Clitics and the Left Periphery in the Sanskrit of the Rigveda

Abstract

This article presents a novel syntactic analysis of the Vedic left periphery and the position of clitics within it, taking the Rigveda as a corpus. I analyze Vedic within the cartographic model of the left periphery, arguing for distinct TopP and FocP projections. The model accounts for the position of conjunction clitics, pronoun clitics, adverbial clitics, interrogative pronouns, relative pronouns, local particles and the negator ma. This model has implications for our understanding of Vedic syntax and ancient Indo-European languages more widely.