noun
- Plural of proclisis; instances in which a word or particle is phonetically attached to the following word, losing its stress.
Usage: linguistics; technical term
Examples
- In English, proclises occur when unstressed words attach to the next stressed word.
- The linguist studied proclises in Romance languages to understand stress patterns.
- Proclises differ from enclitics in that the unstressed element precedes rather than follows the stressed word.
- Many function words in casual speech exhibit proclises rather than maintaining independent stress.