Distribution and function of clitic object pronouns in popular16th-18th century Greek narratives

The phenomenon of variation in weak object pronoun placement in Early Modern Greek has been the object of a number of studies. This paper presents some results from a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the phenomenon based on a varied corpus. The perspective taken is functional, focusing mainly on Talmy Givón’s model of referential cohesion in narrative discourse. The findings reveal a consistent pattern of variation that is statistically significant and provides a plausible explanation both for a functional distribution as well as the historical change leading to today’s relatively stable patterns.