1. The linguistic process by which a word loses its stress and phonological independence, becoming attached to an adjacent word as a clitic.
Usage: technical; linguistics

Examples

• In English, the cliticization of 'is' to pronouns creates contractions like 'he's' and 'she's'.
• The cliticization of the negative marker 'n't' to auxiliary verbs is a common feature in English grammar.
• Linguists study cliticization to understand how words lose their independence in speech.
• The cliticization process varies significantly across different languages and dialects.
• French demonstrates cliticization with object pronouns that attach to verbs.