Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

Philip Newton said:
> On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 18:10:59 -0500, Mark P. Line <mark@...>
> wrote:
>> 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.)
>
> Well, consider a cliticised version of "only"; it can go, perhaps not
> just anywhere, but before a wide range of positions in a sentence.
> Compare:
>
> Only Tom saw the cat
> Tom only saw the cat
> Tom saw only the cat
> and even
> Tom saw the only cat
> though "only" has a different usage in that last sentence.
It's interesting to think about why 'only' does *not* have a cliticized
version in any varieties of English I'm familiar with. Part of it probably
has to do with stress: you expect clitics to be unstressed, so the
cliticized form of 'only' would have to be reduced. Maybe the meaning of
'only' is too important to the meaning of the constituent it modifies for
it to get worn down phonologically to where it can be a clitic. Or
something.

So what if we had a hypothetical language in which the form works like
English 'only' and is, say, monosyllabic and generally unstressed and is a
clitic? That would be just another example (like possessive -'s) of a
clitic that attaches to a type of constituent that itself has a wide
variety of word classes at its beginning or end -- it still wouldn't be a
counterexample that shows a clitic that can "go anywhere". Consider a more
complex example with 'only':


Glaciers are melting faster than before in some regions from the Arctic to
the Alps but others are getting bigger, scientists said on Friday.

? Glaciers are melting only faster than before in some regions from the
Arctic to the Alps but others are getting bigger, scientists said on
Friday.

? Glaciers are melting faster only than before in some regions from the
Arctic to the Alps but others are getting bigger, scientists said on
Friday.

? Glaciers are melting faster than only before in some regions from the
Arctic to the Alps but others are getting bigger, scientists said on
Friday.

? Glaciers are melting faster than before in some only regions from the
Arctic to the Alps but others are getting bigger, scientists said on
Friday.

? Glaciers are melting faster than before in some regions from the Arctic
to the Alps but others are getting bigger, scientists said on only Friday.



> On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 18:41:03 -0500, Mark P. Line <mark@...>
> wrote:
>> The dialect I'm actually fluent in doesn't have genitive forms like
>> these,
>> so somebody who's a native speaker of the standard language should
>> answer:
>> what if the title is 'Herr' instead of 'Onkel'? I know most people where
>> I
>> lived would say 'Herr Enterichs Millionen' when they were trying to
>> mimic
>> the standard language
>
> That's what I'd say, too.
>
>> is this supposed to be 'Herrn Enterichs Millionen' in standard?
>
> Uh... now you've made me unsure.
Well, if a native speaker can be unsure about it, maybe I'm intuiting a
change-in-progress more than just being unsure about standard usage.


> A quick google for "Herrn Müllers" finds quite a few hits (several
> hundred, though not thousands of them -- but more than for "Herr
> Müllers"), both for "ART NOUN Herrn Müllers" and for "Herrn Müllers
> NOUN", so you may well be right.
>
> However, if that's the "correct" grammar in the standard, I'd say it's
> at least slightly marked as +formal. Not sure whether "Herr Müllers X"
> is wrong, but it's certainly what quite a few people would say in
> everyday speech.
Okay. I didn't know if the usage with "Herr" was at all widespread.


-- Mark