In linguistics, a clitic ( , backformed Crystal, David. A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase. In this sense, it is syntactically independent but phonologically dependent—always attached to a host.SIL International (2003). SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a clitic? "This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003." Retrieved from . A clitic is pronounced like an affix, but plays a syntactic role at the phrase level. In other words, clitics have the form of affixes, but they are distributed like function words.
Clitics can belong to any grammatical category, although they are commonly pronouns, determiners, or adpositions. Note that orthography is not always a good guide for distinguishing clitics from affixes: clitics may be written as separate words, but sometimes they are joined to the word they depend on (like the Latin clitic , meaning "and").
Classification Clitics fall into various categories depending on their position in relation to the word they connect to.
Proclitic
A proclitic appears before its host.
French (especially colloquial):
Enclitic
An enclitic appears after its host.
Endoclitic
Some authors postulate endoclitics, which split a stem and are inserted between the two elements. For example, they have been claimed to occur between the elements of bipartite verbs (equivalent to English verbs such as take part) in the Udi language. Endoclitics have also been claimed for PashtoCraig A. Kopris & Anthony R. Davis (AppTek, Inc. / StreamSage, Inc.), September 18, 2005. Endoclitics in Pashto: Implications for Lexical Integrity (abstract pdf) and Degema. However, other authors treat such forms as a sequence of clitics docked to the stem.Martin Haspelmath (2022) 'Types of clitics in the world’s languages'
Mesoclitic
A mesoclitic is a type of clitic that occurs between the stem of a verb and its affixes. Mesoclisis is rare outside of formal standard Portuguese, where it is predominantly found. In Portuguese, mesoclitic constructions are typically formed with the infinitive form of the verb, a clitic pronoun, and a lexicalized tense affix.
For example, in the sentence conquistar-se-á ("it will be conquered"), the reflexive pronoun "se" appears between the stem conquistar and the future tense affix á. This placement of the clitic is characteristic of mesoclisis. Other examples include dá-lo-ei ("I will give it") and matá-la-ia ("he/she/it would kill her"). These forms are typically found much more frequently in written Portuguese than in spoken varieties. Additionally, it is possible to use two clitics within a verb, as in dar-no-lo-á ("he/she/it will give it to us") and dar-ta-ei (ta = te + a, "I will give it/her to you").
This phenomenon is possible due to the historical evolution of the Portuguese synthetic future tense, which comes from the fusion of the infinitive form of the verb and the finite forms of the auxiliary verb haver (from Latin habēre). This origin explains why the clitic can appear between the verb stem and its tense marker, as the future tense was originally a separate word.
Colloquial Turkish exhibits an instance of a mesoclitic where the conjunction enclitic de ("also, as well") is inserted after the gerundive suffix -e connecting the verb stem to the potential suffix -(e)bilmek, effectively rendering it in its original auxiliary verb form bilmek (to know). Suffixed auxiliary verbs cannot be converted into individual verbs in Standard Turkish, and the gerundive suffix is considered an inseparable part of them.
Distinction One distinction drawn by some scholars divides the broad term "clitics" into two categories, simple clitics and special clitics.Miller, Philip H. "Clitics and Phrasal Affixes." Clitics and Constituents in Phrase Structure Grammar. New York: Garland, 1992. N. pag. Print. This distinction is, however, disputed.Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo & John Payne (2011). There are no special clitics. In Alexandra Galani, Glyn Hicks & George Tsoulas (eds), Morphology and its interfaces (Linguistik Aktuell 178), 57–96. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Simple clitics Simple clitics are free morphemes that can stand alone in a phrase or sentence. They are unaccented and thus phonologically dependent upon a nearby word. They derive meaning only from that "host".
Special clitics Special clitics are morphemes bound to the word on which they depend; they are part of the host word. That form, which is unaccented, represents a variant of a free form that carries stress. Both variants carry similar meaning and phonological makeup, but the special clitic is bound to a host word and is unaccented.
Properties Some clitics can be understood as elements undergoing a historical process of grammaticalization:
lexical item → clitic → affixKlavans, Judith L. On Clitics and Cliticization: The Interaction of Morphology, Phonology, and Syntax. New York: Garland Pub., 1995. Print.
According to this model from Judith Klavans, an autonomous lexical item in a particular context loses the properties of a fully independent word over time and acquires the properties of a morphological affix (prefix, suffix, infix, etc.). At any intermediate stage of this evolutionary process, the element in question can be described as a "clitic". As a result, this term ends up being applied to a highly heterogeneous class of elements, presenting different combinations of word-like and affix-like properties.
Comparison with affixes Although the term "clitic" can be used descriptively to refer to any element whose grammatical status is somewhere in between a typical word and a typical affix, linguists have proposed various definitions of "clitic" as a technical term. One common approach is to treat clitics as words that are prosodically deficient: that, like affixes, they cannot appear without a host, and can only form an accentual unit in combination with their host. The term postlexical clitic is sometimes used for this sense of the term.Klavans, Judith L. On Clitics and Cliticization: The Interaction of Morphology, Phonology, and Syntax. New York: Garland Pub., 1995. Print.
Given this basic definition, further criteria are needed to establish a dividing line between clitics and affixes. There is no natural, clear-cut boundary between the two categories (since from a diachronic point of view, a given form can move gradually from one to the other by morphologization). However, by identifying clusters of observable properties that are associated with core examples of clitics on the one hand, and core examples of affixes on the other, one can pick out a battery of tests that provide an empirical foundation for a clitic-affix distinction.
An affix attaches syntactically and phonologically to a base morpheme of a limited part of speech, such as a verb, to form a new word. A clitic syntactically functions above the word level, on the phrase or clause level, and attaches only phonetically to the first, last, or only word in the phrase or clause, whichever part of speech the word belongs to. The results of applying these criteria sometimes reveal that elements that have traditionally been called "clitics" actually have the status of affixes (e.g., the Romance pronominal clitics discussed below).
Zwicky and Pullum postulated five characteristics that distinguish clitics from affixes: Clitics do not select their hosts. That is, they are "promiscuous", attaching to whichever word happens to be in the right place. Affixes do select their host: They only attach to the word they are connected to semantically, and generally attach to a particular part of speech. Clitics do not exhibit arbitrary lexical gaps. Affixes, on the other hand, are often lexicalized and may simply not occur with certain words. (English plural -s, for example, does not occur with "child".) Clitics do not exhibit morphophonological idiosyncrasies. That is, they follow the morphophonological rules of the rest of the language. Affixes may be irregular in this regard. Clitics do not exhibit semantic idiosyncrasies. That is, the meaning of the phrase-plus-clitic is predictable from the meanings of the phrase and the clitic. Affixes may have irregular meanings. Clitics can attach to material already containing clitics (and affixes). Affixes can attach to other affixes, but not to material containing clitics. That is, an affix may appear between a stem and a clitic, but a clitic may not occur between a stem and an affix to that stem. An example of differing analyses by different linguists is the discussion of the possessive marker ('s) in English; some linguists treat it as an affix, while others treat it as a clitic.
Comparison with words Similar to the discussion above, clitics must be distinguishable from words. Linguists have proposed a number of tests to differentiate between the two categories. Some tests, specifically, are based upon the understanding that when comparing the two, clitics resemble affixes, while words resemble syntactic phrases. Clitics and words resemble different categories, in the sense that they share certain properties. Six such tests are described below. These are not the only ways to differentiate between words and clitics.Zwicky, Arnold M. "Clitics and Particles." Language 61.2 (1985): 283–305. Print.
If a morpheme is bound to a word and can never occur in complete isolation, then it is likely a clitic. In contrast, a word is not bound and can appear on its own. If the addition of a morpheme to a word prevents further affixation, then it is likely a clitic. If a morpheme combines with single words to convey a further degree of meaning, then it is likely a clitic. A word combines with a group of words or phrases to denote further meaning. If a morpheme must be in a certain order with respect to other morphemes within the construction, then it is likely a clitic. Independent words enjoy free ordering with respect to other words, within the confines of the word order of the language. If a morpheme's allowable behavior is determined by one principle, it is likely a clitic. For example, "a" precedes indefinite nouns in English. Words can rarely be described with one such description. In general, words are more morphologically complex than clitics. Clitics are rarely composed of more than one morpheme.
Word order
Clitics do not always appear next to the word or phrase that they are associated with grammatically. They may be subject to global word order constraints that act on the entire sentence. Many Indo-European languages, for example, obey Wackernagel's law (named after Jacob Wackernagel), which requires sentential clitics to appear in "second position", after the first syntactic phrase or the first stressed word in a clause: Latin had three enclitics that appeared in second or third position of a clause: -enim 'indeed, for', -autem 'but, moreover', -vero 'however'. For example, quis enim (quisenim) potest negare? (from Martial's epigram LXIV, literally "who indeed can deny [her riches]?"). Spevak (2010) reports that in her corpus of Caesar, Cicero and Sallust, these three words appear in such position in 100% of the cases.Spevak, Olga (2010). The Constituent Order of Classical Latin Prose. In series: Studies in language Amsterdam / Companion series (vol. 117). . Page 14. Russian has one: ли (li) which acts as a general question marker. It always appears in second position in its sentence or proposition, and if the interrogation concerns one word in particular, that word is placed before it: Он завтра придёт (on zavtra pridyot), He'll arrive tomorrow. Придёт ли он завтра?, Will he arrive tomorrow? Завтра ли он придёт?, Is it tomorrow that he'll arrive? Он ли завтра придёт?, Is it he who'll arrive tomorrow?