Re: a case-free language?

So... if something merges morphological with another word it can't be an
adposition even if it satisfies your criteria? Then there are two
criteria at least:

(i) Not repeated for each NP in coordinate phrases
(ii) Does not merge morphologically with another word

I wasn't arguing that this system was an examples of adpositions, but it
seemed to satisfy your definition and it wasn't what I would think of as
adpostions to I was trying to clarify things. I'm a mathematician lol...
if we see a definition we always try to find problem cases. ;)
Anyway.... *hums* I know you said its disfunctional and doesn't happen
in natural languages, but I might make the equivalent of adpositions
infixes that can have scope over more than one NP in my next language...
I don't care if no speakers anywhere would actually do it. Although
repeated infixes and syllable reduplication etc combined like in Tagalog
always gave me a headache.. it seems much more difficult to retrieve the
root word than it should be.

>
>It does indeed satisfy that criterion, and that is the most important
>one.  Nonetheless, the system you describe is rather dysfunctional.
>Ablauting systems, which is basically what you are describing here, are
>universally* affixal rather than clitic; there are few, if any,
>known examples of clitics existing inside affixal or root material.
>(See the works of Arnold Zwicky for more about this.) Thus, your example
>amounts to saying that something is both a clitic and a bound affix at the
>same time, which is a contradiction in terms.
>
>* I am usually very wary of making strong claims like this, but in
>this case, clitic ablaut runs against linguists' understanding of
>affixation entirely, so it is to be accepted only with strong and
>clear evidence to that end.
>
>==========================================================================
>Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
>Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
>University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
>1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
>Chicago, IL 60637
>
>
>

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