[Lingtyp] Morphologically complex clitics?

[Martin Haspelmath]

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 
> <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 
> <mailto: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
>
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>
>     _florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch <mailto: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 
> <https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman>
>
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522

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