English Nonsyllabic Auxiliary Contractions: An Analysis in LFG with Lexical Sharing

English auxiliary contractions may reduce to varying degrees, sometimes becoming nonsyllabic, with only a consonant. Most nonsyllabic contractions exhibit behavior that suggests they are joined to the preceding form in the lexicon. Yet paradoxically they behave syntactically like a clitic group, formed from two distinct constituents. I con clude that these forms are lexical clitics. To model lexical clitics, I employ a mechanism called lexical sharing, allowing two or more atomic constituents to be instantiated by the same word. Combining lexical sharing wit h LFG provides a way to model functional constraints associated with nonsyllabi c auxiliary contractions. I also show that lexical sharing provides an illumin ating analysis of so-called second-word clitics, concluding that adding lexical sharing to LFG provides a useful component in the analysis of cliticization.