Re: THEORY: morphological processes

> From: dirk elzinga
>
> Hey.
>
> Here's something I've been thinking about for a while now. Many
> languages of the world show morphological processes which do not
> involve affixation of fixed material. These processes include:
>
> 1.      vowel ablaut
> 2.      consonant mutation
> 3.      root and pattern/templatic morphology
> 4.      reduplications of various kinds
> 5.      truncation
> 6.      other kinds of stem manipulations such as lengthening,
>         shortening, and deletion of vowels or consonants
>
> I've always been interested in morphological processes like
> these. My question is how many of you have included one or more
> of these morphological processes in your languages? I'm
> primarily interested in processes which alter the shape of the
> stem (3-6), but I welcome discussion of any kind of process
> which is not simply affixation of fixed material. Here are some
> questions you might use to guide your responses:
>
> *       What morphological processes does your language use?
> *       What grammatical category does it mark?
> *       Is the process the only marker of the grammatical
>         category, or is it used in conjunction with other
>         markers such as affixes?
> *       What role does the process play in the esthetics of your
>         language?
> *       What do you think the inclusion of such processes says
>         about you as a language creator? (Does it say anything?)
>
> I'm interested to see what turns up. Thanks!
>
> Dirk

Dirk, this is probably not what you are looking for, but amman iar has a
couple of morphological processes similar to what you are describing.

1) amman iar uses vowel umlaut for plurals.  The protolanguage had a plural
suffix -i.  This suffix tended to cause the vowels in the root to shift
toward high/front,  The plural suffix fell away leaving just the umlauted
vowel as the only indication of pluralization.

        adhel > edhil

2) amman iar case endings tend to geminate the final consonant of the root
(with some exceptions among pronouns) resulting in a shift in stress.  In
this case, the case suffix and the geminate consonant are used in
conjunction.

        adhel+e > adhelle

I find it hard to define aesthetic roles, but there can be no doubt that
both of these processes were originally motivated by aesthetics.  The
current plural form was originally used for a dual.  When the dual
disappeared from the language, the umlaut was rescued for the plural
primarily because I found it aesthetically pleasing.  Similarly, the
gemination originally derived from a complex phonological process that also
disappeared from the language, but like the umlauted vowels, I found a new
home for this process in the case system.  amman iar is full of
morphophonetic transformations (palatization, labialization, nasalization,
assimilation and lenition) that operate at morpheme boundaries, but can also
be triggered by semi-clitic particles at word boundaries.  These
transformations, I believe, give the language its flavor.  The two
operations above fit well with these, I think.

What does all this say about me as a language creator?  Oh my, that's tough.
As an artlanger, aesthetics is primary in my creations, so I guess it says
that I am consistent in that respect.

These are interesting questions Dirk.  Hope this thread leads to some
interesting observations.

David

David. E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
dbell@graywizard.net
www.graywizard.net

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards
for they are subtle and quick to anger"
JRRT