Clitics in dependency morphology
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Thomas Groß
Abstract
Clitics are challenging for many theories of grammar because they straddle syntax and morphology. In most theories, cliticization is considered a phrasal phenomenon: clitics are affix-like expressions that attach to whole phrases. Constituency-based grammars in particular struggle with the exact constituent structure of such expressions. This paper proposes a solution based on catena-based dependency morphology. This theory is an extension of catena-based dependency syntax. A syntactic catena is any word or any combination of words that are continuous with respect to dominance. Likewise, any morph or any combination of morphs that is continuous with respect to dominance form a morph catena. Employing the concept of morph catena together with a hyphenation convention leads to a parsimonious and insightful understanding of cliticization.
Abstract
Clitics are challenging for many theories of grammar because they straddle syntax and morphology. In most theories, cliticization is considered a phrasal phenomenon: clitics are affix-like expressions that attach to whole phrases. Constituency-based grammars in particular struggle with the exact constituent structure of such expressions. This paper proposes a solution based on catena-based dependency morphology. This theory is an extension of catena-based dependency syntax. A syntactic catena is any word or any combination of words that are continuous with respect to dominance. Likewise, any morph or any combination of morphs that is continuous with respect to dominance form a morph catena. Employing the concept of morph catena together with a hyphenation convention leads to a parsimonious and insightful understanding of cliticization.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Authors vii
- Foreword ix
- Dependency in Language 1
- Delimitation of information between grammatical rules and lexicon 33
- Sentence structure and discourse structure 53
- The Copenhagen Dependency Treebank (CDT) 75
- Creating a dependency syntactic treebank 99
- A proposal for a multilevel linguistic representation of Spanish personal names 119
- Coordination of verbal dependents in Old French 141
- Dependency annotation of coordination for learner language 161
- The dependency distance hypothesis for bilingual code-switching 183
- Dependencies over prosodic boundary tones in spontaneous spoken Hebrew 207
- Clitics in dependency morphology 229
- On the word order of Actor and Patient in Czech 253
- Type 2 Rising 273
- Wh-copying in German as replacement 299
- Representation of zero and dummy subject pronouns within multi-strata dependency framework 325
- Index 347
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Authors vii
- Foreword ix
- Dependency in Language 1
- Delimitation of information between grammatical rules and lexicon 33
- Sentence structure and discourse structure 53
- The Copenhagen Dependency Treebank (CDT) 75
- Creating a dependency syntactic treebank 99
- A proposal for a multilevel linguistic representation of Spanish personal names 119
- Coordination of verbal dependents in Old French 141
- Dependency annotation of coordination for learner language 161
- The dependency distance hypothesis for bilingual code-switching 183
- Dependencies over prosodic boundary tones in spontaneous spoken Hebrew 207
- Clitics in dependency morphology 229
- On the word order of Actor and Patient in Czech 253
- Type 2 Rising 273
- Wh-copying in German as replacement 299
- Representation of zero and dummy subject pronouns within multi-strata dependency framework 325
- Index 347
