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60: That’s the kind of episode it’s - clitics
🕑 Added 2021-09-17 01:51:46 +0000 UTCHere’s a completely normal and unremarkable sentence. Let’s imagine we have two different coloured pens, and we’re going to circle the words in red and the affixes, that’s prefixes and suffixes, in blue.
“Later today, I’ll know if I hafta get some prizes for Helen of Troy’s competition, or if it isn’t necessary.”
Some of these are pretty straightforward. “Some”? Word. The -s on “prizes”? Affix. But some of them, “I’ll”, “hafta”, “Helen of Troy’s”, “isn’t”….hmmm.
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about a small bit of language that’s sort of a halfway point between a standalone word and a fully glommed-on affix: the clitic! We talk about why sentences like “That’s the kind of linguist I’m” feel so strange and how on the one hand clitics are a sign of increased efficiency in terms of saying more common words more quickly, but on the other hand they kind of add complication because there are some contexts where the full forms of the words would be fine and yet the clitic doesn’t work, giving you one more thing to keep track of. We also talk about clitics and reduced forms of words in Yolmo, Old English, and Dutch, and how clitic pronouns might be evolving into affixes in French and Spanish.
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Comments
Yes, it would be interesting to map it… My guess is it shows up in rural communities across the southern U.S. Here’s an example from Oklahoma https://www.dialectsarchive.com/oklahoma-6 3:33: I had callouses on my feet like’is 4:55: ’ats kinda the way it’s been
Lingthusiasm
Fascinating, I don't have any of those expressions (except attaboy and get'em) in my Canadian English, nor can I ever recall hearing them! Sounds like a fun project for a dialect survey to see how far out from North Carolina it goes!
In the discussion about “get’em” (24:18), a suggestion is made that we don’t typically contract away a “th” sound. But I don’t think it’s all’at unusual. “’Attaboy” is famous, but less clearly idiomized examples are in wide circulation: “’at’s right,” “’ere ya go,” “’is is crazy.” Among my North Carolina relatives “like ’is” and “like ’at” are standard, and other contractions of’at sort are also common: “bring’at plate over here,” “watch’is youtube video,” “tell’at dog to stop barkin’”
