Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-nlwjb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-06T13:04:58.767Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Clitics and particles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Arnold M. Zwicky
Arnold M. Zwicky*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Typological and theoretical speculations about clitics require that the CLITIC be adequately distinguished from the INFLECTIONAL AFFIX on the one hand and from the INDEPENDENT WORD on the other. The first of these tasks has been attended to, but the second has been slighted, with the result that many items labeled ‘particles’ have been treated as clitics.

After some remarks on the nature of ‘tests’ in linguistics, a series of tests is provided here for distinguishing clitics from independent words. On the basis of these, it is concluded that most of the ‘particles’ in the literature are simply words; from this conclusion, it is argued that treating words with idiosyncratic distributions as acategorial ‘particles’ is wrong.

We then consider the relevance of various cases of ‘particles‘—in German, Chrau, Hidatsa, and Welsh—to theoretical proposals about special clitics. These examples include some items that are independent words, some that are inflectional affixes, and others that are independent words with simple clitic variants.

Finally, a class of DISCOURSE MARKERS is delineated: a grammatical category of items which are often classified as ‘particles’ but which turn out, again, to be independent words rather than clitics of any sort.*

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 283 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

My thanks to Sandra Chung, David Dowty, Michael Geis, Judith Klavans, Geoffrey Pullum, and David Stampe, who offered comments and criticisms on earlier versions of this paper, one of which appeared in the Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 29.148–73 (1984). The work of revision was supported by the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.

References

Bloomfield, Leonard. 1917. Tagalog texts with grammatical analysis. Urbana: University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Bowen, John T., and Rhys Jones, T. J. 1960. Teach yourself Welsh. London: English Universities Press.Google Scholar
Burt, Marina K. 1971. From deep to surface structure. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Carlson, Greg N. 1983. Marking constituents. Linguistic categories: Auxiliaries and related puzzles, ed. by Heny, Frank & Richards, Barry, 1.69–98. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carstairs, Andrew. 1981. Notes on affixes, clitics, and paradigms. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, David. 1980. A first dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Derbyshire, Desmond C. 1979. Hixkaryana syntax. Doctoral dissertation, University College London.Google Scholar
Emonds, Joseph E. 1972. Evidence that indirect object movement is a structure-preserving rule. Foundations of Language 8.546–61.Google Scholar
Fries, Charles C. 1952. The structure of English. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Google Scholar
Gazdar, Gerald, and Pullum, Geoffrey K. 1982. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar: A theoretical synopsis. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Julia A. 1980. Discourse particles: An analysis of the role of ‘y'know’, ‘I mean’, ‘well’, and ‘actually’ in conversation. Doctoral dissertation, Cambridge University.Google Scholar
James, Deborah. 1974. The syntax and semantics of some English interjections. (University of Michigan papers in linguistics, 1:3.) Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Johnson, David E. 1977. On Keenan's definition of 'subject of. LI 8.673–92.Google Scholar
Jones, Morris, and Thomas, Alan R. 1977. The Welsh language: Studies in its syntax and semantics. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.Google Scholar
Kaisse, Ellen M. 1982. Sentential clitics and Wackernagel's Law. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 1.1–14.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1976. Towards a universal definition of ‘subject’. Subject and topic, ed. by Li, Charles, 303–33. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Klavans, Judith L. 1979. On clitics as words. CLS 15.68–80.Google Scholar
Klavans, Judith L. 1982. Some problems in a theory of clitics. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Klavans, Judith L. 1985. The independence of syntax and phonology in cliticization. Lg. 61.95–120.Google Scholar
Longacre, Robert E. 1976. ‘Mystery’ particles and affixes. CLS 12.468–75.Google Scholar
Matthews, G. Hubert. 1965. Hidatsa syntax. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1981. Quechua word structure. Binding and filtering, ed. by Heny, Frank, 279–327. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pullum, Geoffrey K. 1982. Syncategorematicity and English infinitival TO. Glossa 16.181–215.Google Scholar
Rhys Jones, T. J. 1977. Living Welsh. Sevenoaks, Kent: Hodder & Stoughton.Google Scholar
Robinett, Florence M. 1955. Hidatsa II: Affixes. IJAL 21.160–77.Google Scholar
Schachter, Paul, and Otanes, Fe T. 1972. Tagalog reference grammar. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schourup, Lawrence C. 1983. Common discourse particles in English conversation. (Ohio State University working papers in linguistics, 28.) Columbus.Google Scholar
Speiser, E. A. 1941. Introduction to Hurrian. (Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 20.) New Haven: American Schools of Oriental Research.Google Scholar
Thomas, David D. 1971. Chrau grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Wackernagel, Jacob. 1892. Ueber ein Gesetz der indogermanischen Wortstellung. Indogermanische Forschungen 1.333–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitney, William Dwight. 1889. Sanskrit grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1977a. Litmus tests, the Bloomfieldian counterrevolution, and the correspondence fallacy. Second Annual Metatheory Conference Proceedings, 93–151. East Lansing: Michigan State University, Dept. of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1977b. On clitics. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1982. Stranded to and phonological phrasing in English. Linguistics 20.3–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M., and Pullum, Geoffrey K. 1983a. Cliticization vs. inflection: English n't. Lg. 59.502–13.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1983b. Deleting named morphemes. Lingua 59.155–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar