Clitic reduplication of object in contemporary Spanish

In this work, the pronominal reduplication is interpreted as an agreement of the verb with the object by means of a clitic. In this way, the object resembles the subject, which agrees with the verb by means of an affix. However, while the subject agreement is absolutely regular, the agreement of the object, or reduplication, is conditioned by diverse factors. These factors are the main object of investigation in this work. The reinterpretation of the object clitics as agreement markers is the consequence of their grammaticalization from the original character of unstressed personal pronouns towards the character of verbal affixes. The dative clitics are rather further in this process than the accusative clitics - they conserve less pronominal features, and also the reduplication of the indirect object is much more frequent than the reduplication of direct object. This is related to the fact that the indirect object is by its nature closer to the subject, therefore it favours more the regular agreement with the predicate. Key words: pronominal reduplication, clitic doubling, object pronouns, clitics, direct object, indirect object, spanish synta