(of a word) incapable of being stressed, usually pronounced as if part of the word that follows or precedes it: for example, in French, me, te, and le are clitic pronouns
See also proclitic, enclitic
noun
2.
a clitic word
Word origin
C20: back formation from enclitic and proclitic
clitic in American English
(ˈklɪtɪk)
Grammar
adjective
1. (of a word)
functioning as a bound form; closely connected in pronunciation with a preceding or following word and not having an independent accent or phonological status
noun
2.
a clitic word; enclitic or proclitic
Word origin
[1945–50; extracted from enclitic and proclitic]This word is first recorded in the period 1945–50. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: beeper, ergative, regression analysis, spin-off, taxi squad
Examples of 'clitic' in a sentence
clitic
Section 3 gives some remarks on object clitic doubling.
Nuria Aldama García 2018, 'The object-gap pseudorelative generalization', Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguisticshttps://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/borealis/article/view/4405. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)
This working paper will critically review the small body of existing work on clitic reduplication.
Daniel Mann 2015, 'Chilean Clitic Reduplication: Implications for Morphology and Syntax', Working Papers in Applied Linguistics and TESOLhttps://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8H42376/download. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)
In a set of two studies, we investigated whether clitic omissions depend on intervention phenomena.
Fabrizio Arosio, Beatrice Giustolisi 2019, 'Agreement and Interference in Direct Object Clitic Production in Italian MonolingualChildren', Frontiers in Communicationhttps://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00066/full. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)
Modal particles, which precede subjunctive verbs, have been taken as minimality blockers for clitic movement.
Giuseppina Turano 2017, 'Modal particles in Albanian subjunctive, infinitive and supine constructions: presencevs absence of clitic climbing', Quaderni di Linguistica e Studi Orientalihttp://www.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-qulso/article/view/21339. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)
Neverthelesss, clitic duplication has not been extensively examined in the generativist literature.
Daniel Mann 2015, 'Chilean Clitic Reduplication: Implications for Morphology and Syntax', Working Papers in Applied Linguistics and TESOLhttps://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8H42376/download. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)
We then contrast object clitic constructions with object verb-internal affixes and main verbs with auxiliaries.
Maia, Marcus 1997, 'Verb Agreement and the Structure of the Clause in Karaja', Kansas Working Papers in Linguisticshttp://hdl.handle.net/1808/335. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)
Besides, the presence of the clitic has little semantic contribution, if any at all.
Ismael Iván Teomiro García 2013, 'Low applicatives and optional se in Spanish non-anticausative intransitive verbs',Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadashttp://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/rdlyla/article/view/1354. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)
On the contrary, research has not directly investigated the relation between dyslexia, bilingualism and clitic production.
Maria Vender, Shenai Hu, Federica Mantione, Federica Mantione, Denis Delfitto, ChiaraMelloni 2018, 'The Production of Clitic Pronouns: A Study on Bilingual and Monolingual Dyslexic Children',Frontiers in Psychologyhttps://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02301/full. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)