Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

198 Amanda Pounder
While it is true that -mente and its various Romance reflexes have an autonomous
word, later a compounding element, as its origin, it now functions as a suffix (contra
Zagona 1990). It may be that a syntactic ellipsis structure was once responsible
for the formal asymmetry, but for later and modern speakers, it is morphological
ellipsis/brachylogy that is applied here. It is interesting that it is in adverbial coordination
that formal asymmetry obtains, where brachylogy is not a highly salient
device elsewhere in Romance. One reason why this is a rather favourable context
for brachylogy to occur is that the range of formation-type alternatives is smaller
than elsewhere in derivation; in English and Romance, there is generally one, possibly
two, derivational suffix(es) in the adverb-formation domain. Therefore, the
likelihood that given any pair of adjective bases, a -ly or a -mente suffix can be supplied
to fill the apparent gap is extremely high, if not absolute. This would not be
the case for many other derivational and inflectional functions.
Formal predictability is a strong factor elsewhere as a facilitator for morphological
brachylogy. In German adjective inflection and comparative/superlative
formation, the suffixes responsible are invariant, and in Earlier Modern German,
we find that brachylogy is possible here, as shown in (31).
(31) das … schön= und kost-bar-st-e Bau=Werck
the.neut beautiful- and cost-suff-superl-neut.nom building
‘the most beautiful and delightful building’ (Abraham a Sancta Clara 1709: 49)
Here, two superlative adjectives are conjoined. The first appears as a bare stem
(and its fragmentary status is marked in the printed text with a hyphen), while
the second bears both the superlative suffix -st and the adjectival concord suffix
-e that would otherwise also appear on the first adjective (das … schönste und
kostbarste Bauwerck). To interpret the structure correctly, the hearer/reader must
listen for the intonation indicating continuation or note the hyphen, wait for the
appropriate morphology to be supplied, and then reconstitute the fragment of the
first conjunct. This job would be made more difficult if, as well, he had to reconstitute
formally different morphological material. In the Turkish example presented
in Section 1, repeated here as (32), we have a similar case.
(32 (=1)) a. ev-ler-de ve dükkan-lar-da
house-pl-loc and shop-pl-loc
‘in houses and shops’
b. ev ve dükkan-lar-da
house- and shop-pl-loc
‘in houses and shops’
The plural and case suffixes are invariant (predictable allomorphy is permitted, as
the example shows) in Turkish, and morphological brachylogy, called “suspended
affixation” by Turkologists, is the norm in inflection in both spoken and written