Stranger things of word (dis)integrity in Southern Mande

International audience In several Southern Mande languages, the integrity of words can be violated by inserting other bona fide words inside them. This can happen to morphologically complex words [Root+Suffix] and morphologically simplex words [Root]. The Southern Mande language that appears to be most prolific in this respect is Tura [glottocode: tour1242] (Bearth 1971:171-176; Idiatov 2005, 2008). Thus, in (1) the morphologically simplex numeral pȉȉlɛ́ ‘two’ is split by the insertion of the restrictor lèfɩ̀ɩ̀ ‘even’. In (2), the morphologically complex verb dɔ́-lɔ̋ ‘stop’ (from dɔ́ ‘stand’ plus the deobliquative suffix -la̋) is split by the insertion of the modifying expression dɛ̋ɛ́ ké ‘again’ (lit. ‘a certain new [X]’). In (3), dɛ̋ɛ́ ké ‘again’ breaks up the morphologically simplex verb gba̋la̋ ‘thunder’. This kind of violation of word integrity is typologically extremely unusual as such. However, in addition to that, as argued by Idiatov (2005, 2008), in all these cases the second part of the original word actually functions as the syntactic head governing the first part of the original word, and this irrespective of whether it is an actual morpheme itself (2) or just a meaningless part of the word (1, 3). In this construction, the first part is the complement of the second part which confers on the first part the combinatorial possibilities of a noun, such as the possibility to be modified by adnominal modifiers, while the respective word as a whole is not capable of that on its own. Kushnir (2016) and Fedotov (2014) report similar but more restricted cases of violation of word integrity by other words for Yaure [glottocode:yaou1238] and Gban [glottocode:gagu1242], respectively.In this paper, I present the relevant data in more detail. I further elaborate on the concepts of quasi-words (or pseudowords) proposed by Idiatov (2005) to refer to the parts of such split word constructions. I also situate these stranger cases of violation of word integrity of Southern Mande in a typological perspective by contrasting them with comparable word integrity violation phenomena in other languages, such as endoclisis in Udi (Harris 2002) and expletive insertion in English, recently argued by Zingler (2024) to be an example of discontinuous compounding. Finally, I discuss the hypotheses proposed for the diachrony of these word integrity violation phenomena and further elaborate on them by highlighting the similar patterns of reanalysis and the particular relevance of the typical word phonotactic templates found in the relevant languages (variously referred to in the literature as syllabemes, syllabomorphemes, canonical morphemes and (featural) feet).(1)Wȁápȉȉlèfɩ̀ɩ̀lɛ́3PL.SBJ.NEG.COPtwo1eventwo2‘They are not even two/ they are not two at all [but just one].’ (Idiatov 2005:32)(2)Ȍódɔ́dɛ̋ɛ́kélɔ́-ɔ́3SG.SBJ.NEG.PFVstand1newa.certainstand2\PFV-PFV‘He did not stop again.’ (Idiatov 2008:162)(3)Lá=ágba̋dɛ̋ɛ́kélá-árain=AUXthunder1newa.certainthunder2\PFV-PFV‘It thundered again.’ (Idiatov 2008:164)References:Bearth, Thomas. 1971. L’énoncé toura (Côte d’Ivoire). Norman: Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of Oklahoma.Fedotov, Maxim. 2014. Фокус, заглагольные зависимые и эндоклитики в гбан. In Valentin Vydrine & Natalia Kuznetsova (eds.), От Бикина до Бамбалюмы, из варяг в греки. Экспедиционные этюды в честь Елены Всеволодовны Перехвальской, 195–214. Saint-Petersburg: Nestor-Istorija.Harris, Alice. 2002. Endoclitics and the origins of Udi morphosyntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Idiatov, Dmitry. 2005. The exceptional morphology of Tura numerals and restrictors: endoclitics, infixes and pseudowords. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 26(1). 31–78. doi: 10.1515/jall.2005.26.1.31.Idiatov, Dmitry. 2008. Antigrammaticalization, antimorphologization and the case of Tura. In Elena Seoane, María José López-Couso & (in collaboration with) Teresa Fanego (eds.), Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization, 151–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/tsl.77.09idi.Kushnir, Elizaveta L. 2016. Особенности топикализации в языке яурэ (южные манде). In Dmitry V. Gerasimov (ed.), Acta linguistica Petropolitana. Труды Института лингвистических исследований РАН, vol. 1, 106–112. Saint-Petersburg: Nauka.Zingler, Tim. 2024. Expletive insertion: a morphological approach. English Language & Linguistics 28(1). 23–42. doi: 10.1017/S1360674323000254.