Lingthusiasm Episode 60: That’s the kind of episode it’s – clitics
Here’s a completely normal and unremarkable sentence. Let’s imagine we have two different coloured pens, and we’re going to circle the words in red and the affixes, that’s prefixes and suffixes, in blue.
“Later today, I’ll know if I hafta get some prizes for Helen of Troy’s competition, or if it isn’t necessary.”
Some of these are pretty straightforward. “Some”? Word. The -s on “prizes”? Affix. But some of them, “I’ll”, “hafta”, “Helen of Troy’s”, “isn’t”....hmmm.
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about a small bit of language that’s sort of a halfway point between a standalone word and a fully glommed-on affix: the clitic! We talk about why sentences like “That’s the kind of linguist I’m” feel so strange and how on the one hand clitics are a sign of increased efficiency in terms of saying more common words more quickly, but on the other hand they kind of add complication because there are some contexts where the full forms of the words would be fine and yet the clitic doesn’t work, giving you one more thing to keep track of. We also talk about clitics and reduced forms of words in Yolmo, Old English, and Dutch, and how clitic pronouns might be evolving into affixes in French and Spanish.
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Here are links mentioned in this episode:
Wikipedia entry for Clitics
Lingthusiasm Episode 25: Every word is a real word
Lingthusiasm Episode 16: Learning parts of words - Morphemes and the wug test
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
“That’s the kind of linguist I’m” via All Things Linguistic
Is there some rule against ending a sentence with the contraction "it's"?
Ending a sentence with a contraction via WordReference.com Language Forums
Why Does It Sound Weird to End a Sentence with a Contraction? By Neal Whitman
Wikipedia entry for Ash Ketchum
Lingthusiasm Bonus Episode 52: Gotta test 'em all - The linguistics of Pokémon names
Wikipedia entry for Weak and Strong forms of words
Wikipedia entry for Dutch pronouns
A Case Study in Verb Polysynthesis via Reddit
Wikipedia entry for Grammaticalisation
Lingthusiasm Episode 54: How linguists figure out the grammar of a language
Twitter thread about virtual conference design for linguists
You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening, and stay tuned for a transcript of this episode on the Lingthusiasm website. To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.
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Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com
Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production manager is Liz McCullough, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
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