Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

Ben Poplawski said:
> I think of a clitic as an ending that can go wherever it wants.
Aren't you the one who was asking for more precision? :)

1. A clitic doesn't have to be attached to the end of a constituent; those
that do are called 'enclitics'. There are other clitics, called
'proclitics', that attach to the front.

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.)


> Like, -ing can only go on verb stems, and only one at a time, but -'s can
> fit itself pretty much to whatever and how many words it wants.
Actually, possessive -'s attaches morphosyntactically to the end of a noun
phrase and phonologically to the last word in the noun phrase. Noun
phrases can be contrived to end with a variety of different word classes,
of course, so you can find the clitic attached to any of them.

Again, saying that the clitic fits itself "pretty much to whatever and how
many words it wants" is not very precise. :)


-- Mark

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