[Lingtyp] Morphologically complex clitics?

Wed Mar 31 20:33:27 UTC 2021

Maybe I'm missing something, but other than the non-trivial problem of
deciding what is vs. isn't a clitic (vs. affix vs. full word), I thought
the request was for phonologically-leaning multi-morph forms that are not
prefixes or suffixes--not whether they form a prosodic word or clitic-word
constituent.

To fully explain the Luganda example, =byange 'my (class 8)' actually is
analyzed as =bi-a-nge  (cl.8-associative-1sg). I cited only unambiguously
motivated morph-breaks, but if you want to analyze le, la and les as having
more than one morph (which I don't find attractive), then we could further
analyze =byange as =bi-a-ng-e, since there are other possessives that end
in the final formative -e: -by-aff-e 'our', -by-a-mmw-e 'your pl.',
-by-a-bw-e 'their', and bye 'his/her' could be bi-a-e-e, although the
finall -e isn't needed. (A slight problem, though, with byo 'your sg.',
definitely no -e).

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 1:14 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
>
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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
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