Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Conventions and abbreviations
- 1 Preliminaries
- 2 The functions of clitics
- 3 Types of clitic system
- 4 Clitics and phonology
- 5 Clitics and morphology
- 6 Clitics and syntax
- 7 Clitics, affixes and words
- 8 Approaches to clitics
- 9 Envoi
- Notes
- References
- Index of names
- Index of languages
- Index of subjects
1 - Preliminaries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Conventions and abbreviations
- 1 Preliminaries
- 2 The functions of clitics
- 3 Types of clitic system
- 4 Clitics and phonology
- 5 Clitics and morphology
- 6 Clitics and syntax
- 7 Clitics, affixes and words
- 8 Approaches to clitics
- 9 Envoi
- Notes
- References
- Index of names
- Index of languages
- Index of subjects
Summary
Introducing clitics
Consider the sentence Pat's a linguist. If we transcribe the sequence Pat's phonetically we can see that it forms a single syllable, /pæts/, which expresses both the subject of the sentence ‘Pat’ and the verb. A more transparent way of representing the structure would be to pronounce the sentence as Pat is a linguist. But in the sequence Pat's the verb is has been shortened to just a single consonant and has been attached to the noun Pat in the manner of a suffix. In one sense, then, /pæts/ is composed of two words, even though it's pronounced as a single word. Put differently, the 's is phonologically just the final part of /pæts/ but in terms of the sentence structure it functions as the main verb of the sentence.
This type of behaviour makes 's a typical instance of a clitic. In the present case the clitic is a form of a word which is phonologically attached to another word, its host. The 's corresponds to another form of the same word which doesn't show the same reliance on a phonological host. In Pat is a linguist we can pause between Pat and is or even insert another word: Pat, apparently, is a linguist. Similarly, if we want to confirm that Pat really is a linguist we can put the main emphasis or accent on the word is and say Pat (really) IS a linguist. None of these things is possible with the clitic form 's. The full form is therefore behaves like a genuine word, while the clitic 's behaves more like a suffix. A clitic which attaches to the right edge of its host, like a suffix, is called an enclitic. A clitic which attaches to the left edge of its host is called a proclitic. (There are also endoclitics which attach inside their host, in the manner of an infix, though these are much rarer.)
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- CliticsAn Introduction, pp. 1 - 13Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012