Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

On 11 May 2004 Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham@N...> wrote:

> In which case we're back to Ce- -[h/k]-a- as a single morpheme!  (At
> least, as single as French ne..pas, ne..jamais etc. are.
  I'm sure that in agglutinative languages a circumfix may express
only one thing: person, tense, mood, voice, aspect, word derivation
etc.

  In this context I don't know what can be a circumfix in a
flexional language. I think that we must be careful when a
flexional affix encodes more grammatical cathegory, e.g. in case of
ne..jamais: negating the verb (ne = not) and a negative time
complement (jamais = never). Is English colloquial "ain't
(do/say/etc) nothing" a circumfix? Is English phrase "and ...
respectively" is a circumfix?

  I think this is the same for Greek "Ce- -[h/k]-a-". What is the
difference between the conjunction of allomorphemes and the
circumfix in flexional languages?

  Are Slovak active past participles -- like u.vide.vs^i' 'seen,
seeing' < vidie.t' 'to see' -- formed by circumfixes or are they
formed by simple suffixes from perfective verbs, therefore you must
change the imperfective verb into its perfective counterpart? Are
the future of the motion verbs -- like po^.jd.em 'I will go' < ist'
(< *id.t') 'to go' -- formed by circumfixes or are they simple
present forms of the perfecticve counterparts (since analytic
future of imperfective forms isn't possible in these verb group)?
Are Slovak negated verbs -- like ne.robi'.m 'I don't work' <
robi.t' 'to work' -- formed by circumfix or are they just a
conjunction of proclitic negating particle ne- and the respective
personal suffix?

  Therefore, I think, a circumfix may express by definition only
one grammatical cathegory even in flexional languages. Otherwise
this term would be excessively general, superficial, and useless.

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