I argue here that the two pronominal forms of this combined form have undergone degrammaticalization, that is, from being personal pronouns with main grammatical function 'referentiality' to losing their referential force and becoming pragmatic markers of the speakerís attitudinal intensity. Such process contradicts with what Hopper and Traugott consider being the "common way" of grammatical change, the grammaticalization.

Apart from Koneskiís general study of Macedonian literary language (Koneski 1967), Topolin'ska's study on the syntax of the dialects in Aegean Macedonia (Topolin'ska 1995), and Nicolovaís book on Bulgarian pronouns (Nicolova 1986), the syntactic and pragmatic peculiarities of Ethical Dative have not been thoroughly analyzed in the scholarly literature. Topolin'ska and Nicolova only state that the two pronominal elements of the combined ethical dative form are non-referential but without any further observations on the factors and consequences of this non-referentiality. I focus on few factors, which might play a role for the non-referentiality of the pronouns of the combined form. Firstly, the presence of the combined form in the sentence is optional, that is, it can be omitted without changing the informational value of the proposition, for example,

'Kakvo      mi                  ti                       vidja     tam'? (Bulg.)
 What         to me1SgDat    to you2SgDat      you saw  there?

The connotations here are not translatable in English; depending on the context, the meaning of the combined form could be taken as impatience, irritation and anger or simply as referring to a very close relationship between the speaker and the hearer. Without the combined form, the sentence will read only as a simple question: Kakvo vidja tam ('What did you see there?').

Secondly, the strict order of appearance of the two pronominal forms also indicates loss of referentiality. In sentences with ditransitive verbs such as the verb 'to give,' we observe some restrictions on the co-occurrence of the forms of the short pronouns, for example, 1Sg dative and 2Sg accusative pronouns cannot cooccur, yet the combined form of the Ethical Dative is permissible. The examples are from Bulgarian:

Toj     me                  dava       na tebe.
He      me 1SgAcc     gives       to you 2SgDat.

Toj    mi                  ti                     me               dava               na tebe.
He    to me1SgDat     to me2SgDat     me 1SgAcc   gives              to you 2Sg Dat.

Thirdly, the combined form cannot be substituted with any other forms of the dative pronouns.

Sho      ki     *mu                       *i                      vidi!          (Maced.)
What    will     to him 3SgDat       to her3SgDat       see (3Sg)!

Finally, the short pronouns of the combined form cannot be doubled with long pronominal forms like any other regular pronouns in Bulgarian and Macedonian. I take this as additional evidence for the lack of referentiality of the combined form.
The present paper will contribute to the research on the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic status of clitics in Bulgarian and Macedonian.