The intensifying accusative clitic 'ga' (it) in Serbian: from syntax to pragmatics

We explore the intensifying accusative clitic (IAC) ga (‘it’) in Serbian, which has no explicit antecedent, neither introduced in the previous discourse, nor contextually available for deictic reference, thus resembling standard ‘dummy’ pronouns. We argue that the IAC ga is referential — it refers to a specific Topic Situation (TS). Specifically, it is base-generated as a Direct Object, marking affectedness of the specific TS. The intensification effects of this clitic emerge pragmatically, due to Levinson’s (2000) M-principle. The paper provides evidence for TSs as legitimate syntactic objects (Kratzer 2007/2021), supporting the view that there are no ‘dummy’ pronouns (e.g. Langacker 2011).