Re: THEORY: Question: Bound Morphemes

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>         I think you can consider them as affixes, just as in French I c=
onsider the
> so-called "subject pronouns" as mere prefixes.
Well, clitic is more accurate than affix, at least with regards to "a"
and "the" (I don't know enough French to say about je, etc.).  A clitic
is halfway between a word and an affix.  One thing that determines
whether a morpheme is a clitic or an affix is whether things can go
between it and the other word.  For instance, you can say "A tall man".=20
If "a" were a prefix, you'd have to say something like *"Tall a man".=20
Can you put anything between "je" and the verb in French (other than
object pronouns)?  If so, I'd call it a clitic.

> (doesn't "the" come from a demonstrative pronoun by the way?)\
Yes, from _se_, the masculine singular nominative word for "that".  The
"th" comes from analogy with the other forms, which had a thorn, such as
_thone_, accusative singular (plural?) masculine.  "That" comes from the
nominative singular *neuter*, incidentally, =FE=E6t (thaet).

> Writing is very
> traditionalist I think, and often after one century after design or
> redesign, it doesn't follow the reality of a language anymore.
Very true, writing usually lags behind speech.  ESPECIALLY formal
writing.  In formal written English, one can never say "I'm", for
instance.  And, I suspect, there was a period of time after the
invention of /ajm/ (/i:m/?) when it was not written, just as I suspect
that French probly went thru a time when "je" was always written out,
rather than being written "j'" before vowels (i.e., "je ai" instead of
"j'ai")

--=20
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