enclítico

An enclitic is a type of clitic that attaches to the word immediately preceding it, forming a phonological unit with that host. Like other clitics, an enclitic is a bound, unstressed element that lacks independent phonological prominence and therefore relies on a host word for its pronunciation and prosody.

Enclitics are contrasted with proclitics, which attach to the following word rather than the preceding one. The distinction is primarily prosodic and syntactic: enclitics follow their host word, while proclitics precede the next word. In many languages, enclitics function as clitic pronouns, negative particles, or other bound morphemes and can appear in restricted environments such as command forms or clitic-cluster constructions.

Common examples appear in Romance languages and others:

- Spanish: dámelo, where da is augmented by the clitic pronouns me and lo after the verb.

- French: donne-le-moi, with the objects le and moi attached after the verb in imperative context.

- Italian: dammelo or dimmelo, where pronouns attach to the end of the command form.

Phonologically, enclitics are typically unstressed and depend on the host word for their syllable count and accentual pattern. They can influence the distribution of stress in a phrase and may lead to phonological adjustments, such as vowel reduction or syllable fusion, in connected speech. Clitic doubling and related phenomena are closely associated with enclitics in many languages.

See also: clitic, proclitic, clitic doubling.