2421: Mesoclitics Aug 7, 2021

It is not difficult to imagine clitics—the shortened half of a contraction—at the beginning or end of a word, but they can also exist in the middle. While this is by no means the most common manner for a clitic to take, so-called mesoclitics are when the clitic is found between the stem (or 'host') and an affix. For instance, Portuguese and many other Western Romance languages will insert forms of object pronouns in between verbs and the verbal suffix, such as perhaps most prominently Portuguese:

"Escrever-te-ei uma carta" (I will write you a letter)

where the object pronoun 'te' ([to] you) is placed within 'escreverei' (I will write), which itself is made from the verb 'escrever' + the ending '-ei'. Here also, it affects the stress. It is also theoretically possible that having a clitic within a root itself exists, but reports of this are still novel. If confirmed, these would be known as 'endoclitics'.

2415: Clitics Aug 1, 2021

Contractions of words can occur from a shortening at the beginning, known as an proclitic or at the end of that word, known as an enclitic. These are considered then to join with the following word, such as 'you' shortened to y' in 'y'all' or to the preceding word, such as 'will' to 'll in 'he'll'. Both of these types of elements are produced from a general lack of emphasis and often stress, making them phonetically dependant on the words to which they attach, even if syntactically it is a whole word. This is why in orthography, different languages have many varying ways of treating clitics.