The thing that all clitics have in common is some phonological deficiency which debars them from
functioning as independent phonological words. In English, it is crucial for a phonological word to have a
vowel. (There are no vowelless words like
*tpngs, *tvmrk, *sntd, *s, *kvpl.) Clitics do not qualify for word
status because they lack vowels. The requirement that words must contain vowels is inviolable. To become
pronounceable any form like
’s or ’
d must be annexed to a word. The word to which a clitic is appended is
called a HOST.
We will now consider the two types of clitic in turn, starting with the class 1 type of clitic, i.e. the
genitive
’s:
[8.6]
a. the farmer’s wife
b. a day’s work
The genitive
’s construction in English is used to indicate that a noun (to be precise, NP) on the left which
hosts the
’s is a syntactic modifier which specifies more narrowly the meaning of the noun on the right
which is the head of the entire NP. The exact semantic value of the
’s genitive construction varies, as you
can see from the following section of examples based on Quirk and Greenbaum (1973):
[8.7]
GENITIVE ’S
PARAPHRASE
a.
Possessive genitive
the farmer’s cattle
the cattle
belonging to the farmer
the farmer’s tractor
the tractor belonging to the farmer
the farmer’s wife
the
wife of the farmer
b.
Genitive of origin
the farmer’s messenger
the
messenger sent by the farmer
the farmer’s story
the story told by the farmer
c.
Genitive of measure
two years’
imprisonment
imprisonment lasting for two years
a day’s journey
a journey lasting one whole day.
Frequently the noun on the left is the possessor of the entity that is on its right which functions as the
head of the entire NP, as in [8.7a]. ‘Possessor’ is a misleading term for this relationship in many cases.
Often the meaning of this construction is not one of ‘owning’. The farmer may own the cattle and tractor,
but not the wife. She is his partner, not his chattel. The genitive in this latter case indicates a relationship,
not possession.
The fact that the
’s genitive is not necessarily a marker of possession is even clearer in the rest of the
examples in [8.7b] and [8.7c].
The farmer’s story is a story told, not owned, by the farmer and
a day’s
journey
is a journey that lasts a whole day—not one that is owned by the day.
Thus the syntactic and semantic relationship of the genitive
’s with its host is variable. The syntactic role
of this
’s is to mark a NP as being syntactically subordinated to another NP on its right, which it modifies. The
WORD MANUFACTURE 109
meaning of this
’s clitic is difficult to pin down. By contrast, affix morphemes tend to have a more readily
identifiable meaning: e.g.
-s as in
trees has a very predictable plural meaning.
Furthermore, the relationship between a clitic and its host may show schizophrenic tendencies. It may
attach to one word phonologicaly but relate to another syntactically and semantically. Words form cohesive
units with their affixes. But CLITIC GROUPS (i.e. forms containing clitics and their hosts), do not. The
morphemes belonging to a word are firmly bonded together and cannot be separated by extraneous material.
Not so with a clitic group.
Often we find, especially in casual speech, clitics whose phonological host is different from their
syntactic/semantic host. The phonological host of
’s is always the word that precedes the head. From a
semantic angle, we can paraphrase
the farmer’s tractor as ‘the tractor that is owned by the farmer’. The
genitive
’s is appended to the noun
farmer which is both the possessor from the semantic angle and the
phonological host. However, in colloquial English the situation is more fluid. If we take a phrase like
the
farmer next to our campsite’s tractor,
we find that the semantic possessor and the
phonological host are
divorced. The
farmer is still the owner of the
tractor. But the genitive
’s attaches to
campsite, which is the
phonological host.
Suffixes cannot do that. For example, if semantically a noun is plural, it receives the plural inflection
itself. The plural suffix cannot turn up somewhere else in the sentence. Suppose we have a sentence like
She
bought three skirts from that boutique last week
where
skirts is the only plural noun, there is simply no way
we could remove the
-s from
skirts and relocate it on a new site. Shifting the
-s to another place yields
ungrammatical sentences like
*She bought three skirt from that boutiques last week or
*She bought three
skirt from that boutique last weeks
.
Whereas genitive ’
s is the only class 1 clitic, class 2 clitics, to which we now turn, are quite numerous. As
already mentioned, class 2 clitics are forms capable of appearing either as independent words or as clitics
appended to a host. Many auxiliary verbs appearing in unstressed position in a sentence can be free
autonomous words as in [8.8a] or they may be reduced to a consonant which is appended as a clitic to a
preceding host, as in [8.8b]:
[8.8]
a.
Full word
b.
Clitic
'I am `cold.
'I’m `cold.
'He is `cold.
'He’s `cold.
'We will `see it.
'We’ll `see it.
His 'wife has `left it.
His 'wife’s `left it.
His 'wife has `left.
His 'wife’s `left.
Note:
' marks secondary stress and `marks main stress.
The cognitive meaning of the sentences in each pair is the same. Cliticisation does not affect meaning. It
only affects style. Use of class 2 clitics indicates greater informality than the use of full words. In formal
written English cliticised forms are usually avoided—except where the writer is portraying spoken language.
All word-formation regardless of whether it is done by inflection or derivation takes place in the
dictionary. But clitic group formation does not. Clitic groups are formed later when words are put together
in syntactic phrases. The behaviour of genitive
’s described above makes this very clear. Until you know
what the words that form a genitive NP are, you are not in a position to identify the word immediately
110 ENGLISH WORDS
preceding the head of the construction to which you attach the
’s. Clitics are appended after syntactic rules
have grouped words together in phrases.
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