SCl enclisis in North Italian and Rhaeto-Romance varieties: merge and phases

In many Romance varieties the inverted order between subject clitic and verb characterizes interrogation contexts and, in Rhaeto-Romance languages, V2 contexts. This phenomenon gives rise to paradigms whereby in interrogative and V2 contexts the verb is followed by the enclitic form of the SCl, possibly also in combination with the proclitic subject. The enclisis on the verbal form has been dealt with as the result of the movement of the verb, typically in cartographic approaches, whereby the enclitic subject has been seen as the inverted proclitic form. Nevertheless, enclitics usually show a partially different form. Other authors deal with enclitics as inflections, whereby North Italy and Rhaeto-Romance varieties have an inflectional paradigm specialized for modal contexts such as interrogative clauses. V2 varieties with inversion contribute to suggesting a clearer and more complete explanation of this phenomenon. In this article we will motivate the inflectional nature of enclitics based on their distribution and in the light of the hypothesis that it is the result of syntactic Merge. As for inversion, we will propose a hypothesis based on the phasal organization of the clause and the domains of subject-verb agreement.