and (ii) there are no idiomaticity-specific morphosyntactic restrictions or featural combinations that preclude idiomaticity.