Clitic Climbing

When a European Portuguese sentence contains two verbs — a finite auxiliary or modal followed by an infinitive — the clitic pronoun has a choice. It can attach to the infinitive, the verb it is semantically linked to: Quero ver-te ("I want to see you"). Or it can climb up to the higher finite verb: Quero-te ver. Both are grammatical. Both mean exactly the same thing. The pronoun has physically jumped one position up the syntactic tree, but the meaning has not moved. This is clitic climbing, one of European Portuguese's most distinctive and theoretically interesting phenomena. Understanding when climbing is allowed, when it is obligatory, and when it is blocked will separate you from learners who can only place pronouns in one spot.

The basic contrast

Consider a sentence with a modal verb querer plus an infinitive ver plus the clitic te.

Both versions are grammatical European Portuguese. The clitic te is the object of ver — it is you who is being seen — but European Portuguese lets the pronoun detach from ver and attach to quero instead. The semantic link between ver and te is preserved. What has changed is only the phonological and syntactic host.

Why does this matter? Because in many other languages — including English and modern Brazilian Portuguese — this kind of movement is either impossible or severely restricted. European Portuguese allows it productively, and educated speakers alternate freely between climbed and non-climbed forms.

What counts as a restructuring verb

Not every two-verb sequence permits climbing. The higher verb must belong to a specific class — what syntacticians call restructuring verbs or verb-raising verbs. These verbs form a tight grammatical unit with the infinitive below them, and the clitic can travel through them because the structure collapses into a single verbal domain for clitic purposes.

The principal restructuring verbs in European Portuguese are:

With any of these higher verbs, the clitic can climb. The examples below show each class in action.

The two-verb structure behaves, for clitic placement, as if it were a single verbal complex. The infinitive is "transparent" — the clitic can pass right through it.

Verbs that do not allow climbing

Verbs of saying, thinking, believing, deciding, and most verbs that take a full propositional complement do not permit clitic climbing. These are not restructuring verbs; they embed a genuinely separate clause, and the clitic cannot escape from inside that clause.

Common non-restructuring verbs to watch: dizer, pensar, achar, crer, decidir, esperar, prometer, recusar, lamentar, admitir, confessar, sugerir. When these take an infinitival complement, the clitic stays where the infinitive puts it.

The last example is worth staring at. Poder is a restructuring verb, so the clitic can climb from curar to poder (pensa poder-te curar). But it cannot climb any higher, because pensar is not a restructuring verb. This layered behaviour — climbing permitted through some verbs, blocked at others — is exactly what the restructuring analysis predicts.

Proclisis triggers still apply

Clitic climbing is not a replacement for the proclisis/enclisis system. The usual triggers for proclisis (negation, wh-words, subordinators, focus adverbs, indefinites) still operate — but when the clitic climbs, it lands on the higher verb, and the trigger attracts it there.

Compare an untriggered pair with a triggered pair.

Now add não:

Both are grammatical, but notice what has happened. With climbing, te lands before the higher verb quero because não triggers proclisis there. Without climbing, te stays on the infinitive dizer in its ordinary enclitic position — não never reaches that low. The trigger only affects the host the clitic actually ends up on.

This means a clitic under a trigger can land in one of two positions:

1. Climbed and proclitic to the higher verb: Não te quero dizer.
2. Not climbed and enclitic on the infinitive: Não quero dizer-te.

Both are acceptable. In careful PT-PT, the climbed-proclitic form (não te quero dizer) is often preferred because the trigger "attracts" the clitic up and forward. But não quero dizer-te is perfectly fine and very common in conversation.

Mesoclisis and climbing compete

The synthetic future and conditional can take mesoclisis: ver-te-ei ("I will see you"), dir-lhe-ia ("I would tell him"). When the future/conditional is expressed periphrastically with ir, climbing becomes an alternative way to express the same idea.

All three convey the same meaning and are current European Portuguese. The synthetic mesoclitic form (ver-te-ei) is formal and mostly written. The periphrastic without climbing (vou ver-te) is neutral and works everywhere. The periphrastic with climbing (vou-te ver) is colloquial and slightly more oral-speech — it is one of the most common things you hear in everyday Portuguese.

The conditional shows the same pattern:

In careful prose you will meet all of these variants; in conversation the colloquial climbed forms dominate.

Climbing with reflexive se

The reflexive clitic se follows the same rules as other clitics. It can stay with the infinitive or climb to the higher verb.

Reflexive se with inherently reflexive verbs like rir-se, lembrar-se, queixar-se is especially common with climbing, and the colloquial register tends to prefer it.

Register and regional feel

Clitic climbing in European Portuguese sits on an interesting stylistic axis. The climbed form carries two competing flavours at once:

1. It can feel slightly more colloquial when it competes with a periphrastic form: vou-te dizer vs vou dizer-te. Here the climbed version is the one you hear in everyday Lisbon speech.

2. It can feel slightly more literary or careful in certain patterns — especially with modal verbs in writing, where climbed forms were historically favoured in polished prose. Queria-te pedir um favor sounds a touch more elegant than Queria pedir-te um favor in a written text.

So climbing does not belong to a single register. Its flavour depends on which higher verb it sits on and on the surrounding prose. What matters for the learner is that climbed forms are normal, current European Portuguese — not archaic, not marked, not wrong.

European Portuguese vs Brazilian Portuguese

The two varieties diverge sharply on climbing. European Portuguese uses it freely. Brazilian Portuguese — particularly in speech — prefers to leave the clitic attached to the infinitive, or to drop the climbing option altogether in favour of proclisis on the higher verb.

Notice that Brazilian Portuguese places the clitic before the infinitive (proclisis on the infinitive), which European Portuguese does not allow in unmarked contexts. Vou te ligar is ordinary Brazilian but ungrammatical in European Portuguese unless there is a trigger — a learner who writes vou te ligar in a European Portuguese text has outed themselves as a speaker of the Brazilian variety.

Why climbing exists: a deeper look

The syntactic explanation for climbing is that certain verb sequences "restructure" — they collapse into a single clausal domain. The two verbs effectively become one big predicate, and clitics inside that predicate can land on either host. Restructuring is triggered by a class of light, grammatically semi-empty verbs (modals, aspectuals, motion verbs): these verbs add grammatical information (ability, aspect, tense) without introducing a full new clause.

Verbs like dizer, pensar, prometer, by contrast, introduce a genuine subordinate clause — the object of pensar is not "eat cake" but "that I eat cake" (reduced to an infinitive). Such clauses are syntactic islands: clitics cannot climb out.

This is why the class of climbing-licensing verbs is so restricted and so predictable. It is not a list to memorize; it is a natural class defined by semantics (aspectual or modal or light motion) and by syntax (no embedded clause).

Fine-grained cases

A few patterns deserve special attention.

Climbing with ter de and haver de

The modal periphrases ter de and haver de (less common than ter de in modern speech) both license climbing.

Note the phonological adjustment in fazê-lo when the infinitive hosts the direct-object clitic o: the -r of fazer drops and the clitic adopts the -lo allomorph. See the direct object pronoun page for the alternation rules.

Climbing inside a trigger

When a trigger like nunca, já, or a subordinator like quando sits before the higher verb, the clitic climbs to that verb and takes proclitic form.

Here the trigger and climbing work together: the trigger demands proclisis, and climbing brings the clitic up into range of that trigger.

Non-climbing alternatives still work

In all the triggered cases above, you can also leave the clitic on the infinitive. The trigger does not force climbing; it only forces proclisis on whichever host the clitic chooses.

This is why European Portuguese clitic placement feels like it has two axes — proclisis vs. enclisis, and climbed vs. not-climbed. Both axes are independent and both have to be chosen on every two-verb sentence.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Clitic climbing is the movement of a pronoun clitic from an infinitive up to a higher finite verb. It is productive in European Portuguese and rare in Brazilian Portuguese.
• Climbing is licensed only by restructuring verbs: modals (poder, dever, querer, ter de), motion verbs (ir, vir), aspectuals (começar a, continuar a, acabar de, estar a), habit verbs (costumar), and a few others.
• Verbs that take a full propositional complement — dizer, pensar, achar, prometer, decidir — do not license climbing.
• Proclisis triggers (não, wh-words, subordinators, focus adverbs, indefinites) still operate. When the clitic climbs, the trigger attracts it to the higher verb as a proclitic; when it does not climb, the trigger does not affect the infinitive's enclisis.
• Never combine a trigger with climbed enclisis: não quero-te dizer is ungrammatical. Legal combinations are não te quero dizer (climbed + proclisis) and não quero dizer-te (not climbed + enclisis on the infinitive).
• Climbing alternates with periphrastic mesoclisis (vou-te ver ~ ver-te-ei) and is one of the most distinctive rhythmic features of European Portuguese.
• Always use ter de + infinitive or haver de + infinitive for obligation in PT-PT; both allow climbing.
• Brazilian Portuguese's vou te ligar pattern is ungrammatical in European Portuguese unless a trigger precedes it.