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Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 50:2 (2026) ► pp.352–395

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The size of clitics and affixes

A phonological approach to the grammaticalization cline

ORCiD logo with link | University of Innsbruck
ORCiD logo with link | University of Pittsburgh
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Universität Innsbruck.

Published online: 25 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.25003.zin
Abstract
The grammaticalization cline predicts that clitics should be longer than affixes. This work tests this idea and also investigates whether clitics tend to be monosyllabic and whether proclitics and enclitics differ in length. Clitics are defined as items that are part of larger phonological words and attach to hosts from different word classes. Our database comprises 378 clitics and 1,394 affixes from several dozen languages. We find that clitics are monosyllabic significantly more often than all other lengths combined and that enclitics are significantly longer than proclitics. As such, clitics show the same tendencies as affixes. The direct comparison between clitics and affixes reveals that clitics are longer, but this difference is not significant. We argue that any distinction between the two types should rely on distributional and/or functional differences, but these criteria yield gradient results and/or are poorly explored, which further complicates morphological and diachronic analyses.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Clitics: Some open issues
    • 1.2Defining clitics
  • 2.Hypotheses and method
    • 2.1Hypotheses
    • 2.2Database
    • 2.3Operationalization
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Hypothesis 1: Clitic size
    • 3.2Hypothesis 2: Proclitics vs. enclitics
    • 3.3Hypothesis 3: Clitics vs. affixes
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Hypotheses
    • 4.2Synchronic issues
    • 4.3Diachronic issues
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Data availability
  • Notes
  • References
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