A Multi-dimentional Study Of English Clitics

The introduction of clitics is a new type of attempt to categorize words according to both their peculiar phonetic features and grammatical features.Although the concept of clitics has long been used by linguists,it was not until the 1970 s that there were special treatises on clitics.So far,most research has been focused on the distinction of the concept of clitics,affixes or unstressed function words,and few studies have involved the interpretation of the rules governing English clitics from the aspects of phonology,morphology and syntax.Therefore,this study firstly aims to make up for the shortcomings of previous studies,and then to do the research on the distributive features of English clitics and the rules governing English proclitics and enclitics from phonological aspect,morphological aspect and syntactic aspect respectively.And all these work will be based on the improvement of the classification of English clitics by Dixon(2007).Specifically,this study is mainly concerned with three questions:(1)How many clitics are there in English and how can they be classified properly?(2)In terms of phonology,what are the distributive characteristics and rules of English clitics?(3)What are the phonological,morphological,and syntactic constraints on the proclitics and enclitics of English?According to the research questions mentioned above,qualitative approach is employed as the major research method.First of all,the volume and classification of English clitics are collected and summarized on the basis of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English(New Edition)and previous studies.Secondly,the software Adobe Audition is used to adjust the speed of the original audio materials and then the pronunciation characteristics of English clitics are marked in the texts.Finally,the distributive characteristics and restrictive rules of proclitics and enclitics are analyzed from the perspectives of phonology,morphology and syntax.The significance of this research is mainly embodied in the following two aspects.Theoretically speaking,this study can not only broaden the scope of English clitic research,but also be conducive to the further exploration of the interactions among phonology,morphology and syntax.Practically speaking,this study can help English teachers and learners to improve their abilities about listening comprehension based on the deep understanding and the experienced mastering of the characteristics and distributive rules of clitics.Major findings of this study are illustrated briefly as follows:First of all,there are totally 58 English clitics which can be divided into 10 groups according to their grammatical functions.And among them,are,you,her and it are both proclitics and enclitics.Secondly,in terms of phonology,the pronunciation of English clitics follows the three rules:(1)most English clitics include the central vowel schwa;(2)a few clitics have i;(3)some of them have only a few consonants(no more than three exactly)due to their excessive vowel reduction in fast speech.And as for the distribution,clitics of the strong forms can be roughly divided into level-one clitics,level-two clitics and level-three clitics according to different degrees of vowel reduction,and their distribution obeys the rule of the three-stairstep pattern.Finally,there are many restrictive rules of English clitics in phonology,morphology and syntax.And the rules are roughly stated as follows:(1)with respect to phonology,the attachment of proclitics and enclitics to the hosts is largely restricted by the rules of phonological sequence and syllabification;(2)in terms of morphology,the adhesive positions of proclitics and enclitics are primarily determined by their own grammatical functions.Compared with affixes,English clitics have few effects on the grammatical words,so proclitics are eventually attached before derivational prefixes and enclitics are attached behind inflectional affixes;(3)as to syntax,since English clitics are simple clitics and each clitic has its corresponding full form,both clitics and their strong forms have the same syntactic positions and functions.