My "article particles"

Commenting on:
>
> Any Native American language:
>         They all have interesting qualities. I have
> a text on Cherokee, of
> which I've skimmed parts. One thing I distinctly
> remember is that most
> transitive verbs have "infixes" (a syllable added to
> the middle of the verb)
> that indicate if the object is a person, an animal,
> a hard solid, a liquid,
> something diffuse or diaphanous, and a few other
> qualities. So, as an
> example given, if you say, "Please pass the gravy",
> the verb for pass *must*
> have the infix for a liquid direct object. If you
> stick in the infix for
> solid, it would imply that the gravy is very lumpy,
> and would be taken as a
> joke or insult by the cook.
>
By now you know that Kayasanoda borrows just a bit
from Cherokee, primarily for vocabulary and its
agglutinative nature.  I do have one class of infixes,
which I came up with on my own but does give it the
Cherokee "flavor".  (I'm finding as I work with
Kayasanoda and contemplate future conlangs, I'm more
interested in "flavor"--hinting at a natlang without
really imitating it much.)  Anyway, my infixes are my
articles -la- (def) and -de- (indef).  The def is the
only one that can be used as a true article, and then
at the beginning of a word; an indef noun requires
nothing, like in Esperanto.  However, they both serve
an important function with regard to my heavy use of
metaphor.  Take the word "lanekamunada", which means
"east [nom form]".  But this is not the literal
translation; it is actually "the white point" (this is
taken from a Cherokee representation of compass
points).  But what if I wanted to say  "the white
point" in Kayasanoda?  The "la" moves to the word that
I want to use as the noun, in this case,
"muna"--point.  So the word becomes "nekalamunada" (or
"nekademunada" for "a white point".)

Dana!
Clint

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings!
http://greetings.yahoo.com