Editing Morphology (linguistics) (section)

====Prosodic word vs. morphological word====
Here are examples from other languages of the failure of a single phonological word to coincide with a single morphological word form. In [[Latin]], one way to express the concept of '<span style="font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">NOUN-PHRASE</span><sub>1</sub> and <span style="font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">NOUN-PHRASE</span><sub>2</sub>' (as in "apples and oranges") is to suffix '-que' to the second noun phrase: "apples oranges-and". An extreme level of the theoretical quandary posed by some phonological words is provided by the [[Kwak'wala]] language.{{efn|Formerly known as [[Kwakiutl]], Kwak'wala belongs to the Northern branch of the Wakashan language family. "Kwakiutl" is still used to refer to the tribe itself, along with other terms.}} In Kwak'wala, as in a great many other languages, meaning relations between nouns, including possession and "semantic case", are formulated by [[affixes]], instead of by independent "words". The three-word English phrase, "with his club", in which 'with' identifies its dependent noun phrase as an instrument and 'his' denotes a possession relation, would consist of two words or even one word in many languages. Unlike most other languages, Kwak'wala semantic affixes phonologically attach not to the lexeme they pertain to semantically but to the preceding lexeme. Consider the following example (in Kwak'wala, sentences begin with what corresponds to an English verb):{{efn|Example taken from {{harvtxt|Foley|1998}} using a modified transcription. This phenomenon of Kwak'wala was reported by Jacobsen as cited in {{harvtxt|van Valin|LaPolla|1997}}.}}

{{interlinear|indent=3|glossing=no abbr
|kwixʔid-i-da bəgwanəma<sub>i</sub>-χ-a q'asa-s-is<sub>i</sub> t'alwagwayu
|clubbed-PIVOT-DETERMINER man-ACCUSATIVE-DETERMINER otter-INSTRUMENTAL-3SG-POSSESSIVE club
|"the man clubbed the otter with his club."}}

That is, to a speaker of Kwak'wala, the sentence does not contain the "words" 'him-the-otter' or 'with-his-club' Instead, the [[descriptive marker|markers]] -''i-da'' (<span style="font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">PIVOT</span>-'the'), referring to "man", attaches not to the noun ''bəgwanəma'' ("man") but to the verb; the markers -''χ-a'' (<span style="font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">ACCUSATIVE</span>-'the'), referring to ''otter'', attach to ''bəgwanəma'' instead of to ''q'asa'' ('otter'), etc. In other words, a speaker of Kwak'wala does not perceive the sentence to consist of these phonological words:

{{interlinear|indent=3|glossing=no abbr
|kwixʔid i-da-bəgwanəma χ-a-q'asa s-is<sub>i</sub>-t'alwagwayu
|clubbed PIVOT-the-man<sub>i</sub> hit-the-otter with-his<sub>i</sub>-club
|}}

A central publication on this topic is the volume edited by Dixon and Aikhenvald (2002), examining the mismatch between prosodic-phonological and grammatical definitions of "word" in various Amazonian, Australian Aboriginal, Caucasian, Eskimo, Indo-European, Native North American, West African, and sign languages. Apparently, a wide variety of languages make use of the hybrid linguistic unit [[clitic]], possessing the grammatical features of independent words but the [[prosody (linguistics)|prosodic]]-phonological lack of freedom of [[bound morpheme]]s. The intermediate status of clitics poses a considerable challenge to linguistic theory.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/704513339|title=Word : a cross-linguistic typology|date=2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press|others=Robert M. W. Dixon, A. I︠U︡. Aĭkhenvalʹd|isbn=978-0-511-48624-1|location=Cambridge|oclc=704513339}}</ref>