Topics in Bulgarian morphology and syntax: a minimalist perspective

Abstract This paper offers a minimalist view of a variety of topics that in Bulgarian are at the crossroads of lexicon, syntax, morphology, and phonology. It discusses syntactic characteristics in periphrastic tenses with biclausal structures and the formal properties of Balkan control/raising constructions. It sketches accounts for clitic templates, person restrictions, and reflexive haplology that combine syntax and morphology, and assign an important role to person in postsyntactic morphology. It reviews some minimalist-oriented displacement analyses of the distribution of interrogative li . It examines the construction with an obligatory clitic Trese me “I am shivering,” proposing that lexical structure and syntactic conditions on clitic pronouns and doubling account for its characteristics. It compares two prominent GB/minimalist views on reflexive marking and applies them to inherent reflexive verbs. It ends by discussing word order in auxiliary complexes, and touches on left branch phenomena, and on the relation between displacement and information structure.

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