Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

From:    Jim Henry <jimhenry@...>
> "Mark P. Line" <mark@...> skribis:
> > 2. Clitics can't go just anywhere. They're just as much a part of the
> > morphosyntax and phonology of the language as any other. (A counterexample
> > would have to be a clitic that can attach to any word of any sentence,
> > while producing some coherently modified meaning of any constituent it
> > might thereby make itself part of. That's not very likely, is it.)
>
> Esperanto has at least one prefix (mal-) and several modifier
> particles (ne, jam, ankaux, ecx...) that can precede just about any
> word.  A language that has non-syllabic clitics with the same meaning
> or role as those is readily imaginable, though I don't know of an example
> offhand.
I would be very wary about making any theoretical claims on the
basis of how a constructed language works.  Although there are a
few native speakers of Esperanto, the level of fluency that most
Esperantists have is so minimal that it's difficult to distinguish
an important generalization about language from some failure of
the speaker to acquire the language perfectly (as most adult
speakers will).

One possible counterexample along the lines Mark mentions would be
several clitics in Meskwaki, such as _iyo_ "of course".  Meskwaki is
a fairly radically nonconfigurational language, where any constituent
tends to be assigned a particular surface word-order on the basis of
discourse-functional properties. These clitics thus show up in surprising
places, though their tendency is to be in second position and enclitic.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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