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Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

From:Mark P. Line <mark@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 3:02
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