Re: THEORY: morphological processes

On Wed, 19 Jan 2000 16:34:54 -0700 dirk elzinga
<dirk.elzinga@...> writes:
> 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'm interested to see what turns up. Thanks!
>
> Dirk
.

Rokbeigalmki is primarily agglutinative, so most of it doesn't fall into
the interest of your post.
However, it does have a few features that seem to fit:

#2 ~ Rokbeigalmki uses a consonant mutation called "softening" to turn
verb-noun roots into "doer" nouns:
gub /b/ = sound
guv /v/ = soundmaker;
daris /s/ = teach
darish /S/ = teacher;
fiizhag /g/ = fight
fiizhagh /G/ = fighter;
However, this is descended from an old *affix* , _-dh_ /D/, which
survives in words which end in vowels or "unsoftenable" consonants.  So
maybe it doesn't really count, except synchronically.

#6 ~ Rokbeigalmki makes intensified forms of verbs by changing the sounds
into related sounds, which (subjectively, to me) sound stronger.  One of
the simplest, most standard ways of doing this is the lengthening of one
of the vowels, which is also descended from an affix, an infixed _-hh-_
/H/.
khoorat /xUrat/ = deference
kurad /kurad/ = respect
gura~t /gura::t/ = awe;
gub /gub/ = sound
gu~b /gu::b/ = communication;
charzad /(tS)arzad/ = brightness
cha~razd /(tS)a::razd/ = east; (this one involves a vowel/consonant
switch also)
also
het /hEt/ = smell
he~t /hE::t/ = nostril;

#3 ~ It isn't really a pattern overlay in the sense of Semitic
vowel-and-affix patterns, but there are some bound necessary morphemes or
word parts that switch:
az = i (subject, discourse)
ash = me (non-subject);
seflat = night
seflaz = tonight
seflu = some (other) night
seflatratz = last night
seflatelb = next night;

#4 ~ Backwards Reduplication is a very limited process in Rokbeigalmki.
It's used to take a noun, and form a *powerful, large, wide* version of
it:
gal /gal/ = wave
galahhalag /galaHalag/ = tsunami;
ur /ur/ = (useful) fire, as opposed to the pure element of fire
uroohhooru /urUHUru/ = wildfire;
The forms listed are the ancient and exclamatory forms.  The official
forms of the words replace the vowel-/H/-vowel reduplication binder with
a single tilde-lengthened vowel.  In common speech the simple vowel is
used, not lengthened.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "I gave my life to become the person I am right now.  Was it worth it?"
~ richard bach