Inflection and derivation Clitics and cliticization

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

The distinction between inflection and derivation is traditionally widely used in linguistics, but it is hard to define these notions satisfactorily independent of a particular language Bybee 1985. In this description I will make the following distinction: 1. Inflection refers to those morphological processes that mark person deixis. Specifically, inflection involves affixes that mark the subject, direct object and indirect object on the verb and the possessiveagentive suffixes on nouns and participles. Each of these four inflectional categories has its own inventory, the members of which stand in a paradigmatic relationship to each other. In addition, the category of subject inflection is made up of three subclasses. Inflectional morphology on the verb will be treated in detail in Chapter 4, while possessive inflection is discussed in 4.9 and in 5.4. 2. Derivational morphology covers all remaining processes of affixation and reduplication, covering a wide range of semantic categories such as aspect, causation and nominalization. Some derivational affixes have grammatically determined allomorphs. Derivational morphology is the subject of Chapter 10. Regularity, productivity and change of word class are not the distinguishing parameters in this definition. Rather, inflection covers the traditional category of verbal conjugation, which in this case is extended to nominal conjugation.

3.1.4. Clitics and cliticization

Clitics take a position midway between words and affixes. They constitute meaningful elements that differ from affixes in, for example, their position and their behaviour with respect to stress rules and other phenomena. In Muna there exists only one clitic element, the pausal clitic -a for a full dis- cussion of meaning and usage of this clitic, see 9.22. The reasons for calling 3 WORDS AND WORD CLASSES 43 it a clitic are both phonological and grammatical. First, -a is the only element that does not affect word stress when it is present. As noted in 2.5, stress is normally on the penultimate syllable of the word and affixes are considered part of the word. The addition of -a, however, does not affect the placement of stress. In the following examples ` marks a following stressed syllable: `lima arm li`maku my arm lima`kumo my arm emphatic lima`kumoa my arm emphatic pausal Grammatically it differs from affixes in that it is not added to the word, but rather to the phrase for instance after negators. Also, its meaning as a pausal marker is markedly different from the kind of meaning derivational affixes usually have. In the illustrative sentences in this grammar, -a will simply be glossed as CL clitic. Cliticization is a phonological process whereby an independent word is phonologically attached to the preceding or following word. Two such processes occur in Muna, whereby a monosyllabic word is pre-cliticized to the following verb and loses its vowel: 1. The preposition so for in purpose clauses see 9.17: so a-k[um]ala ~ s-a-k[um]ala that I go so ae-gholi ~ s-ae-gholi that I buy 2. The negator pa not future in negative clauses see 8.5.2: pa o-l[um]imba ~ p-o-l[um]imba you will not go out pa o-[m]ondoi ~ p-o-[m]ondoi you will not be able The forms so and pa in the first column are full words. Their distribution is parallel with other prepositions Chapter 6 and negators 8.5 that do not cliticize. In the second column, however, these elements have become clitics, as they are part of the following word. This phenomenon of vowel merging is also found with the prefixes sa- and ta- see 10.2.44 and 10.2.48.

3.2. Word classes