Floating agreement in american spanish leísta dialects

In this paper I link floating features in clitic clusters with two third-person participants to a split object marking system, indicative of a language change in progress. Both clitics are undergoing concurrent reanalysis processes affecting them differentially, i.e. they are located at different stages in the process. Whereas standard varieties draw a clear distinction between direct and indirect object, American Spanish Leísta dialects move to a distinction between primary and secondary object. Clitic cluster agreement in those dialects is triggered by a loss of case restrictions on the third-person clitics resulting in a tendency to mark the primary object.