Re: Polysynthetic nouns

Hallo!

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004 01:15:28 -0700,
william drewery <will65610@...> wrote:

> Modern Arabic has a literary device by which it
> juxtaposes synonymns or near synonymns that share
> similar word-shapes. I wonder if one could require all
> nouns within a noun phrase to be of the same
> word-shape? Do you use cognate objects/subjects in Old
> Arabic?
Why do you call my conlang Old *Arabic*?  It is named Old *Albic*,
and has nothing in particular to do with Arabic.

But I haven't yet spent much thought on literary devices in
Old Albic.  What I already know is that they use quite a number
of kennings (which I haven't worked out yet, though).

But one thing I am actually considering is a kind of "construct
state" in which the case and number marking on a possessed noun
is dropped, as it is also present on the possessor by virtue of
suffixaufnahme, as in the following example:

(1) mbar  o-s-em-as    mbestiro-s-em-as
    house M-GEN-PL-LOC baker-GEN-PL-LOC
    `in the houses of the baker'

which would mean the same as

(2) mbar-em-as   o-s-em-as    mbestiro-s-em-as
    house-PL-LOC M-GEN-PL-LOC baker-GEN-PL-LOC
    `in the houses of the baker'

But I am not sure about this.

>       I think that doing so combined with
> suffixaufnahme could be turned into a kind of noun
> incorporation simply by dropping any anaphoric or
> contextually unnecessary items and slurring the whole
> predicate into one utterance. The cognates would then
> be reduced to reduplicatin of the verbal root, and the
> morphemes the carried by virtue of suffixaufnahme
> would become verbal infixes. I mention this, becase I
> think that's the route i'll take in my conlang.
Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean.  Could you please
explain, and give some examples?

Greetings,

Jörg.

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