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

On 2008-08-11 Alex Fink wrote:
 > Or, indeed, for maximal communicative
 > flexibility, as an interlingua would want, I'm
 > with you that
 >
 > > >The best thing is to do as natlangs do: allow
 > > >the sender to be either vague or precise as
 > > >they see fit.
 >
 > though natlangs don't _explicitly_ do this; it
 > can be harder than is really "reasonable" to be
 > vague about certain things,

True. When pointing out that natlangs are randomly
precise I should also have pointed out that they
are randomly vague!

 > like sex of a singular third-person
 > pronominalised referent in standard English,

IME "one" or "they" works well in most cases, but
I agree that especially the latter isn't 100%
standard, yet.

 > or tense.

Oh yes. There must be some cognitive reason why so
few natlangs have a finite verb form unmarked for
tense. Indeed it seems that if they have one then
they don't mark tense at all!

 > But certainly speakers will find ways to be
 > vaguer or preciser than the grammaticalised
 > options the language affords, if they desire to;
 > and I'd think any language would allow that,
 > with enough circumlocution.

Of course any natlang can say most things with
enough circumlocution -- though I suspect
discussing quantum physics in Pirahã would leave
you unbearably vague most of the time!

 > > >This said vague casting in an interlingua (be
 > > >it an auxlang or a translation interlingua)
 > > >which may be primarily used for non-
 > > >conversational written communication is
 > > >probably a bad thing.
 >
 > Sure, as usual, natlangs and engelangs tend to
 > have different clarity standards.

I beg to point out that an engelang is any
language made to meet to specific design criteria
-- which criteria might be to work exactly like a
natlang. Now that might be an interesting
project...

 > > >I guess one could analyse Esperanto so that
 > > >there is only one noun _o_ and one adjective
 > > >_a_ which compound with different verb roots
 > > >to form the syntactic equivalent of nouns and
 > > >adjectives in most natlangs, or rather such a
 > > >usage would be possible under the
 > > >minimalistic codified grammar of Esperanto,
 > > >but does not agree with actual usage, which
 > > >is much more influenced by (European)
 > > >natlangs, so that in practice some roots are
 > > >nominal or adjectival rather than verbal.
 >
 > Heh, that's a cute if bordering-on-the-absurd
 > analysis. Why not say there's only one verb _i_
 > as well?

Because the _i_ doesn't hang on through the
various inflexions of the verb.
Uncharacteristically for Esperanto as a whole its
verbal endings are portamanteau morphs. In a truly
agglutinating Esperanto I'd expect 'is' to be _est-i-
as_ rather than _estas_. Neither is 'are'
_estajs_. Ergo Esperanto is not really
agglutinating but fusional -- it only so happens
that only verbs really inflect and all other
apparent inflexion is really compounding or
derivation. -j is actually a determiner akin to
the correlative endings and -n is a postposition.

FWIW when I tried to reform Esperanto I tried to
make verbs more aglutinating by replacing the
verbal inflexions as follows.

|   -i  >     -er
|   -as >     -ar
|   -is >     -ir
|   -os >     -ur
|   -us, -u > -or


Notes:
1. The similarity of -Vr to Romance infinitive
    endings and Scandinavian present endings was
    not accidental!
2. The vowels still had a different meaning in
    these -Vr morphemes than as sole vowel finals,
    but in my youthful ignorance I could not or
    would not find a solution to that.
3. -ur was choosen for the future because that
    syllable was used to form the Latin future
    participle (and the word "future")!
4.  i) The derived -Vru endings formed actor
     nouns. Guess what _aktoru_ or _aktaru_ meant!
       ii) Similarly -Vro were "instrument" nouns,
      iii) -Vra were action nouns and
       iv) -Vri were active participles. In case
           anybody wonders
        v) -u was the ending for living beings,
       vi) -o was the ending for concrete nouns and
      vii) -a was the ending for abstract
           nouns. They made a lot of fuss over
           concrete and abstract nouns in
           Swedish school grammar!
     viii) -i was the adjective ending.
       ix) And oh yeah, Esperanto -aro and -ero
           were replaced by -ajo and -emo, so a
           _fonema_ was 'an abstract element of
           sound', while I'm afraid what linguists
           call a 'phone' was _fonemo_, 'a concrete
           element of sound'!
        x) -s became the plural ending.
1. I don't know why I conflated imperative,
    volitive, subjunctive and conditional under -
    or. I don't think there was any great deal of
    thinking behind it!
2. I was only sixteen years old, by which fact
    this attempt to make Esperanto more logical
    should be judged!

 > > >At least in inflecting languages the
 > > >difference would seem to be that an adjective
 > > >is a derivation (possibly zero-derived from a
 > > >root) and as such may be inflected (for case,
 > > >number, gender...) while a genitive is an
 > > >inflection and as such not further
 > > >modifiable.
 >
 > Well, yes, but syntactically there are phenomena
 > like suffixaufnahme to watch for, or on the
 > other side there might be no inflection on
 > adjectives even if other classes are highly
 > inflecting.

Actually in a language like English the genitive
takes extra inflectional morphology unlike the
adjective. Perhaps the English genitive {z} can be
seen as a highly specialized adjective derivation,
which for whatever reasons doesn't need to be
preceded by an article!

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
  à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
  ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
  c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)