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<p>Just a tangential comment on Modern Hebrew: contrary to what was
claimed, it is not a good example of "prepositions ending up as
prefixes", because not all NPs are in fact head initial — most
quantifiers precede the quantified noun, and in such cases, the
preposition occurs as expected before the quantifier, that is to
say, at the beginning of the phrase. <br>
</p>
<p>David<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 06/12/2021 16:25, Martin Haspelmath
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:90ec6ac4-e189-5440-bff8-6a925b45b839@eva.mpg.de">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
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" moz-do-not-send="true">http://www.stanford.edu/~zwicky/what-is-a-clitic.pdf</a>
arnold (zwicky)
_______________________________________________
</pre>
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<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/" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/</a></pre>
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</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
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