Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Aug 16, 2015 19:50:34 GMT 5.5
How many words are there in each of the the following expressions?
Bound words and phrasal affixes are examples of clitics (from Greek kli:no, meaning 'lean'). Unable to stand alone in a sentence or bear accent or stress, clitics "lean" on an adjacent accented word, the host. Clitics can be enclitic or proclitic. An eclitic morph joins to the end of its host as in the case of all the examples above, while a proclitic morph is cliticized to its host in the front, such as the reduced form of the English auxiliary verb do in (4).
(1) a. it'sIn one sense, it's is a single word (indeed, it's just a single syllable), homophonous with (that is, being pronounced identically to) its, which is a different word. While its means "pertaining or belonging to it" (its color, its location), it's means the same as it is or it has. Thus -'s, -m, -ve, -ll, -d and -n't components of the words or expressions in (1) correspond to the full words is, am, have, will/shall, would/had and not and they can be thought of as words. However, these components, unlike their full corresponding word forms, cannot stand alone in a sentence (as in the unacceptable occurrences in (2) below) and they cannot be stressed--to be pronounced, they need to be attached to some other word (much like an affix). As these components (in these very forms) remain bound to and cannot be separated from their hosts, they are referred to as bound words.
b. I'm
c. they've
d. he'll
e. she'd
f. wasn't
(2) a. * 've they decided against it?There is an interesting, slightly similar phenomenon represented by the possessive -'s in such constructions as Tom's hat. Tom's is not a suffixed form of Tom as it is often thought to be just as the plural form cats is a suffixed form of cat. This -'s component is clearly not a suffix because we can have such expressions as in (3).
b. * 'll she come today?
(3) a. the man I saw's hatThe English possessive -'s is dependent on whatever the last word of the preceding noun phrase happens to be. In (3), the possessive -'s ends up attached to a verb form (saw) and a preposition (to). The rules of English grammar don't allow the suffix -'s to verbs and prepositions, meaning that the -'s component in (3) is not a suffix. What's happening in (3) is that -'s is added to the last word of the whole phrase the man I saw or that man I gave a dollar to and unlike the bound word, this type of element never corresponds to a full word. Such an element is, therefore, called a phrasal affix.
b. that man I gave a dollar to's hat
Bound words and phrasal affixes are examples of clitics (from Greek kli:no, meaning 'lean'). Unable to stand alone in a sentence or bear accent or stress, clitics "lean" on an adjacent accented word, the host. Clitics can be enclitic or proclitic. An eclitic morph joins to the end of its host as in the case of all the examples above, while a proclitic morph is cliticized to its host in the front, such as the reduced form of the English auxiliary verb do in (4).
(4) D'you need to decide today?Items that are clitic vary across languages but are always grammatical (or functional) words and thus members of closed classes in that they cannot be coined. They may include auxiliary verbs, pronouns (as in Kill'em all), question particles, negative particles, and conjunctions. There are no clitic forms for open-class items such as the lexical noun wood, despite the homophony with the modal auxiliary would (cf. I'd really like that).