Attaching Pronominal Enclitics to Vowel-ending Nominals: Revision of Pronominal Enclitics System

The present paper studies how the pronominal enclitics in Persian attach to the NPs ended in vowels. The main goal of this paper is revealing the underlying representation of such pronouns: how they attach to nouns ending in vowels, studying the insertion process occurred between the stem and the enclitic. After analyzing data, two hypotheses were proposed, of which one was finally confirmed. The results show that the pronominal enclitics system in Persian is a three-membered system (-m, -t, -S) revealing three singular persons. These pronouns consist of one single consonant and their plural counterparts are made by adding the regular plural suffix “- n”. Also, it is shown that the insertion of vowel between the stem and pronouns is the result of analogy with the stems ending in consonants. This process feeds the insertion of a semi-vowel.