THEORY: morphological processes

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 Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu