Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

Joe said:
> J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 15:18:35 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>A clitic of what word?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>? I do not understand this question.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Clitics are words that are phonetically melted with others, e.g. the
>>present third person singular of to be's often cliticized. The 'Saxon
>>genitive'-s is not a word phonetically melted with others; therefore,
>> it's
>>not a clitic, but rather an ending.
>>
>>
>
> I don't think so.  I think it's a suffix that is attached to a phrase
> rather than a word.  Which ''s' is.
Actually, I don't think either one of you has it quite right. The
possessive //s// *is* a morphosyntactic word (it changes the meaning of
the noun phrase it attaches to, not the meaning of the word it attaches
to). If it's a morphosyntactic word, it's not an affix; as such, since it
becomes part of another phonological word when it's attached, it's called
a clitic.

We've been over this recently on the list. The archives should have all
the answers.


-- Mark