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

Jim Henry wrote:
>
> quoting me:
>> 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.
You mean, you need to express whether the wars are against clones,
between clones, concerning clones, including clones or whatever?

Maybe a point worth considering for naturalistic artlangs as well.
But no natlang or naturalistic artlang will have much trouble
expressing the above, with prepositions and/or case-endings. In
Urianian, zirgi klonet = wars against clones, with an accusative
plural, zirgi klonan = wars between/of clones, with the genitive
plural, zirgi klonant = wars concerning/for clones, with a dative
plural, and zirgi klonit = wars including/with clones, with an
instrumental plural.

Or maybe I miss your point entirely. Anyway it was a nice little
exercise.  (I did lack a good word for 'war' in Urianian before. This
one is derived from IE *dhereugh-.)

LEF

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