Re: THEORY: morphological processes

On Wed, 19 Jan 2000 16:34:54 -0700, dirk elzinga
<dirk.elzinga@...> wrote:

>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:
I have examples of many of these in one language or another.

Vowel ablaut: Jarrda
"cig" (to eat) -> "ceg" (food)
"mir" (to sing) -> "mer" (song)

Consonant mutation: Niskloz
"kelet" (planet) -> "keled" (planets)
"septeg" (rock) -> "septek" (rocks)

Root and pattern/templatic morphology: Siralla
"kala" (foot), "kelli" (to walk)
"rala" (river), "relli" (to flow)
"mala" (tree), "ramella" (forest)
"hirra" (inward), "herri" (to enter)
"sherri" (to go), "kashira" (road, path, way)
"ris" (under), "rissa" (low), "rusi" (to descend)

Truncation: Olaetyan
"klisan" (cat), "klisa" (cats)
"zirik" (machine), "ziri" (machines)

Deletion of vowels: Rynnan
idhar "book" (nom. sing.)
idhra (acc. sing.)
idhara (gen. sing.)
idhren (dat. sing.)
idhri (nom. pl.)
idhri (acc. pl.)
idhrien (gen. pl.)
idhrema (dat. pl.)

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