Clitic dislocations and clitics in French and Greek

This article focuses on Clitic Left Dislocation of XPs in French and Greek. By examining the interpretive properties of these XPs, primarily reconstruction properties, it concludes that they have been displaced from their first merge position via movement into (sometimes) a succession of hierarchically organized middle-field positions first above vP then above T and on to the left periphery via standard A or A-bar steps (no mixed options are needed). Furthermore, pronominal clitics have long raised questions regarding their surface distribution (external merge in situ only or not), and their interpretive properties. As these XPs are doubled by clitics, it becomes possible to allocate properties of the doublet (clitic, XP) to its individual members. This article concludes that these clitics all occur high, above T, in designated positions and that clitics do not have referential import, only the XPs that double them do.