Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 06:15:31AM +0100, Ray Brown wrote:
> Whether unstressed /n(@)/ has the phonological form of a separate word is
> debatable. It's usually considered an incltic, but this probably has
> something to do with the written language. I can understand that some
> analyzes of _spoken_ French may well judge it to be a prefix.
>
> However, the other part of the negative construct - pas, point, plus,
> jamais, personne, rien etc. may, and do, occur a free morphemes in other
> contexts. The French (and spoken Welsh) negative constructs may be, as
> Mark says, considered as discontinuous constituents, but they are not
> circumfixes in the normal sense of the word.
I sit corrected.  Thanks!


vehke> Personally I use 'clitic' for a morpheme not limited to a grammatical
vehke> category, i.e. can be added to any word, regardless of the language's
vehke> usual phonological constraints. Clitics thus don't convey any
vehke> grammatical information, AFAIK.

Ah, now that makes sense!  Under this rationale, Latin <-que> isn't a suffix,
because it is not limited in application to a particular part of speech.
Given any two Latin words, if you can stick an <et> between 'em, you can
accomplish the same sense by dropping the <et> and sticking <-que> on
the second one, whether it be a (substatntive) noun, adjective (noun),
or a verb.

Thanks!

-Mark