An Account of Clitics in Shabaki with Reference to Wackernagels Law
In this paper the behavior of clitics in Shabaki, a northwestern Indo-Iranian language spoken in Nineveh plains in Iraq, is discussed in detail with respect to forms and distributions and much more interestingly with respect to sensitivity to Wackernagel’s Law. The paper also addresses clitic doubling, clustering and climbing which may be considered the peculiar defining features of Shabaki. They could be added to nouns, pronouns, verbs, prepositions and other clitics. Shabaki is a language with multiple cliticization and is surprisingly complicated with respect to this phenomenon. It has an intricate system of clitics which include subject pronominal clitics, object pronominal clitics (dative and accusative), possessive pronominal clitics, demonstrative pronoun clitics, ezafe clitics, diminutive clitics, additive clitics, aspectual clitics, tense clitics, copular clitics and negative clitics.
