Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

J. 'Mach' Wust scripsit:

> Thanks for this information. I didn't know that there were two different
> uses of the term 'clitic'.
Well, one can construct a unified definition (as someone -- Mark Line?
has done) by introducing the distinction between the morphosyntactic
and phonological definitions of the term "word", which in one sense
simply pushes the problem off elsewhere, but is probably more useful
overall, since you can get a lot more mileage out of splitting "word"
into two senses.

> If I understand you correctly, you're saying the following: If it's the
> noun in apposition that bears the ending, not the one it's 'apposed'
> to, then this (kinda unmoored) ending can be called a 'clitic'. Like
> this, the German genitive ending in _Onkel Dagoberts Millionen_ is a
> clitic suffix, but in _die Millionen unseres Onkels Dagobert_, it's
> not a clitic suffix.
I don't think it's a clitic in either case, actually; it's clear that the
second example is an apposition, but not so clear that the first one is.
"Onkel Dagobert" may be seen as a compound name, but not so "Dagobert(s)
Onkel".

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
I must confess that I have very little notion of what [s. 4 of the British
Trade Marks Act, 1938] is intended to convey, and particularly the sentence
of 253 words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1.  I doubt if
the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of
equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity. --MacKinnon LJ, 1940

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