A Word, Please: Few people know this language term, but it’s perfect for the holidays

T’was just weeks before Christmas 2021 when I heard a word I probably should have learned decades ago: “clitic.” It’s a language term. I’m supposed to know those. But this one has eluded me till now — just in time to explain the “t” in my cheery holiday “t’was.”

I’ll let Merriam-Webster sum it up: “Clitic: a word that is treated in pronunciation as forming a part of a neighboring word and that is often unaccented or contracted.”

In most cases, a clitic is a piece of a contraction. The “t” in “t’was.” The “ve” in “could’ve.” The “c” in “c’mon.” The “m” in “I’m.” The “ll” in “this’ll.”

A clitic represents a real word — usually a pronoun, auxiliary verb, determiner or particle. But instead of standing on its own, the clitic influences the pronunciation of a neighboring word. So in “t’was,” you have “t” representing the word “it,” but it’s pronounced like it’s all a single word, “twuzz.”

The clitic can also be pronounced as its own syllable, like “ll” in “that’ll.” Or it can be purely a spoken thing that doesn’t get expressed in written form, like the “t” you hear when someone says “He loves t’ dance” even though they would probably spell out “to” if they wrote it.

When a clitic comes before the word it’s attached to, it’s called a proclitic: t’was. When it comes after the word it’s attached to, it’s called an enclitic: that’ll.

English isn’t the only language with clitics. Most others have them, too. For example, clitics are standard ways of expressing pronouns in French, like how “je,” which means “I,” attaches to an auxiliary verb like “ai”: J’ai vu un cheval (I saw a horse).

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Want to squeeze in some more grammar terms before 2021 is done? Here are a couple more worth knowing.

Modal auxiliary verb. An auxiliary verb is a helper, like “have” in “I have walked” or “am” in “I am walking.” Modal auxiliaries are a special subset. Unlike “have” and “be,” which deal only with the timing or the duration of the action in the verb, modals add more information. For instance “must” is a modal auxiliary verb that conveys necessity: You must go. “Can” is a modal auxiliary that conveys ability: You can go. Unlike the standard auxiliaries “have” and “be,” most modals don’t have past-tense forms. “I have gone” can become “I had gone” because “has” has a past tense form. “Must” doesn’t have a past tense form. To put a “must” statement in the past, you have to change another part of the verb: I must go, I must have gone.

Dummy operator. Ever notice how the word “do” has some unusual jobs? For example, you sometimes use it to turn a statement into a question. “You like pizza” becomes a question with the help of “do”: Do you like pizza? So it’s an extra word — a dummy — we use as an operator to make a statement a question.

Copular verb. Which is right: I feel bad or I feel badly? If you don’t know about copular verbs, you might think “badly” is the only correct option. In fact, though “badly” is OK here, the most grammatical choice is “bad” because of the special properties of copular verbs. A copular verb expresses being, seeming or the senses. And unlike a regular action-oriented verb that might be followed by an adverb, “Bob works happily,” a copular verb reflects back on the subject — a noun like Bob. “Bob is happy. Bob seems happy. Bob feels happy.” Compare those to the incorrect “Bob is happily, Bob seems happily and Bob feels happily” and it’s clear that copular verbs don’t partner with adverbs.

June Casagrande is the author of “The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.

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