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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">Dear colleagues,</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">I would like to hear about possible typological parallels to a little-studied morphological (diachronic) feature in North Saami.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">I apologize for the lengthy introduction:</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">Many of you may have heard about probably the best known grammatical morpheme in North Saami,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">haga</i> 'without', a former abessive case suffix (-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">haga</i>) that has degrammaticalized into a postposition and ultimately a free adverb and a preposition. North Saami has a quite
fusional inflectional morphology, and derivational morphology is quite fusional as well. However, there are also a number of disyllabic suffixes that are by definition much less fusional, and I have proposed that one of the reasons for degrammaticalization
– or at least a morphological feature of debonding – may lie in the fact that in a fusional language like North Saami, non-fusional morphemes like -<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">haga</i> are prone to be perceived as words (such as disyllabic adpositions)
rather than as (otherwise maximally monosyllabic) case markers.</span></p>
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10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">What is interesting here is that I am aware of as many as about a dozen other disyllabic suffixes that are occasionally experiencing partly
similar debonding in North Saami. Apologizing for a little self-promotion, I am referring to my recent paper on
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">haga</i> and a partly similar instance of degrammaticalization, and quote myself as follows:</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">It may be added that in North Saami there are a number of similar but considerably less degrammaticalized morphemes that may occasionally undergo
debonding, namely conjunction reduction à la <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">
vuoiddas- ja ostonagaid</i> ‘stains of grease and willow bark’ (30) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">
varra- ja guomonaga</i> ‘stained with blood and chyme’ (33). Such morphemes have been discussed in Ylikoski (2009: 116–128, 200–201) where it is conjectured that such phenomena could in principle be regarded as tentative symptoms of a wholesale “degrammaticalization
drift” in North Saami; a situation in which somewhat atypical disyllabic suffixes seem to represent an intermediate stage on the way to a more clitic-like status for many of the present-day suffixes. Examples mentioned in Ylikoski (2009) include, among others,
the verb forms <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">hála- ja čále-dettiin</i> [speak and write-<span style="font-variant:small-caps">cvb.sim</span>] ‘when speaking and writing’ and
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">bora- ja juga-keahttá</i> [eat and drink-<span style="font-variant:small-caps">cvb.neg</span>] ‘without eating and drinking’ instead of ordinary converbs
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">háladettiin ja čáledettiin</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">
borakeahttá ja jugakeahttá</i> id., nouns like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">
nuorra-ja olmmái-vuohta</i> [young and man-hood] ‘youth and manhood’ instead of nuorravuohta ja olmmáivuohta and adjectives like
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">áhče- ja eatne-heapme</i> [father- and mother-less] ‘fatherless and motherless’ instead of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">áhčeheapme ja eatneheapme</i>. In a way, situations in which such morphemes stand out as quite atypical for affixes are reminiscent of Norde’s (2001; 2009: 206–207) thoughts on deflexion as impetus to degrammaticalization
of morphemes like English and Scandinavian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">
s</i>-genitive and Irish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">muid</i> ‘we’.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Tahoma", sans-serif;" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Ylikoski, Jussi. 2016. “Degrammaticalization in North Saami: Development of adpositions, adverbs and a free lexical
noun from inflectional and derivational suffixes. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen</span></i><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> 40: 113–173. Available at
</span><a href="http://cc.oulu.fi/~jylikosk/filer/fum40_ylikoski.pdf" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); text-decoration: underline;" id="LPlnk81304" previewremoved="true"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">http://cc.oulu.fi/~jylikosk/filer/fum40_ylikoski.pdf</span></a></span></p>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">I wish to emphasize that most if not all the inflectional and derivational suffixes I am referring to go back to ancient Proto-Saami or even
Proto-Uralic suffixes. For example, unlike English -<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">less</i> in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">"father- and motherless"</i>, the suffix -<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">heapme</i> in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">áhče- ja eatne-heapme</i> [father- and mother-less] is regarded as having an age-long past as a suffix only. In other words, from a comparative Uralicist perspective, the above examples are about as strange as "speak- and
writing", "eat- and drinking" or "grammati- and degrammaticalization" in English.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:
"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">My question:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;
mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">
I wonder if there are many languages that behave like North Saami in this respect? More precisely, I would be especially interested in languages that have experienced a similar "wholesale degrammaticalization drift" or "debonding drift" in the sense that there
are many individual (originally) bound morphemes that have turned out to be not necessarily that bound after all.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">Best regards,</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US">Jussi Ylikoski</span></p>
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10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
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<span style="font-size:
10.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif;mso-ansi-language:EN-US" lang="EN-US"><a href="http://cc.oulu.fi/~jylikosk/" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193); text-decoration: underline;" id="LPlnk812348" previewremoved="true">http://cc.oulu.fi/~jylikosk/</a></span></p>
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