The rise of the accusative clitic in Chilean Spanish

Clitic climbing is a widely attested phenomenon in the literature on "restructuring" verbs - essentially modal, aspectual, and movement verbs, which select a non-finite VP as their complement. Cinque (2006) proposes that these verbs are heads of functional IP categories, thus comprising a monoclausal domain with the lexical non-finite verb. This proposal is endorsed by the existence of certain "transparency effects" - among which the possibility of clitic object raising to the left of the functional verb, which cannot take place when the non-finite VP is selected by another lexical verb. Since Cinque's (1999) hierarchy has already been verified for Chilean Spanish regarding adverbs (Wechsler, 2023), the aim of this paper is to investigate the possibility of accusative clitic climbing over functional constituents in this Spanish variety. We turn to two types of tests: i. movement of the clitic adjuncted to a main finite verb over adverbs; and ii. isolated movement of the clitic over functional verbs. It was attested that the clitic can follow the finite present verb over low and medial adverbs of the hierarchy, but this movement is limited by the maximum raising height of the finite verb in Chilean Spanish. In the tests with isolated clitic climbing, we have found that the pronoun can move over functional verbs of all of the IP while movement over lexical verbs is