Modality on pronouns

[Daniel Everett]

Point well-taken, Marianne. That is why the forms I first mentioned
have no such internal constituency. I have a longish paper in Language
on wrong-way cliticization in Yagua from 1990 and agree with you that
such phenomena may skew things. On the other hand, the kind of
phenomenon that Nigel raises is a likely historical source for at least
some modality (and perhaps tense) marking on pronouns. After the
passage of time, of course, the morphological source structure may no
longer be reconstructable, as you know well, leading back to the same
issue I raised.

-- Dan
 >From: Marianne Mithun <mithun at LINGUISTICS.UCSB.EDU>
 >Reply-To: Marianne Mithun <mithun at LINGUISTICS.UCSB.EDU>
 >To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
 >Subject: Re: Modality on Pronouns
 >Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 09:50:57 -0800
 >
 >Let's not overlook the distinction between affixes, which attach to
 >words
 >of specific lexical categories, and clitics, which are in
 >construction
 >grammatically with constituents. Clitics may ride on a particular
 >word
 >phonologically simply because it appears at the beginning of a
 >sentence,
 >for example. In some cases the word a clitic is riding on
 >phonologically
 >may not even be part of the constituent in question.
 >
 >
 >Marianne Mithun
 >
 >
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Daniel L. Everett
Professor of Phonetics & Phonology
Postgraduate Programme Director
Department of Linguistics
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, UK M13 9PL
http://ling.man.ac.uk/info/staff/de
Fax: 44-161-275-3187
Office: 44-161-275-3158