Re: relative tense and beyond!

 Nick wrote :
But,
usually it's pretty clear whether a given morpheme is an affix, a
clitic, or a word.

I agree with you : when tagged to a word, an affix tends to specialise into
either a grammeme trying to hint PoS and have nothing to do with the
'semantic' content of that word, or reversely into a lexeme trying to add
semantic 'detail'  to the word and not step in syntax :-)
But that's not always really possible because words themselves comprise PoS
concepts deriving from their own role of actors of specific 'verbs'
(man---feat---outstanding : Fr 'grand homme'). They also comprise semantic
concepts deriving from their own classeme (morning--young---small : Fr 'petit
matin').
So IMHO when the grammeme 'affix' agrees with the word semantic connotation,
or reversely the lexeme resumes the PoS of the word, I regard the pair (affix
; base) as a compound word. And reversely, of course : component1+component2
=> affixA+component2) .

Mathias