Italian Clitics

"Italian Clitics" is a scholarly book that explores the evolutionary development of Italian object clitics from a grammaticalization theoretical perspective. It examines the morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features of these clitics and provides a detailed analysis of the so-called verbi procomplementari. These verbs are characterized by the integration of clitics that no longer function as pronouns and are widely used in modern Italian. The emergence of these structures is described as a process that encompasses both the grammaticalization of the clitic and the lexicalization of the verb-clitic sequence. The book is descriptive and data-driven, focusing on the essential aspects of grammaticalization and lexicalization. It is aimed at a broad audience, including linguists, language scholars, and students interested in language change and variation.