There are no special clitics
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Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero
Abstract
The hypothesis of Clitic Idiosyncrasy holds that special clitics are neither words nor affixes, but constitute a separate type of object whose behaviour is partly governed by dedicated grammatical mechanisms. In an influential implementation of this idea, Judith L. Klavans and Stephen R. Anderson claim that special clitics are phrasal affixes, introduced by a set of postlexical morphological rules that is separate from stem- and word-level morphology. This paper criticizes the hypothesis of Clitic Idiosyncrasy and its implementation through phrasal affixation. First, we show that the identification of a distinct class of special clitics depends on a concept of ‘special syntax’ that is not well-defined: in many instances, there are syntactically autonomous units that exhibit the same behaviour as putative special clitics. Secondly, we note that the theory of phrasal affixation incorrectly predicts that special clitics will be invisible to lexical morphophonology. Thirdly, we demonstrate that, in certain crucial cases, phrasal affixation cannot place special clitics in the right positions: in Bulgarian, for example, the definiteness marker is suffixed to the head of the first syntactic phrase immediately contained within the NP. We show that this behaviour is straightforwardly handled by a theory of syntactic feature-passing within subtrees that allows phrasal features to be transferred now to heads, now to edges. This theory is independently motivated by phenomena such as the English ’s genitive and Old Georgian Suffixaufnahme.
Abstract
The hypothesis of Clitic Idiosyncrasy holds that special clitics are neither words nor affixes, but constitute a separate type of object whose behaviour is partly governed by dedicated grammatical mechanisms. In an influential implementation of this idea, Judith L. Klavans and Stephen R. Anderson claim that special clitics are phrasal affixes, introduced by a set of postlexical morphological rules that is separate from stem- and word-level morphology. This paper criticizes the hypothesis of Clitic Idiosyncrasy and its implementation through phrasal affixation. First, we show that the identification of a distinct class of special clitics depends on a concept of ‘special syntax’ that is not well-defined: in many instances, there are syntactically autonomous units that exhibit the same behaviour as putative special clitics. Secondly, we note that the theory of phrasal affixation incorrectly predicts that special clitics will be invisible to lexical morphophonology. Thirdly, we demonstrate that, in certain crucial cases, phrasal affixation cannot place special clitics in the right positions: in Bulgarian, for example, the definiteness marker is suffixed to the head of the first syntactic phrase immediately contained within the NP. We show that this behaviour is straightforwardly handled by a theory of syntactic feature-passing within subtrees that allows phrasal features to be transferred now to heads, now to edges. This theory is independently motivated by phenomena such as the English ’s genitive and Old Georgian Suffixaufnahme.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction 1
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Part 1. Interfaces with syntax and phonology
- Case conflict in Greek free relatives 21
- There are no special clitics 57
- Inflectional morphology and syntax in correspondence 97
- At the boundary of morphology and syntax 137
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Part 2. Interfaces with semantics and the lexicon
- The feature of tense at the interface of morphology and semantics 171
- The aspectual properties of nominalization structures 195
- Determiner and Noun phrase coordination in modern Greek 221
- The pre-conditions for suppletion 239
- Archi morphology from a lexicographic perspective 267
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Part 3. Interfaces in psycholinguistics and language acquisition
- Morphology and syntax dissociation in SLA 291
- The role of morphology in grammatical gender assignment 321
- Index 351
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1. Interfaces with syntax and phonology
- Case conflict in Greek free relatives 21
- There are no special clitics 57
- Inflectional morphology and syntax in correspondence 97
- At the boundary of morphology and syntax 137
-
Part 2. Interfaces with semantics and the lexicon
- The feature of tense at the interface of morphology and semantics 171
- The aspectual properties of nominalization structures 195
- Determiner and Noun phrase coordination in modern Greek 221
- The pre-conditions for suppletion 239
- Archi morphology from a lexicographic perspective 267
-
Part 3. Interfaces in psycholinguistics and language acquisition
- Morphology and syntax dissociation in SLA 291
- The role of morphology in grammatical gender assignment 321
- Index 351
