Clitics versus affixes

The criteria seen so far distinguish between free forms and bound forms, but this is not yet the
distinction that interests us primarily: that between Word-forms and affixes. The notion 'bound
form' comprises not just affixes, but also the class of clitics, elements that are in many ways
intermediate between affixes and free forms. Clitics are generally regarded as a type of word-
forms, but they are different from free word-forms in that they are prosodically dependent and
have all the other features of bound forms that we have seen. Thus, the rules by which clitics are
combined with their hosts (the elements to which they attach and which they rely on for
'prosodic support') are considered to be not in the domain of morphology, but in the domain of
syntax (and/or perhaps phonology). Moreover, clitics may be morphologically complex
themselves and consist of a root with affixes (though such clitics are not particularly common).
The expression formed by a clitic and its host is called a clitic group. Perhaps the most salient
property of clitics that distinguishes them from affixes is that they often have freedom of
movement - i.e. they can occur in different positions in the sentence. For example, the Polish
clitic pronoun go 'him' (which contrasts with the independent, stressable pronoun jego) can be in
several different positions in the sentence in (8.3). (In this and other examples of clitics, we
follow the convention of linking them to their hosts by an equal sign, even though Polish spelling
has a space here.)

Of course, this property of clitics can be illustrated only with languages that allow freedom of
movement in comparable non-clitic positions. Thus, in English we would not expect clitics such
as ='ve to show freedom of movement, because the corresponding full form have does not show
such freedom either (e.g. They-'ve done it/*They done='ve it; They have done it/*They done
have it). And the clitics' freedom of movement may not be as complete as that of free forms. For
instance, the Polish clitic pronoun =go is always enclitic (it follows its host) and thus cannot be
in sentence-initial position, unlike the independent pronoun jego. Sometimes the restrictions on
the movement of clitics are so great that they no longer have any freedom, as happens with
second-position clitics, a fairly common class of clitics that must occur directly after the first
element of the sentence. For instance, in Serbian/Croatian the auxiliary verb je is such a second-
position enclitic, as is illustrated by the sentence in (8.4), again with a number of variant word
orders.

But, although Serbian /Croatian =je has no freedom of movement, it still has freedom of host
selection - i.e. it can occur with hosts of various syntactic categories, and its host need not be
syntactically related to it. The clitic =je is syntactically related to voleo, the main verb, but it may
also follow other constituents of the clause. Affixes do not have such freedom of host selection -
they combine with a stem to which they are syntactically related. Another widespread property of
clitics is that they are less prosodically integrated with their host than affixes - i.e. fewer prosodic
rules take the clitic group as their domain. For instance, Spanish stress is usually on the last or
penultimate syllable of the word, and rarely on the antepenultimate (e.g. camindr 'walk.iNF',
camina 'walk.PRES.3sG', camindbamos 'walk.PAST.lPL'), but never on the fourth syllable from
the end. But this is possible with chtic groups, e.g. diga=me=lo 'say it to me!'. Moreover, there
are many (morpho-)phonological rules that operate within the domain of the word-form, but not
across a word boundary. For example, in Dutch a word-final obstruent is devoiced, but no such
devoicing occurs when a vowel-initial suffix follows it (see (8.5a)). However, when a vowel-
initial clitic follows such a word, devoicing still occurs, as can be seen in (8.5b)

Thus, the clitic is as it were invisible for the rule of final devoicing. Similarly, in Ponapean there
is a rule of vowel lengthening at the end of the word that does not apply when a suffix follows.
However, when a clitic such as demonstrative =et follows the noun, vowel lengthening still
occurs (Ponapean spelling marks vowel length by the letter h):

Affix-base combinations are often idiosyncratic in one way or another, whereas clitic-host
combinations are usually very regular, as one would expect for combinations of syntactic units.
For one thing, affixes may trigger idiosyncratic morphophonological alternations, whereas clitics
do not. An example is the English plural suffix -s, which requires idiosyncratic voicing of the
final fricative in a number of nouns (e.g. knives, lives, calves, houses, mouths). By contrast, the
English genitive clitic ='s never triggers such voicing (e.g. knife' = s, life' = s, calf = s). Second,
affixes may undergo idiosyncratic morphophonological alternations, whereas clitics do not. For
example, the Russian reflexive suffix -sja (as in ty moes'-sja 'you (SG) wash yourself) has the
reduced phonological allomorph -s' when it follows a vowel-final word (e.g. vy moete-s' 'you
(PL) wash yourselves'). The corresponding Polish element sie is not an affix, but a clitic, and it
undergoes no morphophonological alternation (e.g. myjesz = sie 'you wash yourself, myjecie =
sie_ 'you wash yourselves'). Third, affixes may trigger idiosyncratic suppletive alternations in the
base, whereas clitics do not. For example, in Finnish many nouns alternate between a stem-final
sequence -nen and a sequence -se. The former occurs when the word is uninflected (i.e. in the
nominative singular form), and the latter occurs when any kind of suffix follows, inflectional or
derivational. But when a clitic follows the noun 'woman', the stem nainen is used (e.g. nainen-
ko? 'the woman?'), showing that clitics behave differently from affixes. Fourth, affixes may
undergo idiosyncratic suppletive alternations, whereas clitics do not. For instance, Polish has
several different inflection classes of verbs, and the first person singular suffix is either -m or -e,
depending on the class (kocha-m 1 love', umie-m 'I'm able', ucz-e T teach', pij-e 'I drink'). Object
pronouns, however, are clitics, and they have an invariableshape (koclmm go 'I love him', pijego
'I drink it', uczego T teach him', etc.). Fifth, affix-base combinations may have an idiosyncratic
meaning, whereas clitic-host combinations never do. Idiosyncratic meanings of affixes are
mostly observed in derivational morphology, but occasionally they are found in inflection as well
(e.g. plurals with a special meaning, asin (4.15)). And, finally, affix-base combinations may
exhibit arbitrary gaps, whereas clitic-host combinations are always possible. Again, arbitrary
gaps are more characteristic of derivation than of inflection, but we saw in Section 7.7 that
defective paradigms occasionally occur. The criteria for distinguishing between affixes and
clitics are summarized in Table 8.2.
Compounds versus phrases
In many cases, compounds are easy to tell apart from phrases with two content words.
Compounds consist of two (or rarely more) lexeme stems that are juxtaposed in a single word-
form, and, when a language does not allow phrases consisting of two juxtaposed lexemes of the
same wordclasses, the combination must be a compound. For example, German Holzhaus
[wood-house] must be a compound noun because two juxtaposed nouns cannot form a noun
phrase in German. Two rough paraphrases of Holzhaus would be Haus aus Holz 'house from
wood' and holzernes Haus 'wooden house', but these are clearly distinct from the compound
because of different word order, an additional preposition, or additional adjectival morphology.
Similarly, Italian segnalibri [indicate-books] 'bookmark' must be a compound, because it is not
similar to a phrase with a similar meaning. It is true that Italian has a phrase segna libri whose
pronunciation is the same, but this is an imperative verb phrase and means 'indicate books!', so
both syntactically and semanrically it is clearly distinct from the compound segnalibri.
Occasionally compounds even have a special segmental marker. Thus, in Coast Tsimshian an -m-
interfix between the two members indicates a compound, e.g. gyemg-m-dzizus [light-iNTF-day]
'sun', guiinks-m-hoon [dry-iNTF-fish] 'dried fish' (Dunn 1979:55). But such special markers are
rare (see also (5.4)). However, there are also a great many cases in which compounds are quite
similar to phrases with a similar meaning, and then we have to take a closer look in order to
distinguish the two patterns. For example, in Lango the inalienable possessive construction
shows the order head-possessor and is expressed by simple juxtaposition (e.g. wi rwdt [head
king] 'the king's head', bad daktal [arm doctor] 'the doctor's arm'). Now Lango has expressions
that look like compounds at first blush, e.g. war) dt [eye house] 'window', dog borjo [mouth
dress] 'hem' (Noonan 1992: 115, 157-8). However, their most striking property is that they are
idiomatic - i.e. their meaning cannot be determined from the meaning of their constituents.

Membedakan antara bentuk bebas dan bentuk terikat antara bentuk-kata dan imbuhan.
Gagasan 'bentuk terikat' tidak hanya terdiri dari imbuhan, tetapi juga kelas klitik. Klitika pada
umumnya dianggap sebagai jenis bentuk-kata, tetapi mereka berbeda dari bentuk-kata bebas
karena mereka tergantung secara prosodi dan memiliki semua fitur lain dari bentuk-bentuk
terikat yang telah kita lihat. Dengan demikian, aturan-aturan dimana klitika digabungkan dengan
domain morfologi, tetapi dalam domain sintaksis (dan / atau mungkin fonologi). Lebih lanjut,
klitika mungkin secara morfologis kompleks sendiri dan terdiri dari akar dengan afiks (meskipun
klitika semacam itu tidak terlalu umum). Ekspresi yang dibentuk oleh suatu clitic dan inangnya
disebut grup clitic. Mungkin sifat paling menonjol dari klitika yang membedakan mereka dari
afiks adalah bahwa mereka sering memiliki kebebasan bergerak - yaitu mereka dapat terjadi pada
posisi yang berbeda dalam kalimat. Sebagai contoh, kata ganti klitik bahasa Polandia go 'him'
(yang kontras dengan kata ganti jego yang bebas dan dapat ditekankan) dapat berada dalam
beberapa posisi berbeda dalam kalimat dalam (8.3). (Dalam contoh ini dan contoh lain dari
klitik, kami mengikuti konvensi untuk menghubungkan mereka dengan tuan rumah dengan tanda
yang sama, meskipun ejaan Polandia memiliki ruang di sini.)