an elegant solution

[Lois Bloom]

8/26/99

All solutions raise the vexing question, still with us evidently:  What
counts as a word?  a morpheme?  With the example you give: "gonna [:
go-ing to]" --a long time could lapse between the first appearance of
"gonna" and the appropriateness of a morpheme count (see Bloom, Tackeff, &
Lahey,1984, Learning 'to' in complement constructions, JCL, 11; reprinted
in Bloom, Language Development from 2 to 3, Cambridge, 1991).

Lois Bloom