Re: USAGE: Circumfixes
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, May 10, 2004, 23:40 |
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On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 05:41:11PM -0500, Mark P. Line wrote:
> A clitic is a morpheme that is a whole word in morphosyntax but only part
> of a word in phonology. Stated differently: morphosyntactic words do not
> usually match up perfectly with phonological words in natlangs. When a
> particle (a monomorphemic, closed-class morphosyntactic word) is not a
> phonological word, it's a clitic.
>
> Many French particles are clitics. English 'the' and 'a/an' are clitics.
Okay. What about Latin -que? It's referred to as a[n en]clitic, but it
not to be a whole word even morphosyntactically. At least, it's written
as a suffix.
> I've never noticed "frigging" or similar AmE emphatic terms inserted
> within a morpheme, only between morphemes. I've never heard or used
> *'be-frigging-lievable', only 'un-frigging-believable'.
Well, I have heard, and use, unbe-frigging-lievable et sim. On the
other hand, it is "I don't frigging believe it!" rather than
*"I don't be-frigging-lieve it!". So I'm not sure what the rule is,
but it doesn't seem to honor morpheme boundaries consistently.
-Mark
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