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Yes, Zwicky's 1994 idea that "clitic" is an "umbrella term" was
adopted by Spencer & Luís (2012) – but this is not a CLAIM.<br>
<br>
If the question is how to use a term, we make *terminological
choices* – and my proposal was to make the choice that a clitic is
defined as "a non-affix non-root bound form". This would give the
term "clitic" a precise meaning (as a general-typological concept).<br>
<br>
[Please note that I forgot the condition "non-root" in the earlier
message; thanks to Chao Li for reminding me of this.]<br>
<br>
The advantage of this would be that textbooks could explain this
term in this succinct way, and if one wants to know whether a
Quechua element is a clitic (in this comparative sense), then one
could simply check whether it is bound or free (i.e. occurs on its
own), and whether it is promiscuous.<br>
<br>
Vladimir Panov is quite right, of course, that there is something
unintuitive about this definition, because Hebrew prepositions end
up as prefixes (because nominals always begin with a noun), while
English prepositions end up as clitics (because nominals may begin
with a determiner, an adjective or a noun). And Riccardo Giomi is
quite right that it is unintuitive to say that Italian diminutive <i>-icchi-</i>
is a clitic just because it can occur both on nouns and on verbs and
is thus promiscuous.<br>
<br>
But this is as it should be, because our "intuitions" about clitics
can have no direct role in our science. We need clear terms, and
clear claims, and reproducible methods for testing our claims –
intuitions are often based on traditional stereotypes and can be
left to wither away.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 06.12.21 um 15:06 schrieb Arnold M.
Zwicky:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:2BC1229B-9AAF-4F67-B8F3-32ED291A75FA@stanford.edu">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">I realize that this paper is now antique, but I continue to cling to its main claim, that CLITIC is merely an umbrella term and that (with the possible exception of two special cases, quite different from one another, and deserving technical terms of their own) the phenomena customarily referred to by that name do not constitute a single entity of theoretical interest:
AMZ, “What is a clitic?” (in Nevis, Joseph, Wanner, & Zwicky, Clitics Bibliography, 1994).
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.stanford.edu/~zwicky/what-is-a-clitic.pdf">http://www.stanford.edu/~zwicky/what-is-a-clitic.pdf</a>
arnold (zwicky)
_______________________________________________
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<div>Dear Alex & all,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I cannot help joining this discussion as the topic is
extremely interesting and very controversial.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Here I would like to mostly reply to Martin. For a while,
after having read your whole series of articles on the
issue, I have found your definition of clitics very useful
and the least controversial, and I have used it myself in my
own work. However, recently, I have realized that it is not
completely unproblematic either. Here are a couple of
controversies, which are mostly related to the notion of
promiscuous attachment.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>(a) Let's say that "attaches to" means "immediately
precedes or follows". But then if we take, say, the European
prepositions, in many cases this is true that they "attach"
to words of different syntactic classes. Say, in "in sum" in
attaches to a noun "sum", "in a house" it attaches to the
indefinite article, and "in these beautiful houses" it
attaches to a deictic element, and then an adjective follows
as well. However, the set of elements<i> in</i> is able to
attach to is limited to what constitutes the English noun
phrase (it cannot attach to verbs or adverbs). Therefore, <i>in</i>
always attaches to the English noun phrase from the left, no
matter what constitutes it. Therefore, it is kind of
"promiscuous" in your strict sense, but it is not
promiscuous on a higher level, therefore it is also a kind
of a prefix. This made many linguists talk of "phrasal
affixes", which makes sense after all. Moreover, if we take
a language in which a noun obligatorily occupies the first
slot in the noun phrase such a Hebrew (if we ignore the
article), then it turns out that its prepositions are not
promiscuous, whereas those of English are, which is very
counterintuitive, I would say. Rather, it would be more
intuitive to say that in both Hebrew and English
prepositions attach to the noun phrase from the left, but
the orders of elements within their noun phrases are
different.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>(b) One can look even closer at the elements whose
attachment is promiscuous, but whose promiscuity is very
limited. For example, adjectives and nouns are definitely
different word classes in Latin. However, they share a large
part of their inflectional endings. Indeed, we have <i>lup-us
bon-us</i> 'wolf-nom.sg.m good-nom.sg.m' and <i>lup-a
bon-a</i> 'wolf-nom.sg.f good-nom.sg.f'. Then it turns out
that according to your definition, the inflectional endings
of Latin are to be treated as clitics in cross-linguistic
studies. Is this a good solution?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I still believe that with your definition, we are on the
right path, but maybe we need some more specifications.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div>Vadimir (Panov)<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></pre>
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