Asymmetries in the prosodic phrasing of function words: Another look at the suffixing preference

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that across the world’s languages there is a fairly strong asymmetry in the affixation of grammatical material, in that suffixes considerably outnumber prefixes in typological databases. This article argues that prosody, specifically prosodic phrasing, plays an important part in bringing about this asymmetry. Prosodic word and phrase boundaries may occur after a clitic function word preceding its lexical host with sufficient frequency so as to impede the fusion required for affixhood. Conversely, prosodic boundaries rarely, if ever, occur between a lexical host and a clitic function word following it. Hence, prosody does not impede the fusion process between lexical hosts and postposed function words, which therefore become affixes more easily. Evidence for the asymmetry in prosodic phrasing is provided from two sources: disfluencies, and ditropic cliticization, that is, the fact that grammatical proclitics may be phonological enclitics (i.e. phrased with a preceding host), but grammatical enclitics are never phonological proclitics. Earlier explanations for the suffixing preference have neglected prosody almost completely and thus also missed the related asymmetry in ditropic cliticization. More importantly, the evidence from prosodic phrasing suggests a new venue for explaining the suffixing preference. The asymmetry in prosodic phrasing, which, according to the hypothesis proposed here, is a major factor underlying the suffixing preference, has a natural basis in the mechanics of turn-taking as well as in the mechanics of speech production.*

Baseline and elaboration

“…To be sure, unhelpfully is less than optimal owing to the intermixture of prefixation and suffixation; processing is naturally simpler if each phonological augmentation proceeds in the same direction vis-à-vis the stem. Across languages, moreover, suffixing is generally more prevalent than prefixing (Himmelmann 2014). A factor contributing to the preference for suffixation is that the inherent priority of a baseline is reinforced by the sequence of phonological expression.…”

The Development of Prefixation in Time and Space

“…It is also widely known that cross‐linguistically postposed grammatical elements are mostly suffixes whereas among the preposed grammatical elements prefixes and function words are roughly equally frequent (cf. Himmelmann : 927–929). This latter fact seems to imply that the last step in the sketched evolution of a function word into an affix, the univerbation with the lexical host, is more frequent in the case of function words syntactically postposed to their lexical hosts than with function words syntactically preposed to them.…”

“…Recently it has been argued that this difference in the behaviour of function words, and therefore partially the suffixing preference itself, is ultimately caused by a typologically widespread asymmetry in the prosodic phrasing of clitics (cf. Himmelmann ). It has been assumed that postposed function words univerbate with their lexical hosts more easily because, after having become a clitic, they are usually prosodically phrased with the lexical hosts on their left side.…”

“…Himmelmann (: 933–945) argues that disfluencies in the production of an utterance, which might manifest themselves in pauses optionally filled with items like English uh , are cross‐linguistically more common between a preposed function word and its lexical host than anywhere else in the utterance. This is demonstrated for such different languages as English and German (spoken in Europe), Japanese (spoken in Asia), and Tagalog (spoken in Oceania).…”

“…The so‐called ‘ditropic clitics’ are stressless function words which are syntactically preposed to their lexical hosts being at the same time prosodically phrased to whatever stressed word happens to be at their left (cf. Cysouw ; Himmelmann : 945–955). Cf.…”