On "güey" in Spanish

A thought occurred to me some time ago about this word.  I'm not as interested in the context it's used in (as in the sources I have below) as much as its phonetics and semantics (I'll explain why throughout this post).  

It's use is most widely propagated in Mexico and for many (adults mostly) it is a derogatory term that is "degrading" the (Mexican) Spanish language.  But Bucholtz (2009) demonstrates its use in the sociolinguistic contexts of alignment, address referencing, and derogatory name-calling as well as others.  In case you're short on time, Tyler Schnoebelen, Ph.D. student at Stanford University, has his reading notes on this article available online (link found below).

What is of interest to me, ever since I started studying Indo-European, is the derivation of this word...where did it come from?  What is its meaning?  Apparently, it is a "deformation" of the word "buey" which is Spanish for ox.  Anyway, its suppose to derive from the Latin terms bovis and bos.  What is most interesting to me is the Proto-Indo-European morpheme from whence this Latin term came from which happens to be, get this, "*g^wou-" meaning 'livestock'.  It seems as though this "deformed" term has semi-reverted to its Proto-Indo-European origin in the (Mexican) Spanish language.  Here is the link I used to approach this deduction which is a dictionary on Proto-Indo-European morphemes (its in Spanish, sorry!)...oh and the closest phonetic transcription of  "güey" that I can come up with is [γwei].  Interesting, isn't it!

Tyler Schnoebelen

Bucholtz, Mary. 2009. From Stance to Style: Gender, Interaction, and Indexicality in Mexican Immigrant Youth Slang. In Alexandra Jaffe (ed) Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 146-170.

Clitics: Crazy Little Critters

Clitics have proven to be one of the hardest things to classify syntactically or morphologically (or in anything linguistics-related for that matter).  Supposedly, they have a long history of being studied since Pāṇini's time (Ancient Sanskrit linguist dating all the way back to 4th century B.C.).  Jakob Wackernagel (late 19th/early 20th century Swiss linguist who studied Sanskrit as well as Indo-European, Greek, and Germanic) also studied them making a generalized assumption on Indo-European languages roughly stating that they came after the first word in a sentence.  They are considered to be a phonologically deficient 'thing' occupying an unstressed position which is more of a reason to not place them first in a sentence.

Ok so I started all this talk and haven't mentioned what the heck a clitic is--well that's the thing I don't think I know but it's such an annoying little particle in MANY LANGUAGES that it still needs to be properly defined.  Oh and get this, there are different types of clitics as well.  Arnold Zwicky (1977) gives the definitions that I am most attuned to:  simple clitic which is "a free morpheme, [that] when unaccented, may be phonologically reduced, the resultant form being phonologically subordinate to a neighboring word"; special clitic which is "an unaccented bound form [that] acts as a variant of a stressed free form with the same cognitive meaning and with similar phonological makeup"; and finally bound words which defined by Fontana (1993) are "those clitic-like elements which do not have corresponding full forms" (whatever does this mean!!).

I most identify dative clitics, in Modern Spanish, with the second definition--being of the special kind.  The following is a paradigm that helps identify what Zwicky means:
   
     In Spanish we have:

1. "Yo" (I, subject pronoun), "me" (dative clitic), and "a mi" (me, object pronoun)
2. "Tu" (you, subject pronoun), "te" (dative clitic), and "a ti" (accusative object pronoun)
3. "El/ella" (He/she), "le" (dative clitic), and "a el/ella" (him/her)
4. "Nosotros" (We), "nos" (dative clitic), and "a nosotros" (us)
5. "Ustedes" (you all), "les" (dative clitic), and "a ustedes" (you all), "Vosotros" (you all), "os" (dative clitic), and "a vosotros" (you all)
6. "Ellos/ellas" (They), "les" (dative clitic), and "a ellos/ellas" (them)

Oh, and then we have the pesky reflexive se (which also has indefinite and passive uses) and a somewhat accusative object which is si (mismo).  There are also prepositional things which I really don't know how to classify: conmigo (with-me), contigo (with-you), and consigo (with-self).

Anyway going back to the beginning of this post--clitics are CRAZY!!! Anyone want to tell me what they hate most about them...?

References:
Fontana, J. M. 1993. Phrase Structure and the Syntax of Clitics in the History of Spanish. Ph.D. dissertation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Zwicky, Arnold. 1977. On Clitics. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.

Wikipedia on Pāṇini
Wikipedia on Wackernagel
Wikipedia on Clitics