noun
- a word or morpheme that is phonologically dependent on another word and cannot stand alone as a stressed unit
Usage: linguistics
Examples
- The word ‘ll in ‘I’ll go’ is a clitic form of ‘will’.
- In many languages, pronouns function as clitics attached to verbs.
- The contraction ‘s in ‘John’s book’ is considered a clitic.
- Clitics differ from affixes because they can attach to phrases rather than just words.
- The linguist studied how clitics behave in different sentence positions.
- Some clitics can move around in a sentence while maintaining their meaning.