In
morphology and
syntax, a
clitic ( from
Greek κλιτικός
klitikos, "inflexional") is a
morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends
phonologically on another word or phrase. In this sense, it is syntactically independent but phonologically dependent, always attached to a host. The term is derived from the Greek for "leaning". It is pronounced like an
affix, but plays a syntactic role at the
phrase level. In other words, clitics have the
form of affixes, but the distribution of function words. For example, the contracted forms of the auxiliary verbs in
I'm and
we've are clitics.