The exceptional morphology of Tura numerals and restrictors: Endoclitics, infixes and pseudowords
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Dmitry Idiatov
Abstract
This paper offers a comprehensive account of the exceptional morphosyntactic behaviour of Tura numerals. It explores the ability of the roots of Tura numerals to be split up by the so-called “intensifiers”, or better “restrictors”, which, remarkably, are neither affixes nor clitics in other contexts. This typologically rare phenomenon proves to have interesting implications for morphology, syntax and pragmatics. I claim that some of these constructions result from conventionalization and subsequent univerbation of certain pragmatically marked collocations. The others are a product of reanalysis by analogy that occurred in one specific syntactic environment. The need for an adequate synchronic morphological analysis of the constructions at issue made it necessary to address some theoretical questions, such as endoclisis, word integrity, and constancy of the morphological status of linguistic entities. In most cases when restrictors are used in a numeral-internal position, they are claimed to be infixed roots or infixes. In addition, the notion of “pseudoword(form)” is proposed to account for some of the facts attested. The typologically highly interesting category of restrictors is also examined in detail from syntactic, semantic, etymological and morphological perspectives.
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
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Articles in the same Issue
- La réduplication des verbes monosyllabiques dans les langues kwa de Côte d’Ivoire
- The exceptional morphology of Tura numerals and restrictors: Endoclitics, infixes and pseudowords
- Kay Williamson, 1935–2005
- Hausa, by Philip J. Jaggar
- Research Mate in African Linguistics: Focus on Cameroon, edited by Ngessimo M. Mutaka and Sammy B. Chumbow
- Description du kikae, parler swahili du sud de Zanzibar, suivie de cinq contes, by Odile Racine-Issa
- La force des choses ou l’épreuve ‘nilo-saharienne’, by Robert Nicolaï
- The Locative Class in Shengologa (Kgalagadi), by Sabine Neumann
- An Anthology of Tashelhiyt Berber Folktales, by Harry Stroomer
- Continuity and Divergence in the Bantu Languages, by Bastin, Yvonne, André Coupez, and Michael Mann
- Studies in Buli Grammar, edited by Michael Kenstowicz and George Akanlig-Pare
- Recent publications in African linguistics
