Clitics
An Introduction

The first introduction to clitics, providing a complete summary of their properties and their uses.

Andrew Spencer (Author), Ana R. Luis (Author)

9780521682923, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 12 July 2012

388 pages, 8 tables
24.6 x 17.4 x 1.7 cm, 0.77 kg

'Clitics are the marsupials of language, a class of creatures lying between words and affixes. In this lucid introduction, Spencer and Luís show how clitics illuminate crucial properties of language.' Mark Aronoff, Stony Brook University

In most languages we find 'little words' which resemble a full word, but which cannot stand on their own. Instead they have to 'lean on' a neighbouring word, like the 'd, 've and unstressed 'em of Kim'd've helped'em ('Kim would have helped them'). These are clitics, and they are found in most of the world's languages. In English the clitic forms appear in the same place in the sentence that the full form of the word would appear in but in many languages clitics obey quite separate rules of placement. This book is the first introduction to clitics, providing a complete summary of their properties, their uses, the reasons why they are of interest to linguists and the various theoretical approaches that have been proposed for them. The book describes a whole host of clitic systems and presents data from over 100 languages.

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.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Phonetics, phonology [CFH]