Words Affixes Words, affixes, clitics

Chapter 3 Words and word classes This chapter will form a prelude to the syntax and morphology chapters of this Muna grammar. I will first discuss the difference between word, affix and clitic, while the rest of the chapter is concerned with the division of words into word classes and a succinct discussion of these classes. A number of issues relating to the area of word classes will conclude this chapter.

3.1. Words, affixes, clitics

3.1.1. Words

In this section I will define some concepts which will be used throughout this grammar. Based on Reichling 1935 the word can be defined as a unit of phonological and morphological constancy and syntagmatic mobility. In other words, in a word such as fotu head, the four phonemes are in a given fixed order and cannot be changed without altering the meaning or resulting in a non- existent word. Morphological constancy is shown by the fact that in a word such as no-feka-nggela-hi-e-mo she has already made it clean, the order of the morphemes is fixed. Given these six morphemes, this is the only possible ordering. Syntagmatic mobility can be shown by replacement, movement, separa- bility and isolation. In combination these tests will show the division between words, groups of words and affixes. Take for example the following two sentences, which are almost identical in meaning although there is a dif- ference in emphasis: 1 a. inodi a-kamokula-mo I am already old I 1sR-old-PF b. a-kamokula-mo inodi I am already old 1sR-old-PF I The fact that the two constituents of these two clauses can be moved around shows that they are separate words. 42 A GRAMMAR OF THE MUNA LANGUAGE

3.1.2. Affixes

Affixes can be defined as a closed class of grammatical elements within the word. They are bound morphemes and cannot occur on their own. A fair number of affixes change the word class of the root to which they are affixed. Formally, the following categories can be distinguished: prefixes, suffixes and infixes. Another formal process involving word-internal structural changes is reduplication, which in some cases is combined with affixation to signal one semantic unit. Examples of affixation: 1. Prefix fo- on verbal bases; resulting meaning: causative. ndawu fall fo-ndawu drop 2. Combination of prefix ka- and reduplication on nominal bases; resulting meaning: diminutive. tomba basket ka-tomba-tomba small basket

3.1.3. Inflection and derivation