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Re: THEORY: Question: Bound Morphemes

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Monday, July 5, 1999, 10:00
At 18:13 02/07/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Christophe Grandsire wrote: >> I think you can consider them as affixes, just as in French I
consider 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. >
Well, I won't call 'je' a clitic, but French conjugation is very incorporating (like in polysynthetic languages). We can have things like 'je le lui donne' (I give him/her it) where the accent is put on the last syllable (donne). We can sometimes have words, like in "je n'ai rien vu" (it's a compound conjugation I know, but in French, the auxiliary and the verb can't generally be separated). In this case, 'rien' (nothing), even if it is normally a word in its own right, doesn't carry any stress. That's why I consider it 'incorporated' in the verbal form, and why I still consider 'je' as a mere prefix.
>> (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") >
I don't know. The apostrophe is very old in French, but you may be right. I'm not a specialist of Old and Middle French.
>--=20 >"If all Printers were determin'd not to print any thing till they were >sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed" - >Benjamin Franklin >http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Conlang/W.html >http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html >ICQ #: 18656696 >AIM screen-name: NikTailor > >
Christophe Grandsire |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G. "Reality is just another point of view." homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html