D'ya not know what a clitic is? Let's explore together then we'll both know.
"a word that is treated in pronunciation as forming a part of a neighboring word and that is often unaccented or contracted. "
—Merriam-Webster dictionary
from Greek ἐγκλιτικός enklitikós "leaning" or "enclitic", a clitic refers to a morpheme that functions like a word, but never appears as an independent word, instead being always attached to a following or preceding word (or, in some cases, within a surrounding word). Examples in English include:
A clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent but phonologically dependent on another word. In English, common examples of clitics are contractions and possessives. some examples, in case that sentence is too wordy (show, don't tell!):
I'm (I + am)
He's (He + is)
They've (They + have)
Can't (Cannot)
Y'all (you + all)
D'ya (Do + you)
Clitics in Other Languages:
Greek:
μου (mu) - "my" as in το βιβλίο μου (to vivlio mu) meaning "my book"
Spanish:
lo - a direct object pronoun as in lo veo meaning "I see it"
French:
l' - contracted form of "le" or "la" as in l'homme (the man) or "l'eau" (the water)
These clitics are attached to other words and cannot stand alone, demonstrating their phonological dependence despite their grammatical function. SO while "I'm" is often used in a sentence such as "I'm going to make a coffee",but it can't stand alone, so to answer the question "Are you making me a coffee?", the answer would be "I am", not the clitic form "I'm".
Are there languages that don't employ clitics? I didn't know and there was just too much reading to do, so I did what any normal 21st-century geek does, I asked ChatGPT, who answered me thus:
Classical Chinese: Classical Chinese, the written form of Chinese used for many centuries in historical documents, typically does not use clitics. Instead, it relies on a monosyllabic and morphologically simple structure.
Finnish: Finnish is often cited as having few, if any, clitics. The language tends to use suffixes and inflections rather than clitics for grammatical purposes.
Japanese: While Modern Japanese uses particles (which can sometimes function like clitics), classical forms of Japanese had fewer clitic-like structures.
Turkish: Turkish primarily uses agglutination, attaching multiple suffixes to a root word to indicate grammatical relationships, which reduces the need for clitics.
In general, languages with extensive use of inflection and agglutination (like many
Uralic and
Altaic languages) tend to have fewer clitics. However, the absence of clitics is more about the rarity and marginality of their usage rather than a complete non-existence, as clitic-like elements can emerge in different contexts within a language.
$ xclip -o | wc -w
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZyZFa5qO0
with examples