'Clitic doubling', or 'pronominal reduplication', in
linguistics, is a phenomenon by which
clitic pronouns appear in
verb phrases together with the full
noun phrases that they refer to (as opposed to the cases where such pronouns and full noun phrases are in
complementary distribution).
Clitic doubling is found in many languages, including
Albanian,
Macedonian,
Bulgarian,
Greek,
Persian,
Romanian,
Somali, and
Spanish; in each case, it follows different rules.
In the standard
Macedonian language, clitic doubling is obligatory with
definite direct and
indirect objects, which contrasts with standard Bulgarian where clitic doubling is optional. Non-standard dialects of Macedonian and Bulgarian have differing rules regarding clitic doubling.
Clitic doubling in Spanish
Spanish is one well-known example of clitic-doubling language. In certain constructions, the indirect object can be expressed both as a full noun phrase and as a clitic:
:''Le di un regalo a mi madre.'' "I gave my mother a gift."
:''A mis invitados siempre les ofrezco café.'' "I always offer coffee to my guests."
:''No les des comida a los animales.'' "Do not give food to the animals."
The above, if literally translated into English, would be redundant:
| ''Le'' | ''di'' | ''un'' | ''regalo'' | ''a'' | ''mi'' | ''madre'' |
| to.her | I.gave | a | gift | to | my | mother |
| ''A'' | ''mis'' | ''invitados'' | ''siempre'' | ''les'' | ''ofrezco'' | ''café'' |
| to | my | guests | always | to.them | I.offer | coffee |
| ''No'' | ''les'' | ''des'' | ''comida'' | ''a'' | ''los'' | ''animales'' |
| not | to.them | give | food | to | the | animals |
Indirect object clitic doubling is used when it refers to a person or another animate entity, but it is not compulsory and one can say "''Siempre ofrezco café a mis invitados''" without the doubling.
The direct object may also be doubled, but this is not common and the decision to double it is often a matter of style (and dialect).
:''Lo vi a tu papá en la tienda.'' "I saw your dad at the store."
:''El otro día la conocí a su esposa.'' "The other day I met his wife."
(In the above, ''lo'' and ''la'' are usually omitted.)
Notes
# Friedman, V. (1994) "Variation and Grammaticalization in the Development of Balkanisms" in ''CLS 30 Papers from the 30th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society'', Volume 2. (Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society)