Clitics have raised much discussion, mainly with regard to their status. As they, generally speaking, do not bear a lexical accent, they cannot be considered prototypical words. Indeed, clitics share features of bound morphology. However, some of them have a morphological behavior similar to prototypical words: typically, clitic pronouns can inflect, and in Greek they actually do, displaying fully-fledged paradigms which are similar to those of accented pronouns. For this reason, and even more for their distribution, they hardly qualify as affixes. It then seems better to consider clitics as non-prototypical words, located at some point in the middle of the continuum between free and bound morphemes. Greek has a vast array of clitics; in addition, various items which bear a graphic accent share the placement restrictions of clitics. Such items are traditionally called prepositives and postpositives in grammatical descriptions, a terminology which reaches back to Apollonius Dyskolos (2nd c. CE).

Clitics

LURAGHI, SILVIA
2014-01-01

Abstract

Clitics have raised much discussion, mainly with regard to their status. As they, generally speaking, do not bear a lexical accent, they cannot be considered prototypical words. Indeed, clitics share features of bound morphology. However, some of them have a morphological behavior similar to prototypical words: typically, clitic pronouns can inflect, and in Greek they actually do, displaying fully-fledged paradigms which are similar to those of accented pronouns. For this reason, and even more for their distribution, they hardly qualify as affixes. It then seems better to consider clitics as non-prototypical words, located at some point in the middle of the continuum between free and bound morphemes. Greek has a vast array of clitics; in addition, various items which bear a graphic accent share the placement restrictions of clitics. Such items are traditionally called prepositives and postpositives in grammatical descriptions, a terminology which reaches back to Apollonius Dyskolos (2nd c. CE).
2014
9789004225978
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11571/1099596
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact