Bound Clitics

About Pronominal Clitics

As the name suggests, pronominal clitics are unstressed object pronouns which can be prosodically bound, morphosyntactically bound, or both. Pronominal clitics must occur with a verb, because they are verb-related as direct or indirect objects. They can be located preceding the verb as a proclitic ,e.g., lo buscó, or positioned after the verb as an enclitic, e.g., buscarlo. Pronominal clitics can move within an utterance, which changes the form but not necessarily the content of the utterance. Accordingly, these pronouns can occur as freestanding clitics or as bound clitics.

Why code for bound pronominal clitics?

Spanish has great word order flexibility. The Spanish language is not as dependent on word order for meaning as is the English language. In order to limit over-inflation of MLU and control the effects of dialectical variation, bound (not freestanding) pronominal clitics are identified with a plus sign '+'.

The freedom of movement that pronominal clitics possess is an important aspect in individual differences across language development and dialect. For example, a speaker could say "give it to me" in two ways:
   1a) me lo das
   1b) dámelo

Regardless of which version the speaker produces, (1a) or (1b), the content remains constant. Due to strict rules of spelling convention, (1a) is written as three separate words, and (1b) is written as one word. Herein lies the temptation to assign three words to (1a), and only one word to (1b). However, it is important to remember that SALT transcription analysis is based on oral language, not on written language. Therefore, both versions should receive the same morphological credit.

Therefore, "dámelo" (1b) should be coded for bound clitics in the following manner so that it's counted as three words:
   2b) dá+me+lo

The "+" symbol indicates the use of bound clitics by the respective personal pronouns. Whether or not pronouns indicate clitic-usage, they are still analyzed as separate main body words and separate root words. Thus, (1a) and (2b) will be given equal weight in the analysis. Both possess the same verb and object pronouns; they have equal morphological value.

It should be clear that pronominal clitics can be bound or they can be freestanding, depending on the order of the pronoun(s) in relation to the verb. What is constant is that pronominal clitics always appear with a verb, even though they do not always stand immediately next to the verb.

For example:
   C Dá|dar+me+lo.   Give it to me.
   C Me lo das|dar.    Give it to me.
   C Él está|estar gritando|gritar+le a la rana.   He is screaming at the frog.
   C Él le está|estar gritando|gritar a la rana.    He is screaming at the frog.

Notice that the vertical bar convention is used to identify the root forms of the verbs in these examples.

Bound morphemes versus bound pronominal clitics

Bound morphemes are marked with a slash, e.g., rana/s, and bound pronominal clitics are marked with a plus sign, e.g., buscar+lo. Bound morphemes receive morpheme credit but not word credit. Thus "rana/s" would be counted as one word with two morphemes. Bound clitics receive both word and morpheme credit. Thus "buscar+lo" would be counted as two words and two morphemes.