TITLE:
Past Study of Enclitics in Indo-European and Egyptian: Some Biobibliographical Detail (As Supplement to “Neutral Tone in Chinese”)
AUTHORS:
Leo Depuydt
KEYWORDS:
Abel, Hans, Accent, Egyptian, Ancient, Enclitic Words, Neutral Tone in Chinese, Neutral Tone, Teaching Correct Pronunciation of, (Word) Stress, Tones in Language, Wackernagel, Jacob
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics,
Vol.12 No.6,
December
22,
2022
ABSTRACT: In the article entitled “Neutral Tone in Chinese: A Comprehensive Theory” published in the present journal, neutral tone in Chinese was interpreted entirely in light of enclitic behavior. Much has been written about how enclitic words behave in many languages, mostly Indo-European. But this large body of literature has not been applied in any significant way to Chinese. The aim of the present paper is to provide a supplement to the above-mentioned article by presenting a brief guide to literature on enclitic words. Special attention is devoted to one of the first languages for which the phenomenon was studied, perhaps the very first, also the language that is the longest attested in writing of any, ancient Egyptian (§§4 - 9). This article makes reference to both Chinese and Egyptian. It is common to compare Chinese and Egyptian because both exhibit pictorial writing. They also both have very long histories. But which has the longest? Not many articles discuss both Chinese and Egyptian. This is therefore as good a place as any to try to answer the question, which has not been done systematically. It is addressed in an Appendix.