clitic

clitic

See also: clític

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek κλιτικός (klitikós, “inflexional”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈklɪtɪk/

• Audio (RP)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪtɪk

Noun

Examples
we’ve (enclitic) I’d’ve (enclitic) d’you (proclitic) ’tisn’t

clitic (plural clitics)

1. (linguistics) A morpheme that functions like a word, but never appears as an independent word, instead being always attached to a following or preceding word (or, in some cases, within a surrounding word).
   • 1997, Raffaella Zanuttini, Negation and Clausal Structure, Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax, page 29:

     In fact, even within the northern Italian dialects, subject clitics do not constitute a syntactically uniform class, as has been convincingly argued in Poletto's work.

   • 2006, Olga Mišeska Tomić, Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features, page 242:

     In Macedonian, clitic-doubling is a fully-fledged phenomenon. The Macedonian Dat and Acc pronominal clitics, which originate in agreement phrases and move to preverbal position,¹⁰ where they cluster with other clausal clitics, are on their way to becoming mere case markers, which formally distinguish direct and indirect objects from subjects.

   • 2009, Philippe Prévost, The Acquisition of French, Language Acquisition and Language Disorders: 51, page 196:

     Here, we will see that they also have problems with overt pronouns, especially object clitics, whose emergence is more delayed than in typically developing children.

Hyponyms

• (linguistics): enclitic, endoclitic, mesoclitic, proclitic

Coordinate terms

• affix

Derived terms

• heteroclitic
• oikoclitic
• postclitic
• proclitic
• xenoclitic

 

Related terms

• enclisis
• endoclisis
• mesoclisis
• proclisis

Translations

morpheme attached to another word

Breton: stagadenn f Catalan: clític (ca) m Chinese: Mandarin: 附著詞素／附著词素, 附着词素 (fúzhuò císù) Czech: příklonka f Danish: klitikon n Dutch: cliticum n Finnish: liitepartikkeli (fi) French: clitique (fr) m Georgian: please add this translation if you can German: Klitikon (de) n Hebrew: נתמך‎ m (nitmákh) Hungarian: simulószó, klitikum, függőszó Icelandic: sníkill (is) m Indonesian: klitik (id) Japanese: 接語 (せつご, setsugo) Mongolian: please add this translation if you can Norwegian: Bokmål: klitikon n Nynorsk: klitikon n Persian: واژه‌بست‎ Polish: klityka f Portuguese: clítico (pt) m Romanian: clitic n Russian: кли́тика (ru) f (klítika) Serbo-Croatian: klìtika (sh) f Spanish: clítico (es) m Swedish: klitikon n Welsh: gogwyddair m

Further reading

• clitic on Wikipedia.Wikipedia