Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 5:58 AM, caeruleancentaur
<caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
>> Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
>
>> In particular, how to translate the adjectival or apposite
>> use of "clone" modifying "wars"?   (I didn't have a word for "clone"
>> yet, and worried that I might need a new root word, but a few
>> moments' thought yielded {tâ-Ä Ä­}, "sibling-copy".)   I tried out
.....

> I also did not have a word for 'clone.'  First, I had to create a
> word for sibling!  I went with som-dzôôn-m-us, i.e., same-parent-
> having-person.  Then I prefixed that to kwêraþus, creature. Result:
> somdzóónmëkwêraþus.  A bit longer than 'clone,' n'est-ce pas?
If you already had words for "brother" and "sister", maybe you
could form unrelated words for "male clone" and "female clone"
with the language having no general word for "clone of either sex".
Some languages have no general word for "sibling" or "cousin
of either sex" etc.


On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 4:46 AM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:

> Wouldn't most languages simply combine "wars" in the nominative with "clone"
> in the genitive, perhaps preferably plural. English has a special way of
Sure.  In a naturalistic artlang, I would do that without agonizing over it
for a minute.  But the point of this thread, or the sub-thread, that I revived
when this issue occurred to me was that a vague, general-purpose adjectival
or genitive derivation might not be a good thing in an engelang/auxlang.
gzb leans toward the engelang end of the engelang-artlang spectrum
(not auxlangy at all) and has more precise adjectival suffixes and
genitive-like postpositions, none of which correspond exactly to an
English apposite noun as in "Clone Wars" or any IE lang's genitive
for that matter.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html
Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before
I analyze the results and write the article

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