On phantom infixes and morphological adverbs in the Bosnian language

Abstract

In 'Gramatika bosanskoga jezika' (Grammar of the Bosnian Language), published in 2000, the authors, Dževad Jahić, Senahid Halilović and Ismail Palić, claim that there are infixes in the Bosnian language. As an example, they give nominative plural nouns such as 'grob-ov-i' and 'mač-ev-i' where -ov- and -ev- are identified as infixes. Later, in the same work, there is definition which states: "A morpheme which has a role of connecting a root and a grammatical morpheme is called an infix... " However, even a supeficial search through textbooks on linguistic indicates that an infix, by definition, is something inserted into another morpheme, usually a root. The above mentioned definition clearly places an infix outside of a root, and thus gives it a status of a suffix. So, the definition given by the authors stands in a stark contrast to that which is usual in the linguistic literature. Initially, this paper answers the question whether there are infixes in the Bosnian language or not, but it is only an introduction to the discussion about the status given to individual elements in morphology. Namely, some elements cannot be clearly identified as affixes, i.e. morphemes, since their grammatical function is not clear. Thus, therms like 'empty morphs' are encountered. The goal of this paper is to shed some light on these phenomena, and to try to increse the level of terminological clarity in this field.