A Cyclic Approach to Simple Cliticization

Abstract

Abstract: A sentence such as “I am going to find the store” may be reduced to “I[ma] find the store.” This reduction consists of a reduction of the auxiliary, changing “I am” to “I'm,” and an adjunction of infinitival to onto going to derive “gonna.” From there, gonna” is reduced to produce the complex clitic “I[ma].” This series of reductions can either be implemented consecutively, without interacting with other operations, or the reductions can be derived cyclically. The cyclic approach avoids a number of conceptual and empirical problems while also establishing the fundamental nature of cyclicity.