英文要旨
Clitic Doubling of Objects in the Bulgarian Dialect spoken in Brăneşti:Language Contact and Grammaticalization
Kenta Sugai
This thesis discusses the clitic doubling of objects in the northeastern Bulgarian dialect
spoken in the village of Brăneşti, Romania. The main purpose of this research is todescribe the formal and pragmatic aspects of the phenomenon, and also to analyze it fromthe viewpoint of language contact and grammaticalization.
Clitic doubling refers to the doubling by a clitic pronoun of a verbal argument inside
the same propositional structure－found not only in Bulgarian, but also in other Balkan
languages. While this phenomenon has been widely studied in general, Bulgarian dialects－especially those spoken outside the Republic of Bulgaria － have rarely been thetarget of such studies. This thesis, therefore, focuses on clitic doubling in one such dialect
spoken in Brăneşti, Romania.
The first chapter overviews the distribution and classification of Bulgarian dialects.
The second chapter gives an outline of the clitic doubling of objects, and clitic personalpronouns in the Bulgarian literary language. The author confirmed that clitic doubling isa morpho-syntactic way to topicalize an object. Clitic personal pronouns are usually
adjacent to the verb, and may be situated before (preverbal) or after the verb (postverbal)
according to the position of the verb in the sentence. It should also be noted that thepreverbal position has two structural models: HTLD and CLLD.
The third chapter describes and analyzes the formal and functional aspects of clitic
doubling in the Brăneşti dialect.
The clitic personal pronouns in this dialect display some different features than theliterary language, for example they are preverbal regardless of the verb’s position in thesentence. This is a feature characteristic of affixes, rather than clitics. This fixed word
ordering can also be found in Romanian.
The author also analyzed the use of the accusative marker preposition pă, whichappears to be a loan word from Romanian. Pă can be used only when the object is animate
and/or definite. Non-clitic personal pronouns which are lexically definite and animate
require use of this preposition.

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The clitic doubling of objects with pă displays specific behavior, such as mandatory
doubling of non-clitic personal pronouns both in the preverbal and postverbal positions.
When other nouns co-occur with the preposition pă, they are clitic-doubled more often in
the postverbal position, unlike in literary language. In contrast, clitic doubling without păis observed mostly in the preverbal position, as in the literary language. It can therefore
be asserted that the clitic doubling construction in the Brăneşti dialect exhibits
characteristic features only when this preposition is concerned.
Upon examination of clitic doubling structures, the same structures－such as HTLD
and Na-drop in the preverbal, and restriction of the use of RD in the postverbal position－were found. The difference between the Brăneşti dialect and the literary language canbe found only in the use of the preposition.
The function of the clitic doubling construction is also analyzed here. It appears thatthe pragmatic function of the construction is the same as in the literary language－thatbeing the topicalization of the clitic-doubled object. It should be noted, however, that not
only topical, but also some focused objects are clitic-doubled. This suggests that the cliticdoubled object is gradually losing its markedness as a topical phrase.
In the fourth chapter, the clitic doubling construction is analyzed from the viewpointof grammaticalization.
First, the author explores the process by which the clitic doubling construction isgrammaticalized. The clitic doubling construction begins as a topic-shifted construction－a pragmatic device. As time passes, the clitic personal pronouns are reanalyzed as
affixes (agreeing with the object) as grammatical markers.
Second, the author analyzes the distribution of this phenomenon using dialect atlases.
Not only does the degree of grammaticalization vary between dialects, it also displays ageographical gradient from most grammaticalized in southwestern Macedonia to least
grammaticalized in northeastern Bulgaria. It is suggested that the multiethnic andmultilingual environment in southwestern Macedonia may have played an important rolein the development of the clitic doubling construction from a pragmatic to a grammaticaldevice.
Considering the above, the author hypothesizes that the less grammaticalized clitic
doubling in one of the northeastern Bulgarian dialects spoken in Brăneşti has beengrammaticalized through language contact with Romanian.
The author set out to clarify whether the clitic doubling construction in the Brăneşti
dialect is grammaticalized or not, using the parameters of grammaticalization, proposedfrom the typological point of view. It was determined that, as the clitic doubling2

construction displays all four parameters, it may be argued the construction isgrammaticalized to a considerable extent.
The degree of grammaticalization differs according to the types of objects. The most
grammaticalized clitic doubling can be found only when the object is marked by nonclitic personal pronouns, which must be accompanied by pă.
On the other hand, it seems clitic doubling constructions without pă are connected tothe pragmatic function to topicalize the clitic-doubled object, consequently showing thatsuch constructions remain pragmatic devices, and are not grammaticalized as much in theabsence of pă.
The most grammaticalized construction of the clitic doubling can be found when thedirect object is marked by the aforementioned preposition pă, which is borrowed from
Romanian. Moreover, the construction of the clitic doubling with this preposition
possesses almost the same features as in the model language. The fact that this similarity
can be found only in conjunction with the preposition, can be explained by thegrammatical replication of the model of Romanian construction.
In the fifth chapter, the author concludes that the clitic doubling construction isgrammaticalized through language contact with Romanian. The most grammaticalized
clitic doubling can be observed when the clitic-doubled object is followed by the loan
word pă, showing that the grammaticalization process is triggered by the grammatical
replication of the equivalent construction in Romanian.

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