The prosodic representation of clitics in Irish

In this paper, the behavior of proclitic function words in Irish is analyzed. It is argued that proclitics normally remain outside the prosodic word (pword, symbolized ω) of the host lexical word, but under certain circumstances part or all of the clitic may be incorporated into the host pword. Thus both [Clitic _ω(Host)] and [_ω(Clitic + Host)] structures are found within a single language. Moreover, the final consonant of a proclitic can be syllabified as the onset of a vowel-initial host: A string VC # V... is syllabified V _ω(C V...), thus permitting a pword to consist of a morphologically arbitrary string. Finally, it is shown that the final consonant of a proclitic cannot be syllabified as the onset of a vowel-initial host when a syntactic trace intervenes between the proclitic and its host; this fact is attributed to a constraint forbidding pwords from mapping onto morphological strings containing a trace.