Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

Thomas R. Wier said:
> From:    "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
>> 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.
>
> "Usually"? Hardly.  They usually do, but sometimes they don't.
> Grammatical mismatches are the unusual evidence that we use
> to deduce the structure of the grammar's architecture as a whole,
> but the norm is for modules to align.
Sorry, lexical typo. I wanted to write: "Morphosyntactic words do not
always 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.
>
> You can't define parts of speech in this Platonic kind of way;  parts
> of speech are defined relative to one another.  In one language, particles
> may be limited to so-called "function words", but in others all adjectives
> or adverbs -- open classes -- may be formally particles.

1. I was glossing what I meant in this particular instance by "particle".

2. We could try to debate the common and correct usage of the term, but I
doubt that either one of us would change his mind. I glossed my use of the
term precisely to avoid any such debate.


-- Mark