Re: THEORY: Question: Bound Morphemes

Sufkaltin=E1tas na<Charles>:
> No, you said clitics
> have bound and free forms; this can never be pinned down.
I said the FREQUENTLY had free forms, not always.  Free forms, clitics,
and affixes aren't always completely clear.  But, I'd say that "the",
"a", and "an" are pretty strongly cliticized, and the subject pronouns
seem to me to be developing in that direction (but not there yet!) -
consider that, for most people, an answer to "Who did it?" would be "Me"
rather than "I".  Of course, "I" can occur freely in certain situations,
so it's not a clitic yet, but might become one eventually.

> Would you use "bound" for anything other than determiners?
> A verb like "is" certainly does not stand alone, but isn't bound.
Well, I'd say that "is" is a free form.  It can't stand alone, but it's
not bound to the subject.  Actually, for some speakers it can occur
alone - consider the line in Amazing Grace "I once was lost, but now am
found".  Also, you can say "Is he?".  On the other hand, 's (as in "is")
is a clitic; I, at least, could say "The man I told you about's over
there", but it can only occur at the end of the noun phrase, with no
adverbs or anything before it (*"he never's home" is ungrammatical in,
AFAIK, most dialects, while "he never is home" is grammatical in some
dialects, altho not mine)

Language resists all efforts to pigeonhole it, no matter what definition
you use for anything, you'll find exceptions and borderline cases.

--=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
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