167Es necesario reconocer que la exactitud de los modelos de clasificación por

At this point, it will be useful to combine the insights provided by our case studies and the rest of the discussion from this chapter with the theoretical assumptions from Chapter Two, and thus outline a broader perspective on how languages develop new affixes. In this way, we will also address the apparent “gradualness” often attributed to grammaticalization- type changes, and reconcile the time-depth required for “gradualness” with the more punctual nature of change as described thus far.

In Chapter Two, I argued that linguistic change is non-deterministic, and may be halted or even reversed at any time. Clitics need not necessarily turn into affixes; whether they do depends on other features of the grammar, other changes in the language (phonological or syntactic), and factors external to the language. There is also an element of chance involved. The case studies discussed in this chapter all involve complete affixation, but along the way, we observed contrasting cases where no affixation occurred: the development of the Oscan locative occurred in the dialect of Agnone, but not that of Bantia; not all Piattino subject clitics became affixes; the affixation of Amharic -all did not occur in relative clauses, and never occurred at all in closely related Tigrinya, even though the latter has the same construction.61 _{Each of these examples points to the complexity of the factors}

involved in affixation: it is not a deterministic process, and it does not proceed as smoothly or as evenly as it is often described in the literature.

It is true that M-words that become affixes tend to have passed through various intermediate stages first. These intermediate stages are what grammaticalization theorists are speaking of when they write about “clines” of grammaticality or the “pathway” from independent lexical item to bound affix. Their error lies in the teleological assumption that each stage necessarily leads to another.

In 3.3, phonological primacy was cited as a very important factor in determining whether learners analyse a particular morpheme as a Sub-word or an M-word. Speakers tend to de-stress non-lexical forms (except in cases of emphasis), so when a former lexical item acquires grammatical functions, it is likely to develop both reduced and unreduced forms, which may co-exist for centuries, or longer. As long as speakers have the intuition that the reduced and unreduced forms are the same lexeme, they are unlikely to interpret the former as a bound affix. After several generations, however, only the reduced form may be left in a particular structural position or functional capacity, thus giving rise to a clitic.62 _{If the}

61 _{Tigrinya also shows that linguistic forms which have acquired grammatical functions may remain} phonologically unchanged independent M-words.

62 _{The finer details of the mechanism underlying this stage are complicated and somewhat problematic,} in that the line between contraction and allomorphy is not well delimited. Similarly, it is not clear whether the variation between reduced and unreduced forms is on the grammatical level (along the lines of the competing grammars discussed in the work of Kroch 1994) or the phonological level (e.g. an optional reduction rule, like the rule reducing I would to I’d). Also unclear is the role of phonological processes in obscuring the link between the reduced and unreduced forms, or whether these processes are phonological at all; extreme allomorphy is something speakers are generally accustomed to (e.g. both the Old Irish verb téit ‘goes’ and its compound do∙tét ‘comes’ are seven ways suppletive – and not entirely in the same ways). MacKenzie (in prep) demonstrates that auxiliary contraction in English can be sensitive to properties of the host (e.g. auxiliaries are far more likely to

60 reduced form of the clitic has become the underlying phonological form for speakers, it becomes a special clitic (in the terminology of Zwicky 1985).63 At this point, t_{he relationship}

between special clitic and the original lexeme will be etymological only; for speakers, they are now two items. This is particularly probable if the clitic has undergone further phonological changes. Then, if a new clitic meets the structural requirements for potential affixation, the set of its potential hosts may become progressively more coherent64_{, so that its}

distribution becomes much narrower than it was previously, and the number of elements which may intervene between the clitic and its future stem is reduced. Now the probability that the proto-affix is linearly adjacent to its stem increases, and with it the potential for speakers to analyse them as a unit.65

It is reasonable to say that each development described in the previous paragraph builds on the previous one. If the lexeme had never developed a functional usage, it is rather unlikely that it would have acquired a reduced variant. If, for whatever reason, the connection between the reduced and unreduced forms remains transparent to speakers, the unreduced form is unlikely to gain special status in the grammar. But it is not reasonable to say that each development ensures that the “next” development must take place. Again: changes can halt, or reserve themselves, at any stage. For instance, while the set of elements to which a special clitic attaches may narrow, it is equally plausible that syntactic changes in the grammar will cause the set of elements to broaden, thus reducing the likelihood of potential affixation rather sharply. The existence of preconditions for particular diachronic developments does not render a change teleological.

Recall, as well, that the structural changes involved in this type of morphosyntactic change are actually quite small: an additional movement operation, or a slightly different structural position. If the data can accommodate both analyses, there is no reason a priori

why the children of a generation of innovators would necessarily acquire the innovative variant, thus “undoing” the change.

This brings us to the issue of “gradualness”. The changes illustrated here are both punctual and discrete: a child acquires a grammar slightly different from that of his elders. There is no room for glacial-type gradual changes under this account, yet it is true that it can take centuries for commonplace garden-variety affixes to develop. As discussed in the previous chapter, this apparent paradox is largely a consequence of identifying the change as “independent lexical item to bound functional affix” rather than recognising that what is actually happening is a series of micro-changes punctuating long stretches of stasis.

Innovations can take a long time to spread, and an innovative grammar can take generations to completely replace an older grammar. The synchronic situation is complicated by the inevitable contact between conservative speakers and innovators; it is likely that innovators will acquire the conservative dialect and become bi-dialectal. The astute reader will have noticed that, with the exception of the “toy” example of Oscan, none of the case studies discussed in this chapter are as straightforward as the usual stereotype. In fact, the only case studies cited in the literature that do not have any complicating factors are those that are completely reconstructed and, consequently, have existed as such for a very long time,

contract with pronouns than with nouns), thus showing that contraction is not a purely phonological

process.

63 _{Zwicky (1985) identifies two kinds of clitics: “simple” clitics, which result from allegro speech, and} “special” clitics, which are underlyingly clitics.

64 _{Cf. the selectivity criterion of Zwicky and Pullum (1983): affixes are more selective about their hosts} than clitics.

65 _{This could be accompanied by further phonological changes, particularly the longer the clitic} remains in the language; in particular, it may cease to be a full syllable due to e.g. syncope or apocope. The affix-to-be may also become subject to word-level phonological processes like vowel harmony (and may start to affect the base as well). Phonological changes may also affect the stem-to-be. The closer the phonological relationship between the stem and affix, the tighter the impression of unity between them becomes.

61 possibly millennia in some instances. The examples here are of more recent origin, and therefore demonstrate that there are many more complications in affix-genesis than the standard picture allows for.

The variation resulting from the co-existence of two discrete grammars could, in principle, result in a synchronic situation which resembled some intermediate stage on a cline, but only on a superficial level. Ideally, closer examination of empirical data ought to allow for the detection of principled variation emerging in a few crucial contexts.66 _{For example, it}

could be the case that some speakers had a grammar P featuring an affix-like entity Q which is optional in a context C, while other speakers have an innovative grammar P' in which Q is obligatory in C.67

Hypothetically, conjunction is a good potential candidate for a diagnostic C, since affixes and clitics often pattern differently under conjunction. Suppose, for instance, that the item of interest is an innovative tense suffix -T. A speaker using grammar P might allow -T

to appear on only one verb in a sequence, with the others understood to be under its scope, while a speaker using grammar P' might require -T to appear on each verb in a sequence to which it is relevant. Innovators may also change the contexts in which the affix is found. If the new affix is a case marker, for instance, they may, for the first time, begin to produce it on adjectives agreeing with the case-marked noun, as the speakers of the Agnone dialect of Oscan did with their new locative suffix -en (in contrast to the more conservative speakers of the Bantina dialect). Further innovations are possible; speakers might e.g. restrict the use of an affix to particular conjugation classes, or extend it to new environments where previously it could not occur. One of the two competing hypotheses about the origin of the Aeolic Greek consonant-stem dative plural ending -essi is an example of the latter type. The older ending was -si, and therefore the dative plural of an s-stem noun would have ended in -es-si; the hypothesis is that this was reanalysed as a single morpheme -essi and then extended to stems ending in other consonants.68

Even after an innovative analysis has spread throughout a speech community, all speakers are using it, and variation has stabilised, the affix in question still may not necessarily behave like a stereotypical affix, as the examples presented in the previous section illustrate. If there is enough evidence for independence of a particular terminal somewhere in the grammar, speakers will acquire it. Affixes which give no direct syntactic evidence for ever being other than affixes (e.g. the Germanic dental preterite, the “classic” Indo-European inflectional affixes, or Semitic verbal agreement affixes, &c.) may well require centuries if not millennia to evolve as such.

The social aspects of this situation are beyond the scope of this dissertation.

66 _{This variation, both within the idiolect of the individual and between speakers in the larger} community, raises some interesting theoretical questions. In theories which explain diachronic affixation through inviolable universals, one might predict that speakers would be forced to choose one analysis over another, since UG ought to support only one analysis if universals are implicated. The existence of variation at the level at which it occurs seems to run counter to that prediction. On the other hand, variation is not a problem for theories in which UG is a set of parameters with toggle- settings.

67 _{Assuming, of course, that textual and/or comparative evidence makes clear that the clitic grammar is} the elder; cf. Chapters Two and Five for the problem of determining the direction of change in the absence of solid comparative or historical evidence.

68 _{This particular innovation occurred in the Aeolic dialects (Boeotian, Lesbian, Thessalian) as well as} the Delian, Locrian, and Pamphylian dialects. The alternative hypothesis is that -essi was formed on the nominative plural -es, by analogy with the vocalic stems, which had nominative plurals in -ai/-oi and dative plurals in -aisi/-oisi. Regardless of its veracity, however, the s-stem hypothesis is useful for illustrative purposes.

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