Verbal clitics in Bulgarian

I provide an analysis of the Bulgarian clitic cluster within the framework of Greg Stump’s theory of Paradigm Function Morphology. I treat the basic clitic cluster as essentially a string of affixes generated by paradigm functions. In this way I formalize the notion of ‘phrasal affix’. The placement of the cluster is determined by the interaction of syntactic and prosodic constraints, whose interaction is mediated by Optimality Theory. The notorious question clitic, li, is treated as an enclitic to the leftmost stressed element in its domain. The clitic itself is generated as a member of the basic cluster but without any linear precedence. Its final placement is thus decided by OT constraints. I briefly consider the closely related Macedonian system, in which the clitic cluster is affixed by the paradigm function not to the root of the lexeme, but to a word form which has already undergone a layer of inflection.