Persian Clitics beside Verbs

In this paper, two different functions of pronominal enclitics in Persian are discussed. Traditionally, it was supposed that these enclitics act as pronouns or real arguments, while this paper tries to indicate that they act as agreement markers in some contexts, too. As historically they have moved from Wackernagel’s position toward verb adjacent position, their functions have also changed. Now, they are used in object clitic doubling and as subject agreement markers in a group of Persian structures. As subject agreement markers, it is argued that they have acquired a new role via grammaticalization, namely agreement markers, and Blocking Principle, as envisaged in Fuß (2005) could explain this process. While acting as object clitic doubling, the optional NP object acts as topic.