Re: THEORY: Xpositions in Ypositional languages {X,Y}={pre,post}

On Sep 23, 2007, at 4:40 PM, Adam Walker wrote:

> --- Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin@...> wrote:
>
>> In the last episode, (On Sunday 23 September 2007
>> 13:47:37), Philip Newton
>> wrote:
>>> Or "The guy I ate lunch with's car"? :)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>
>> Yes, but that doesn't make clear that construction
>> in English's continued
>> awkwardness ;-)
>>
>> Jeff
>
> Jeff's sentence is really out there, but sentences
> like Philip's don't raise eyebrows in actual use.
> (Except among high school English teachers.)
I'm curious if anyone else has heard things like "the guy that's car
I drove" instead of "the guy whose car I drove". I don't think I say
it, but I notice it occasionally from a few family members; I've
never noticed it outside my family.

A little more on topic, another putative phenomenon is endoclitics --
clitics which occur inside of words (either between morphemes or
within them). They are thought by some (e.g. Judith Klavans and
Arnold Zwicky) not to exist, but others (e.g.  Alice Harris and
Ethelbert Karl) disagree. They seem to occur in at least Udi, Pashto,
and Degema.

Then there are also mesoclitics, which occur between morphemes within
a word in Portuguese. I don't see why some so-called endoclitics
(i.e. the ones between morphemes) shouldn't be called mesoclitics.

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