Are Asturian clitics distinctly distinct?

Abstract

This chapter is focused on an idiosyncratic feature of Asturian in the context of other neighboring Romance languages. In all these languages, the regular clitic forms for the third person dative and the third person accusative cannot cluster together; as a consequence, one or the other must be replaced by another item or they must fuse into a single form. In Asturian, however, clitics remain the same in that context. This chapter explores the thesis that such a state of affairs is due to the fact that the Asturian dative clitics incorporate the properties of a locative and justifies it historically.