Clitics Conclusion
Clitics are interesting for the same reasons that they are difficult to analyze. They behave in some ways like affixes, and in other ways like independent words. Their “affix-like” properties are normally phonological: they form a single phonological word with their host for purposes of stress placement and other phonological processes. The rules of syntax, however, do not generally treat the clitic and its host as a unit. Clitics, unlike nor mal affixes, may attach to hosts from many different categories, and clitics are less likely than true affixes to exhibit semantic or morphophonemic irregularities.
SIMPLE CLITICS are clitics only because they are phonologically bound to some other word. The majority of these are BOUND WORDS which share the normal syntactic and semantic properties of an established lexical category. Bound words are more likely to be function words (e.g. pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries, or prepositions) than content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.).
SPECIAL CLITICS are elements whose position in the sentence is not predicted by the rules of syntax needed to account for the ordering of other elements. The most common types are verbal clitics, which attach to the verb, and second position clitics. Special clitics are normally unstressed and often phonologically bound, though they may also stand alone as unstressed particles. Their special position is the defining feature.
