ENG 575: Comparative Syntax — Fall 2005: TUE & FRI 13.30-15.00 Linguistics Section, Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus Kleanthes K. Grohmann (Room M 004, Phone x2106, kleanthi@ucy.ac.cy) November 1, 2005 CLITICIZATION 1. MORPHO-PHONOLOGICAL CLITICS Consider first English reduced forms holding of inflection and negation: (1) a. John’s (been) here. a’. John is / *was / has (been) here. b. John’s reading the book. b’. John is / *was reading the book. (2) a. He’d bought the book (if…). a’. He had bought the book (if…). b. He’d like to buy the book. b’. He would like to buy the book. (3) a. I’m / You’re / We’re… a’. I am / You are / We are… b. They’ll go to the beach. b’. They will / *shall go to the beach. c. I’ve *(got) the time. c’. I have (got) the time. (4) a. John isn’t going anywhere. a’. John is not going anywhere. b. They aren’t here yet. b’. They are not here yet. c. * I’mn’t / amn’t interested. c’. I’m / am not interested. d. % I / … / They ain’t here here. d’. I / … / They are not here. Some contractions are possible, others aren’t (a lexical constraint?). Are these clitics? (5) Phonological dependence on adjacent words (Aronoff & Fudeman 2005: 35) Clitics (from Classical Greek klinein ‘to lean’) are grammatical words that are unable to stand on their own phonologically, but must instead lean on another adjacent word. They must be incorporated into the prosodic structure of another word. But the definition in (5) also includes other prosodically independent words, such as determiners and prepositions. (6) a. a beer, an apple, the book, the answer… b. on Friday, from here, to there, of power… Looking at clitics from a syntactic point will refine this view. The remainder of today’s class will deal with a brief overview of different types of clitics and various clitic-related phenomena across a number of related as well as unrelated languages.