The morphophonology of the Romanian clitic sequence

This paper proposes an analysis of some morphophonological phenomena of Rom anian pronominal clitics which have been treated so far as idiosyncrasies. I argue that pronominal clitics have only one underlying form and that surf ace forms are different because of the different environments in which they appear and because of their morphological properties. As will be shown, an Optimality Theoretic ranking of morphological and phonological constraints can account for the surface realisation of the clitics. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.