Debonding
This chapter deals with the third and final type of degrammaticalization. Debonding is defined as ‘a change whereby a bound morpheme in a specific linguistic context becomes a free morpheme’. Like deinflectionalization, debonding involves bound morphemes, but where in deinflectionalization grams remain bound and gain a new function or meaning, in debonding affixes and clitics become free morphemes and do not necessarily gain a new function or meaning. Debonding can be said to comprise two subtypes, since inflectional affixes and clitics on the one hand and derivational affixes on the other behave slightly differently. Examples include infinitival markers, connective particles becoming free connectives, and numeral suffixes becoming quantifiers.
Keywords: bound morpheme, free morpheme, debonding, affixes, clitics, deinflectionalization, connective particles, free connectives, numeral suffixes, quantifiers
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