ABSTRACT
The term clitic is an umbrella term for a type of weak (subject and object) pronouns in morphosyntactic theory. While both clitics and strong pronouns have referential properties, they differ in their morphosyntactic properties. This chapter provides a succinct overview of the various definitions of the term clitic, but will focus on pronominal clitics or special clitics in the syntactic tradition of Kayne (1975). Pronominal clitics display special syntax because they occupy a distinctive position when compared with strong pronouns or nominal expressions, and they cannot be conjoined. We review the second language acquisition and processing of accusative, dative and partitive clitics, clitic clusters, clitic doubling, clitic-climbing, clitic left dislocation and clitic omission, taking into consideration how formal linguistic and psycholinguistic principles account for the acquisition data and how acquisition data contributes to morphosyntactic and psycholinguistic theory.
