Editing Clitic (section)

==Properties==
Some clitics can be understood as elements undergoing a historical process of [[grammaticalization]]:<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Hopper
 | first = Paul J.
 |author2=Elizabeth Closs Traugott
 | year = 2003
 | edition = 2nd
 | title = Grammaticalization
 | publisher = Cambridge University Press
 | location = Cambridge
 | isbn=978-0-521-80421-9}}
</ref>

{{in5}}lexical item → clitic → affix<ref name="klavans">[[Judith Klavans|Klavans, Judith L.]] On Clitics and Cliticization: The Interaction of Morphology, Phonology, and Syntax. New York: Garland Pub., 1995. Print.</ref>

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.<ref name="klavans" />

===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.<ref>Klavans, Judith L. On Clitics and Cliticization: The Interaction of Morphology, Phonology, and Syntax. New York: Garland Pub., 1995. Print.</ref>

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 [[Diachrony and synchrony|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 syntactically and [[phonology|phonologically]] attaches 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.<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Zwicky
 | first = Arnold
 | author-link = Arnold Zwicky
 | year = 1977
 | title = On Clitics
 | publisher = Indiana University Linguistics Club
 | location = Bloomington}}
</ref>
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 [[#Romance languages|below]]).<ref name=Spencer/>

Zwicky and Pullum postulated five characteristics that distinguish clitics from affixes:<ref name=Spencer/>
* 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Clitics: An Introduction | first1=Andrew |last1=Spencer| first2=Ana R. |last2=Luis |isbn=9781139560313 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=wLYgAwAAQBAJ |date= 2012 |publisher= Cambridge University Press |pages=292–293|quote=There are two alternatives that have been explored in recent literature.}}</ref>

===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.<ref name="zwicky">Zwicky, Arnold M. "Clitics and Particles." Language 61.2 (1985): 283–305. Print.</ref>

*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.{{Contradictory inline|reason=Further above it is said that clitics work on the phrase level. The English possessive, for example, attaches to a complete phrase.|date=October 2014}}
*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.<ref name="zwicky" />

===Word order<!--'Wackernagel's Law' and 'Wackernagel's law' redirect here-->===
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'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> (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:<ref name="klavans" /><ref name="walkden">{{Cite book
| vauthors=Wackernagel, W
| title =   On a law of Indo-European word order: Über ein Gesetz der indogermanischen Wortstellung 
| place = Berlin
| publisher = Language Science Press
| date = 2020
| format = pdf
| url = http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/270
| doi = 10.5281/zenodo.3978908 
| doi-access=free
| isbn = 978-3-96110-271-6 
}}</ref>
*[[Latin language|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.<ref>Spevak, Olga (2010). ''The Constituent Order of Classical Latin Prose''. In series: ''Studies in language Amsterdam / Companion series'' (vol. 117). {{ISBN|9027205841}}. Page 14.</ref>
* [[Russian language|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?
** Я не знаю, придёт ли он завтра ''(Ya nye znayu, pridyot li on zavtra)'', I don't know if he'll arrive tomorrow.