[Lingtyp] Morphologically complex clitics?

Tue Apr 6 17:56:39 UTC 2021

Thanks for your helpful feedback Larry! I'll try to be more constructive
next time!

Just one brief response,

" (as can be seen from the several LINGTYP responses, as well as private
ones he received"

Strangely, I am not able to see Florian's private emails (apart from the
one's I sent him). So I've evidently missed a lot of important context.

best,

Adam

p.s. As for g-words and p-words being "at the descriptive" level, I
recently wrote and am writing a few (obviously wrong and unconstructive!)
papers that question this assumption.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/lnc3.12364
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/sl/pre-prints/content-sl.19025.tal

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 5:32 PM Larry M. HYMAN <hyman at berkeley.edu> wrote:

> Dear Adam,
>
> I am responding for several reasons. First, I personally did not find your
> expanding (escalating) the discussion to be particularly useful in
> identifying the kinds of phenomena that Florian had clearly delineated (as
> can be seen from the several LINGTYP responses, as well as private ones he
> received). To say that essentially everything "leans" is not helpful at
> all, as if we cannot find independent phonological criteria for elements
> that have clitic-like behavior. If a framework prefers to reanalyze these
> (or even outlaw them), this also seems besides the point which was to
> identify phenomena at the descriptive level, where there is already enough
> to disentangle. I want to thank Florian for his inquiry, which we can take
> as an invitation to identify examples where morphologically complex clitics
> appear to exist and determine what their properties are.
>
> For example, you hypothesize that the Luganda example might (instead) be
> treated as a string of clitics. However, considering the total facts of
> Luganda one would better recognize that =byange 'my' begins with the same
> noun class 8 agreement prefix bi- found in other word classes, e.g.
> (e-)bi-tabo 'books', bi-rúngi 'good', bi-biri 'two', bi-rî 'those (far)'
> etc.). I also indicated a phonological criterion for clitichood: the
> preservation of final vowel length of the preceding syllable: (e-)bi-d*éé*
> =byange  'my bells' vs. (e)bi-d*e* bi-biri 'two bells'. Of course the
> total picture is more complex than this, as Francis and I reported in
> excruciating detail (Hyman & Katamba 1990, "Final vowel shortening in
> Luganda", *Studies in African Linguistics*). But there is good reason to
> assert that class 8 =by-ange 'my', =by-o 'your sg.' and =by-e 'his/her' are
> (i) single clitics and (ii) morphologically complex. Besides preserving
> preceding length, they cannot stand alone. Thus, compare these with the
> corresponding self-standing independent possessive pronouns: e-by-áange
> 'mine', e-bí-by-ô 'yours sg.', and e-bí-by-ê 'his/hers', which are fuller
> and have different tone properties.
>
> Best, Larry
>
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 4:20 AM Adam James Ross Tallman <
> ajrtallman at utexas.edu> wrote:
>
>> Dear Florian *inter alia,*
>>
>> It's never really clear to me whether with questions like these, we are
>> asking:
>>
>> 1. Are there descriptions which posit such things (i.e. use a
>> terminological framework that allow them to "exist" and then describe them
>> as "existing")?
>>
>> 2. Is there a thing like this in the language (regardless of the
>> terminological framework because all of the relevant notions have obvious
>> cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics / criteria)?
>>
>> For 1, note that for some authors (like Stephen Anderson, circa 2005)
>> morphologically complex clitics seem to be logically impossible. Clitics
>> are either syntactic elements that integrate into (post-lexical)
>> phonological structure (simple/phonological clitics) or else they are
>> morphological elements themselves that operate over phrases. Since they are
>> supposed to be realizational elements themselves, it's hard to even imagine
>> a morphologically complex clitic being something that's allowed.
>>
>> *Is Anderson making an empirical claim about the absence of
>> morphologically complex clitics cross-linguistically?* I don't think so.
>> They are just ruled out on terminological / theoretical grounds. I assume
>> the Luganda case would just be analyzed as a string of clitics - where
>> their place in the grammar would be (as post-lexical phonological
>> integration or post-lexical /phrase level placement or both) determined,
>> would then depend on what you meant by "normal syntax".
>>
>> In terms of 'phonologically leaning' ... according to which phonological
>> process (if any)? You can always vacuously phonologically lean into an
>> utterance/intonational phrase. In much prosodic phonology, an element can
>> be categorized,tautologically as phonologically leaning just because it
>> surfaces at all (it would integrate into an intonational phrase (that need
>> only be identified by pause breaks), or an empirically vacuous layer of the
>> prosodic hierarchy). So for some linguists, this just isn't a meaningful
>> empirical question at all. Not that it's not interesting, we just have to
>> know a lot more about how one goes about establishing the bridging
>> principles between notions like g-word and p-word and the actual language
>> data.
>>
>> If the question is - *can *such structural classifications exist. Well,
>> yeah. You just have to choose definitions of '=' and '-' such that a
>> morphologically complex clitic falls out. For instance, in Chacobo there's
>> this punctual morpheme *=/-tápi. *It allows some variable ordering with
>> "suffixes" and "clitics" in the verb complex - it could be categorized as
>> either an affix or clitic depending on what criteria you use. When the verb
>> complex occurs with an associated motion morpheme, *=/-tapi *happens to
>> have a fixed position after the AM morpheme and it happens to modify the
>> motion action. *SO*, just choose a definition of g-word that makes *-tapi
>> *an affix and the AM morphemes simple clitics. And voilà, you have a
>> morphologically complex clitic. Is this an example of a morphologically
>> complex clitic? If you want it to be, yes.
>>
>> Thus, it's hard to know how 2 is being addressed in any of the
>> discussions, because '=' and '-' are not defined. So implicitly people are
>> responding to 1. Which is fine, it's always informative to know how much
>> terminological variation there is in the field, but it's harder to
>> interpret what it all means.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Adam
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 10:14 PM Martin Haspelmath <
>> martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de> wrote:
>>
>>> But what exactly is "a clitic word"?
>>>
>>> In Luganda, it may be uncontroversial that there are two words in
>>> *e-bi-déé=by-a-nge*  'my cups', because *by-aa-* also occurs as a
>>> proclitic elsewhere.
>>>
>>> But in Quechua *wasi-bi-chu-ga-n* 'is not at home', how do we know that
>>> there is a "clitic word" *-chu* and a "clitic word" *-ga-n*, rather
>>> than three clitics *=chu*, *=ga*, and *=n*? Is this because *-ga-*
>>> looks like a "verb stem", and we have the idea that verbs are "inflected"?
>>>
>>> Since Schiering et al. (2010) (doi:10.1017/S0022226710000216), it has
>>> been widely known that "p-(rosodic) word" is not a generally applicable
>>> notion, which casts even more doubt on the notion of "clitic word".
>>>
>>> But if we consider items that are traditionally considered "clitics" in
>>> European languages, it's really easy to find complex ones among the bound
>>> person forms, e.g. French *l-e/l-a/l-es*, Italian *m-i/t-i/s-i*, Greek
>>> *to-n/ti-n/tu-s/t-u/ti-s*, Bulgarian *n-i/v-i/g-i*.
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> Am 31.03.21 um 05:56 schrieb Larry M. HYMAN:
>>>
>>> Hi Florian,
>>>
>>> I was expecting lots of offers over the past 16 hours, but none! In
>>> Bantu this is quite usual because clitics often combine noun class
>>> agreement with whatever the marker is--often fused. E.g. in Luganda the
>>> locative enclitic =kô 'on it, a little' consists of class 17 ku- and -o.
>>> The "connective" (associative, genitive) prefixes the noun class agreement
>>> to /-a/ (ebitabo byaa=Walúsimbi  'Walusimbi's books', from class 8 /bi-a/),
>>> and so forth. Several of the possessive pronoun enclitics are bisyllabic,
>>> e.g. class 8 byange = /bi-a-nge/ 'my', as in e-bi-déé =by-a-nge  'my cups'
>>> (where the enclitic saves the length of the root -déé 'bell(s)' from
>>> undergoing final vowel shortening.
>>>
>>> There are lots of such examples in the following paper:
>>>
>>> Hyman, Larry M. & Francis X. Katamba. 1990. Final vowel shortening in
>>> Luganda. *Studies in African Linguistics *21.1-59, available here:
>>>
>>> https://journals.flvc.org/sal/article/view/107438/102758
>>>
>>> Best, Larry
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 4:36 AM <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> I am looking for examples of morphologically complex clitics — i.e.,
>>>> g-words that a) do not form their own p-words and b) consist of multiple
>>>> morphemes. Below are some of the few examples I have found. In (1-2), it is
>>>> an encliticized copula which carries person inflection. In (3), the verb
>>>> complex consists of a finite verb, a converb, and an auxiliary, each their
>>>> own g-word. Both the finite verb and the auxiliary are inflected for first
>>>> person and therefore morphologically complex.
>>>>
>>>> (1) Trió (Cariban)
>>>>     əmamina-nə=pəə*=w-a-e*
>>>>     play-INF=occ.with=1Sa-be-NPST.CERT
>>>>     'I am playing' (Meira 1999: 180)
>>>>
>>>> (2) Ecuadorian Quechua
>>>>     paj  mana wasi-bi=t͡ʃu*=ga-n*
>>>>     3PRO NEG  house-LOC=NEG=be-3
>>>>     'S/he is not at home.' (Muysken 2010: 197)
>>>>
>>>> (3) Nangikurrunggurr (Southern Daly)
>>>>     jawul karicinmade *ŋebem=*wuɹic*=ŋiɹim*                catma
>>>>     spear bent        1SG.S.bash.PRS=fix=1SG.S.sit.PRS straight
>>>>     'I'm sitting straightening this bent spear.' (Reid 2003: 114)
>>>>
>>>> I am grateful for any further examples of such patterns, or references
>>>> to literature on morphologically complex clitics.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Florian
>>>>
>>>> _____________________________
>>>>
>>>> Universität Bern
>>>>
>>>> Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
>>>>
>>>> Florian Matter
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Länggassstrasse 49
>>>>
>>>> CH-3012 Bern
>>>>
>>>> Tel. +41 31 631 37 54
>>>>
>>>> Raum B 168
>>>>
>>>> *florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>*
>>>>
>>>> *http://www.isw.unibe.ch <http://www.isw.unibe.ch/>*
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director,
>>> France-Berkeley Fund
>>> Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
>>> https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Martin Haspelmath
>>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>>> Deutscher Platz 6
>>> D-04103 Leipzighttps://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
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>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Adam J.R. Tallman
>> Post-doctoral Researcher
>> Friedrich Schiller Universität
>> Department of English Studies
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>
>
> --
> Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director,
> France-Berkeley Fund
> Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
> https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman
>

-- 
Adam J.R. Tallman
Post-doctoral Researcher
Friedrich Schiller Universität
Department of English Studies
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