Re: Reflexive (was Re: Help on Verbs...)

Charles wrote:

> Ed Heil wrote:
>
> > In the classical languages at least, (en)clitics are defined, as Nik
> > said, in terms of suprasegmental phonology.
>
> > Clitics don't have to be any special part of speech or have any
> > special function; they just have to become part of another word for
> > accent purposes.
>
> Last time, it was me who got beat up for saying "the" is not a clitic.
> In some sense it is a "detachable clitic", because a whole crowd of words
> can be between it and the noun. But the "clitic-clitic" (?) is really attached
> more closely, like "s'" + verb. Or something like that, sortamaybe.
I don't really see any reason to analyse "the" or "a/an" as clitics.  It
seems to me that a better analysis is that they can undergo phonological
reduction, which occurs in lots of words which most certainly *aren't*
clitics (like "then" /DEn/ --> /D@n/, and "that" /D&t/ --> /D@t/).

The only real clitic-y form in the English language (AFAIK) is the
so-called genetive case ending, <'s>, which functions on the phrasallevel
rather than the wordlevel.