Talk:'ve

Clitic?

Is this really a clitic, or some other part of speech? --Vladisdead 04:23, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've changed that to the more standard heading "Suffix." If there is some dispute, then the mention of "Clitic" belonds in a usage note if anywhere. --Connel MacKenzie 20:38, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a clitic form of the auxiliary verb have, not a suffix. A suffix is a bound morpheme attached to a root to form a word, while a clitic is a word phonologically bound but syntactically independent. I'll move this page back to 've. Read the following thesis:

Zwicky, Arnold M. & Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1983), "Cliticization vs. Inflection: English n't", Language 59(3): 502-513.

— TAKASUGI Shinji 07:02, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Possess

Is the second meaning listed really true? Shouldn't it just be listed as "Non-standard" instead of "Some dialects"? What dialects might they be? --Connel MacKenzie 20:38, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

It would not be 'non-standard'; it is a hallmark of both exceedingly proper and exceedingly old-fashioned British English. 'I've no choice but accept it', 'They've an idea that they can...', 'You've two choices' are all acceptable under either of those circumstances. (Sometimes Americans do it too, but I've only seen it in the script of the DS translation of Final Fantasy IV, which had exceedingly literary writing.) --90.196.150.122 20:52, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

RFC discussion: July 2016–December 2019

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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've, 'm, -'s

Those three entries are in Category:English clitics. 'd, linked to from 've, is not listed as a clitic but as a suffix. -'s (note the hyphen) has a verb part of speech with the headword line "-'s ‎(clitic)" and then other parties of speech with the headword line "’s" (should that be moved to 's, with prominent cross-links between the two entries, or should the headword lines be updated to include the hyphen?). Can someone check that the entries are in the right category, check whether other entries like 'd belong in the clitic category, and check whether some of the POS sections of -'s should be moved or have their headword-lines updated? Some of the mess in -'s is probably my doing; I'm sorry. - -sche (discuss) 19:35, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

I second the request for clean up with regard to this issue. Given the discussion in Talk:'ve, it seems that clitics are not suffixes (for morphological reasons), though of course they are suffixes in the sense that they are written affixed to the ends of other words. Accordingly, I propose the following:

• We should use section headings that reflect the POS served by the clitic, e.g. ====Verb====. My rationale is that, when parsing, clitics must be identified as having separate parts of speech from the words they are affixed to. Consider the sentences "she's talking" and "let's eat", where 's acts as an auxiliary verb and as a pronoun, respectively. Simply tagging this as suffix robs the parse of useful information.
• We should use headword macros of the form {{head|en|POS|cat2=clitics|clitic}} for the appropriate POS. This lists the term in both, e.g., Category:English verbs and Category:English clitics and clearly marks the definition with "(clitic)". To my knowledge, there is no separate clitic headword macro, though one could be defined as suggested.
  • Note: This macro will also list the word in Category:English lemmas, which appears to be correct given the categorization of Category:English clitics. There are possible workarounds if this is not desired.
  • Undecided: We may also want to use "cat3=suffixes" in order to list the term in Category:English suffixes as well. Clitics aren't the same as other suffixes, but I suspect many users will expect to find them in Category:English suffixes because they occur at the ends of words. (Clitics can also be prefixes, though mostly in languages other than English; the only English candidate I can think of is s', as in s'ok. Noting this via category inclusion seems appropriate.)
• We should avoid the use of hyphens in clitic page titles already demarcated with apostrophes. This seems to be the present trend, and it serves to establish clitics' distinction from other affixes (i.e., their syntactic independence). English clitics almost always have apostrophes where the hyphen would go; the only notable exception is -s', though this is a weird case as either a hybrid non-clitic plural -s and clitic possessive 's or a modified possessive 's after an existing s (itself not a suffix). (Note that -n't is not a clitic!)
  • We may nonetheless want to add usage notes indicating that the form should always occur affixed to the preceding word, unless we are confident that users will interpret the apostrophe itself to indicate that. (We currently assume users interpret the hyphen that way.)
  • Alternately: We could go the opposite route and always use hyphens in clitic page titles. This eliminates any possibility of confusion between clitics and other entries with apostrophes at either end such as 'twas and doin'. Further, it would separate the entries for s' as it occurs in, e.g., boys' club and s'ok (assuming the later had an entry and indeed is a clitic).

Rriegs (talk) 02:05, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

These may be moved given a related discussion, which I am now cross-linking: Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/English#-'re (which will be found after archiving at Talk:-'re). - -sche (discuss) 22:50, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

needn't've

Similarly to shouldn't've JMGN (talk) 23:18, 18 August 2023 (UTC)