Abstract

We face many challenges when researching syntax because the syntactic structure of a sentence cannot be determined on the basis of word order alone, whereas word order is often the only evidence a researcher has when advancing the scientific exploration of syntax. This thesis investigates Ossetic, and uses the properties of a small class of lexical items featured in Ossetic with the aim of finding some leads into the language’s clause structure. A general overview clarifies the grammatical categories in terms of which Ossetic clitics are discussed in the literature, a critical analysis is presented for select pieces of previous research on the syntax of Ossetic clitics, and lastly a number of sentences involving clitics are analysed, with some considerations on what they can reveal about the syntactic structure of Ossetic.