Re: EAK - two problems

On 5/22/07, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> wrote:
> It feels strange to me how the possessive marker doesn't always
> attach to the head, but I'm not exactly sure what feels wrong about
> that; I know there are clitics in other languages that don't always
> attach to heads.
Don't some Latin clitics (e.g. -que) work like this, too, always
attaching to the first part of the second component rather than the
"main" part, whatever that is?

> Also, it seems like this scheme would mean that <to-io> occurs very
> often. Earlier you rejected <tou> for the same role because it seems
> to be an inflection, but couldn't you say the same of <to-io>? (Or,
> conversely, couldn't you say that neither one is inflected? My view
> on <tou> is that, although it may be *derived* from a differently-
> inflected form of the same thing <to> is derived from, synchronically
> they could be two separate words, rather than inflected forms of one.)
As Ray said, one difference was that you could add -io not only to
_to_ but also to arbitrary other elements, such as indefinite nouns,
adjectives modifying such nouns, or pronouns. With _tou_ you couldn't
do that, unless the rationale was to add -u always, or something like
that.

So _to-io_ looks more like article+clitic (or other particle) to me,
while _tou_ looks more like an inflected word (at least
diachronically). Even if _to-io_ is related diachronically to an
inflected _toio_.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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