• Heteroclitic

    Origin

    - + clitic.

    Full definition of heteroclitic

    Adjective

    heteroclitic

    1. (linguistics) In linguistics, particularly Indo-European Studies, signifying a stem which alternates between more than one form when declined for grammatical case. Examples of heteroclitic noun stems in Proto-Indo-European include *wod-r/n- "water" (nominoaccusative *wódr; genitive *udnés; locative *udén) and *yékw-r/n- "liver" (nominoaccusative *yékwr, genitive *ikwnés). In Proto-Indo-European, heteroclitic stems tend to be noun stems with grammatically inanimate gender.
      • 2011, Eric J. Toone, Advances in Enzymology and Related Areas of Molecular Biology (page 300)... a heteroclitic response was never observed after the immunization with the deamidated peptide ...

    Related terms

    Noun

    heteroclitic

    (plural heteroclitics)
    1. A heteroclitic noun.
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