4. Clitic doubling and Old Bulgarian

In this paper we address the origin of the phenomenon of clitic doubling in the Balkan linguistic continuum based in data from the earliest Old Bulgarian manuscripts. We argue that our data witness instances of what we consider clitic doubling proper, similar to the Modern Bulgarian phenomenon of the same type. Our analysis is substantiated by general considerations related to the overall OV structure of Old Bulgarian (cf. Dimitrova-Vulchanova & Vulchanov, in press; Pancheva 2005) and a distinction between clitic doubling and other related constructions, such as e.g., clitic left dislocation, the hanging topic construction and clitic right dislocation. We consider clitic doubling in Old Bulgarian and its Modern parallel as exclusively sanctioned by a specific Information structure value we currently define as [+contrastive topic], which is a sufficient trigger for the surfacing of doubling clitics. Our analysis is justified on the basis of the discourse properties of the earliest instances of the phenomenon and the clear parallel with Modern Bulgarian on the one hand, the parallel with other modern Balkan languages, such as Albanian (cf. Kallulli, this volume) and Macedonian (Tomić, this volume) on the other.