On the notion of “secondary wordform”

Vladimir Plungian
Vinogradov Russian Language Institute RAS / Institute of Linguistics RAS

Abstract: This article introduces the concept of the “secondary wordform”, defined as the result of local morphologization of multiple linearly adjacent units within a text, leading to a complete loss of their syntactic autonomy. Such units may subsequently undergo fusion and other morphological modifications. I propose a preliminary classification of types of secondary wordforms, covering a wide range of morphological phenomena, and discuss their significance for cross-linguistic descriptive analysis. The concluding section examines the evolution of forms with initial n- in the oblique cases of Russian third-person pronouns, illustrating the complex dynamics of morphologization within a specific construction.

Keywords: morphology, wordform, clitics, morphologization, fusion, secondary wordform

For citation: Plungian V. On the notion of “secondary wordform”. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2024. Vol. 7, iss. 2. Pp. 80–104. (In Rus.). doi:10.37632/PI.2024.65.84.005