Haig / Nemati: Clitics in Delvari ICIL5 2013 1 Clitics at the syntax-pragmatics interface: The case of Delvari pronominal enclitics Geoffrey Haig (geoffrey.haig@uni-bamberg.de) Fatemeh Nemati (nemati@pgu.ac.ir) Revised handout, 1 paper held at the ICIL 5, Bamberg, 24-26 th August 2013 1 Introduction Clitic pronouns continue to be a focus of attention for linguists of all persuasions. Within West Iranian, pronominal clitics are one of the most salient features of morphosyntax, attested back to Old Iranian and beyond. Currently, there is growing interest in their complexities reflected in publications on a number of different WI languages (e.g. Samvelian 2006, 2007; Haig 2008, 2013; Dabir-Moghaddam 2008; Stilo 2008; Öpengin 2013a, 2013b). In many WI languages, clitic systems are tense-sensitive: although a phonologically identical paradigm of clitics is used in both tenses, the functions and placement principles of the clitics differ according to the tense of the verb. The majority of WI languages with pronominal clitics have preserved some traces of Middle Iranian tense sensitivity, with Persian being a notable exception. In this study, we give a short outline of the clitic system in Delvari, a language with tense-sensitive clitic system, which has previously not featured in the literature. We highlight in particular aspects of information structure, and explore the agreement vs. anaphora distinction. We would like to emphasize the preliminary nature of the analysis at this stage. 2. Delvari: background on the language and the speakers Delvari is the name of the dialect spoken in Delvar district (1 township and 41 villages) situated in Tanguestan County, Bushehr province in the southwest of the Persian Gulf coast. At the 2006 census, the population of the district is reported to be 28,017, in 6,486 families. However, it is unlikely that all inhabitants of the province are fluent speakers of Delvari, and Persian is increasingly dominant in all spheres of life. Fig. 1: Dotted line indicates approximate region where Delvari dialects are spoken 1 We would like to thank the audience at the conference for very constructive discussion, and in particular Jila Ghomeishi for several very valuable suggestions. The authors welcome any further feedback.