Cliticisation

Cliticisation, or cliticization, is a linguistic process in which clitics—unstressed, phonologically light words—attach to a host word or phrase. Clitics behave like independent words in syntax but are phonologically bound to their hosts; they typically lack full prosodic independence and rely on the surrounding structure to receive stress. The result is a tighter coupling of a function word with a neighboring lexical item, often altering surface word order and rhythm without changing the underlying form of the host.

Clitics are classified by their position relative to the host. Proclitics precede the host, while enclitics follow it; placement is language-specific and constrained by syntax and prosody. In many languages clitics attach to verbs to express objects, modalities, or other clausal functions. For example, Spanish often places object clitics before the conjugated verb (Lo veo: I see him), Italian frequently shows a proclitic pronoun before the verb (Lo vedo), and French commonly uses a clitic pronoun before the verb (Je le vois). Some languages also allow enclitic placement in other constructions, such as with infinitives or special verb forms.

Cliticisation interacts with a range of morphosyntactic phenomena. Clitic doubling, common in Romanian, Bulgarian, and related languages, uses a clitic pronoun alongside a full noun phrase to mark object or other relations. Because clitics can shift surface order while preserving core syntax, cliticisation is a central topic in syntax, phonology, and discourse studies, shedding light on how functional elements encode grammatical relationships across languages.