Re: THEORY: Question: Bound Morphemes

At 14:49 02/07/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Kristian Jensen wrote:
>>
>> Charles wrote:
>> >
>> >According to http://www.sil.org/linguistics/glossary/ ,,,
>> >
>> >A bound morpheme is a morpheme which cannot occur as
>> >a separate word apart from any other morpheme.
>
>> Oh, I'm sorry, perhaps I myself should have given the definitions of
>> the terms used in the question I was asking. But I was expecting to
>> get answers from people who knew what I was talking about. Anyways
>> thanks, Charles, maybe more people can give me an answer now.
>
>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.
>Apparently, Basque once had the same phrasal structure as English
>(but in reverse, mirror image), and then *did* glom the article on,
>as you (seemed to) suggest. I am thinking of this classic exchange:
>
>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9901&L=indo-european&D=&H
=&T=&O=&F=&P=2573
>
>Some excepts:
>
>>> Then how will "a blue house" look
>>> like, "ahouse blue"? That would require a change in which the
>>> modifier would have to go after the noun. I don't see how that could
>>> happen
>
>>>> As a matter of fact, *exactly* the scenario described here has happened
>>>> countless times in languages.
>
>>>> Of course, this hasn't happened in English -- yet.  But it might.
>>>> Already I notice that many of my students -- and one or two of the
>>>> contributors to this list -- write `a lot of' as `alot of', suggesting
>>>> that they feel the article to be fused to the following item in this
>>>> case, at least.  There is nothing to stop English from doing the same
>>>> thing that Basque has done, but at the other end of the noun phrase.
>
>
        Well, I think it's one one the case where the example shows the contrary
of what you want to prove. In Euskara, even if the article is written as a
suffix, and even provokes phonological changes in words where it is
attached, it is attached at the end of the _noun phrase_, not the noun,
showing thus exactly the same behaviour of 'the' (but in mirror image). For
example:

emakumea (woman-the): the woman
emakume gaztea (woman young-the): the young woman

        In this respect, English and Euskara function quite the same (the
difference being that Euskara do such things also with plural and case
endings, they come at the end of the _noun phrase_, not the noun).

                                                        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