Re: THEORY: Question: Bound Morphemes

Kristian Jensen wrote:
>
> Charles wrote:
> >
> >It sounded to me like you were saying English "the" and "a" were
> >"bound". They are not, IIUC, and cannot be ... at least not yet.
>
> Of course they're bound! You even defined what bound morphemes were
> yourself: "A bound morpheme is a morpheme which cannot occur as
> a separate word apart from any other morpheme". Both 'a' and 'the'
> cannot occur by themselves.
Ray agrees with you also ... But these still feel like very separate
words to me, and apparently also for Trask in his message, in comparison
to Basque in which the articles are always glued onto other words,
even inducing sound changes. A "bound morpheme" means "bound into
a word", I stubbornly still think. This is not "just" a spelling thing.
English and many other langs have a strong sense of what is a word,
whereas in Chinese and others it is much more fluid.

Even in the sense of being "bound" by not occuring alone,
"the" is just a form of "this/that", and "a/an" equal "one",
which do stand alone. So in my dialect, they are liberated.