Re: THEORY: Question: Bound Morphemes

Hey.

I couldn't resist jumping into this one.

On Fri, 2 Jul 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:

> Ed Heil wrote:
>
> >In many languages, the difference between an affix and a bound word is
> >determined by how it interacts with suprasegmental, word-based
> >elements like accent placements.
Actually, I don't think that the distinction made here holds, if by
"bound word" is meant "clitic". Affixes and clitics are alike in that
they become part of the phonological word to which they are attached.
The difference between the two is that an affix attaches to a stem of a
particular category, while a clitic attaches to a position. In English,
this difference can be shown by the behavior of the plural suffix -s and
the possessive clitic -'s. Plural -s attaches to a noun, and can
only attach to a noun, while the possessive attaches to the right edge
of a noun phrase, whatever part of speech happens to be there (so you
get phrases like 'the man I met over there's hat,' where -'s attaches to
'there', which is an adverb). Hence, plural -s is an affix, while
possessive -'s is a clitic.

> >If Boranesian has anything like a word-boundary-based accent pattern
> >(like Latin or Greek do), then it makes sense to write something down
> >as an affix if it becomes part of the word for accent purposes, and a
> >separate word if it doesn't.
>
> In that case, I think I'm dealing with affixes. But what if I'm
> dealing with an accent pattern that is phrasal rather than local?
You are dealing with affixes iff the determiner must attach to a stem of
a particular category. The distinction between phrasal and local accent
doesn't matter here, unless the determiner carries its own stress, and
the stress pattern of the word to which it attaches remains unaffected.
In that case, the determiner is probably a word in its own right.

> In Boreanesian, this could especially be a problem in verbal phrases
> because they tend to be quite long. Many of the morphemes that make
> up the verb phrase itself is linked to the verb (nominalized verb)
> via the genitive. For example (with each morpheme separated by a
> space for the sole purpose of this example):
>
>      /t[@ s@k@:h ?@n@Nh kijh m@nuw?/
>      the  place  eat    1    chicken
>      lit.: 'my eating-place of chicken'
>
> Phrasal stress falls regularly on the final syllable. In the example
> above for instance, it falls on the syllable /nuw?/. Secondary
> phrasal stress falls on all heavy syllables before the final, and on
> all odd minor syllables before a heavy syllable. Does this mean that
> the above phrase should be written as one word?
I would agree with what has been said by others; this is largely a
matter of personal taste. One convention you may wish to adopt in
romanization is to mark affix/stem boundaries with a dash "-", and a
clitic/host boundaries with an equal sign "="; this has the advantage of
clearly marking the type of morpheme which has combined with a given
stem. Or if you would prefer not to have your transcription peppered
with dashes and equal signs, let affixes be tacitly connected to their
stems, but separate clitics from their hosts with a dash. You don't get
so many non-alphabetic characters, but still acknowledge the special
status of clitics.

> I have heard of languages, like the Polynesian languages, where
> authorities cannot agree what constitutes a word because boundaries
> tend to be fluid. I fear that this may be the case with Boreanesian.
'Word' is a fuzzy term, at best. Do you mean a linguistic object which
is manipulated by the syntax? Or do you mean the domain of stress and
accent rules? Or do you mean the end result of affixation? Little wonder
people can't agree on what a word in Polynesian languages is, when we
can't agree on what a word is!

> >(If you don't write it down as an affix
> >but it still affects word accent, it is technically a 'clitic,' I
> >think.)
>
> Actually, I have seen that clitics can be affixes too.
The distinction between affix and clitic is syntactic, not phonological;
an affix attaches to a stem of a particular part of speech, while a
clitic attaches to a position. I get the clitic/affix question at least
once every semester, and I've found that this is a pretty good way to
explain the distinction.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu                   "All grammars leak."
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~elzinga/                 -Edward Sapir