Re: CHAT: Telek nominalization

On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, taliesin the storyteller wrote:

> Apologize for all the "as for my conlang" but you might get ideas
> and I need to warm up.
>
> * Marcus Smith said on 2001-03-30 04:57:17 +0200
> > I've been inspired by some very interesting work I've been doing on
> > nominalization in Pima. [..] The result is that Telek has gained a
> > more complex nominalization system, and I present it here.
>
> Do you put the nominalized forms in the official vocab or are you
> supposed to nominalize everything on the fly?
These nominalizers are completely productive - they can be added to any
verb in the language, including "neologisms".

 The reason I ask is that
> my lang has quite a few nominalizers as well and so far some nominalized
> forms have been put in the vocab (nice way to boost total number of
> words :) ) and some haven't...
I have some in the lexicon, but not others. The reason for this is that
grammatical gender is sensitive to derivation. Nominalizations that are
well established in the language, such as telen 'speaker' or wifaanan
'runner', have the gender one would expect on a semantic basis, in this
case, animate. Nominalizations that are less well established are marked
with the default inanimate. So _axinin_ 'thing/person that is red' is
marked as inanimate, even if it is used in reference to a man covered with
red paint. I keep track of the well established forms by entering them in
the lexicon. As for the others, I enter them if it is not clear to me
which group they should fall in.

> > This suffix is used when the entity refered to by the nominalized word
> > would be the subject of the base verb, e.g., a dancer is someone who
> > dances, a singer is someone who sings, etc.
>
> Does these nouns-from-verbs cover both animate (persons) and inanimate
> (machines, tools, etc.) doers?
This depends. A hammer (for example) is an instrument, not an agent, so it
is introduced with an instrumental applicative, so the nominalization
would use the oblique-oriented.

On the other hand, a robot or some other kind of automaton can be an
agent, so could conceivablly be a subject.

>
> V -> Vn
> in -> inin
>
> Would a verb that ends with Vn be subject-nommed with a reduplication of
> the Vn or is the epenthetic vowel always {i}?
So, if the stem ends with a vowel, only -n is attached. If the stem ends
in a consonant, V is reduplicated from the last vowel in the stem. So
hypothetical balam -> balaman but balim -> balimin.

> > na'ni 'cook with fire' -> na'ni-m 'that which is cooked with fire; meal
> > (that was prepared with fire)'
> > naali 'tell' -> naali-m 'that which is told; story'
> > kene 'give' -> kene-m 'that which is given to someone; gift'
> > ajlo 'follow' -> ajlo-m 'one that is followed; prey'
>
> Looks like this one doesn't differ between animate and inanimate objects
> at least.
Nope.

Marcus Smith