Trapped morphology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10141198 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alice C Harris (0000-0001-7455-1567, Stony Brook University), Jan Terje Faarlund (University of Oslo) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 289-315 |
| Publication date | 2006-06-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-2267 • E-ISSN: 1469-7742 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0022226706003902 |
| OpenAlex | W4243210340 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
We argue that there is a diachronic process, distinct from phonological erosion, that results in the loss of inflectional morphology that is trapped when a clitic attaches to a host, becoming an affix. This is supported with attested examples from Mainland Scandinavian, Georgian, Spanish, and Greek, as well as shallow, well-accepted reconstructions from Slavic and Georgian. It is further supported by new reconstructions from Zoque (Mixe-Zoquean) and Andi (Northeast Caucasian). For example, in Old Norse the postposed article is a clitic, and there is a case ending between the noun stem and the article: hest-s=in-s ‘the horse (gen)’. The first s is trapped morphology, and it is subsequently lost: hest-en-s . Similarly, in pre-Georgian, the postposed article traps the ergative case marker, *- n : * k'ac-n=ma-n ‘the man (erg)’; it is subsequently lost: k'ac-man . We argue that the loss of trapped morphology is not sound change or another phonological process, but a morphological process
Affix · Biology · Clitic · Genitive case · Georgian · Inflection · Linguistics · Morphology (biology · Noun · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Paleontology · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2023 (16) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |