The Rise of Agreement; the Case of Persian Enclitics Mohammad Rasekh Mahand 1 † 1 Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran. Abstract. Traditionally, it was supposed that Persian pronominal enclitics act as pronouns or real arguments, while this paper tries to indicate that they act as agreement markers in some contexts, too. As historically they have moved from Wackernagel’s position toward verb adjacent positions, their functions have also changed. Now, they are used as subject agreement markers in a group of Persian structures. It is argued that they have acquired this new role, subject agreement markers, via grammaticalization, and Blocking Principle, as envisaged by Fuß (2005) could explain this process. Keywords: pronominal enclitics, agreement markers, grammaticalization, Blocking Principle. 1. Enclitics and their distribution While there is a vast literature on clitics, especially in Romance languages (Anderson 2005, De Cat 2007), Persian pronominal enclitics are not treated appropriately. Modern Persian, an Iranian language, is a pro-drop, verb-final language. Inflectional suffixes appear on the verb to mark subject-verb agreement and they agree with the subject in person and number and license pro-drop in subject position. The subject agreement marker in 3Sg Past is nil. Persian has some pronominal enclitics, too, (=m, 1Sg; =t, 2Sg; =š, 3Sg; =mân, 1Pl; =tân 2Pl; =šân, 3Pl). These enclitics appear in five different positions, which could be divided into two main groups, verbal distributions and non-verbal ones. In verbal positions, the enclitics appear pre- verbally, as in (I); or post-verbally, as in (II). The main purpose of this paper is the study of enclitics in the first verbal position. I. These enclitics appear pre-verbally in some structures. As the following examples show, in these structures, the subject agreement marker on the verb is a default / zero morph in the past tense third singular subjects, while the presence of an enclitic is obligatory. (1) a. xoš=am 'āmad-Ø. Like-Enc 1Sg come Past -3Sg Su Lit: "I like it." b. xāb=aš bord-Ø sleep-Enc3Sg take Past -3Sg Su Lit: "S/he slept." II. The enclitics could also be used post-verbally, after inflectional suffixes used as subject markers. As the feature of special enclitics, these pronominal enclitics have a different syntax compared with their corresponding free forms. The free forms of objects appear canonically pre-verbally (as in 2 b, c), while their cliticized forms appear post-verbally (as in 2a). In this usage, these enclitics could be used without the co- referring direct objects (2a), or co-occur with them (2b&c). (2) a. (man) did-am=eš (I) see Past-1Sg Su-Enc 3Sg "I saw him/her." b. (man) Ali rā did-am=eš (I) Ali-RA see Past-1Sg Su-Enc 3Sg "I saw Ali." † Tel.: + 988118248303; fax: +988118292570. E-mail address: rasekh@basu.ac.ir