Closed class categories 93
neng ‘only’
sa ‘1’
dhu ‘2’
pa' ‘4’
nem ‘6’
Clitics can be identified phonologically and morphologically. Phonologi-
cally, they undergo rules relevant to what Stevens refers to as ‘dot juncture’,
and those that end in [a] invoke a special rule with roots that have an initial [].
Stevens’ ‘dot juncture’ rules and the glottal stop insertion rule are discussed in
Chapter 2. Briefly though, when the clitic form of ‘1’ combines with the form
ella ‘already’ [lla], a glottal stop is epenthesized between the adjacent vowels.
(102) [sa] + [əlla] [saəlla] ‘after’
‘one’ ‘already’
Another phonological process that identifies certain clitics inserts a palatal glide
between two adjoining [ɛ] when the first is an affix or clitic. Thus, when the
object voice prefix occurs with a root initial [ɛ], [j] is epenthensized, as in (103).
(103) [ɛ] + [ɛnɔm] [ɛjɛnɔm] ‘be drunk’
OV ‘drink’
The same process applies when the object of the preposition e ‘at’ begins with
[ɛ], as in (104).
(104) [ɛ] + [ɛlat kafɛ] [ɛjɛlat kafɛ] ‘at the Elat Cafe’
‘at’ ‘Elat Cafe’
This process does not occur in other environments in which there are two conti-
guous [], as between a verbal suffix and the following object, (105).
(105) [nɔlɔɛ] + [ɛpu] [nɔlɔɛ ɛpu] / *[nɔlɛjɛpu] ‘help mother’
‘help’ ‘mother’
Morphologically, clitics can sometimes be incorporated into words. This
is particularly common with the causative prefix pa-. For example, there are
options with respect to the formation of causative reciprocal, but one of them is
to incorporate the morpheme salang/patang into the derived causative. In (106)
and (107) the causative morpheme occurs as ma, the Actor Voice signaled by
the homorganic nasal.