ABSTRACT

Clitics are particles that are attached to phrases. The clitics in Turkish follow the suffixes that occur on the final word of a phrase. Most clitics can attach to any type of phrase, and thus have freedom of movement inside a clause, unlike suffixes, which are fully integrated with the word to which they are attached. Some clitics undergo vowel harmony like suffixes, but others are non-harmonic. They are all unstressable, and in the majority of cases cause stress to occur on the phrase they are attached to for some exceptions concerning dA and -(y)sA/ise. The clitic dA is a conjunction and discourse connective with additive, adversative, continuative/topic-shifting and enumerating functions. -(y)sA/ise is a discourse connective with topic-shifting and contrastive functions.