Re: Group Conlang: affix morphology

Tom Wier wrote:
>
>I am not so sure that B is any more or less naturalistic.  I may be wrong on
>this, but I believe Swahili employs case prefixes for the most part (I know it
>uses prefixed noun classes).  It's the screeve that really strikes me as unnatural
>in terms of typology.  Could someone post some examples of a screeve as it
>is used in Georgian?
I quote my sources:


        Screeve system

        Each 'conjugational pattern' in Georgian represents a
        unique combination of tense, aspect, mood and 'status', and
        is known as a screeve. This word was coined from the Georgian
        term mts'k'rivi ('row') to avoid using the label
        'tense' with its strong temporal connotations. A screeve
        consists of the pattern of verb forms for each person
        and number (cf. Latin amo, amas, amat, etc.).
        There are eleven screeves in Georgian, grouped into three series
        (see table below). Series 1 (S1) (the 'present series')
        has two subseries ('present' and 'future'), each with three
        screeves. Series 2 (S2) (the 'aorist series') has two screeves,
        while Series 3 (S3) (the 'perfect series') has three,
        although the perfect subjunctive is now obsolescent.
        The status of a Georgian verb may be 'evidential' or
        'nonevidential'. All Series 3 screeves are evidential,
        indicating a certain distancing of the speaker from the
        statement.


(The table is missing)
If I understand correctly, the screeves are called more
or less like tenses, but they also have some other connotations.
Some screeves require that the verb be in a certain status, or
always carry an object marker, etc.

Georgian is agglutinative and an inflected verb might have
an all-consonant root, with several prefixes and suffixes
(theorically up to 24 of them, in average no more than 11).
The screeve is (quote) "a tense-aspect-mood-status paradigm".
It is not an inflection, but a set of combinations of tense,
aspect, mood and status affixes.

>Have we already ruled out the possibility of phonemic diphthongs?I don't see why VV
>sequences would be difficult, granted that they become
>diphthongized.
The problem is this: you have we-, is this u- + e- or w- + e- or just
uninflected we-? What do you do with wu- + e- ?

I'd be OK with vowel + semivowel diphthongs (ai, ei, au, ou, etc.).
They might be ambiguous, but they don't pose any difficulties.

[snip]
>The way I get around this in Degaspregos is I have set phonotacticaffixes whose sole
>purpose is to legitimize the morphological additions
>which words might undergo.  Thus, "wiros" ("man") stands as is, because the
>prefix w- ("masculine") works well with the following vowel phonotactically.
>But  for something like "waseos", the -a- affix is required.  I think this
>makes things much more fluid, and it is entirely predictable from the
>phonology.  Thus, any affix can be used with any root, or whatever,
>because of the regular rule allowing for liaison of vowels.
I agree. That means a pair (at least) of allomorphs for each
affix, does it? As long as they're regularly formed, I say yes
to that.

--Pablo Flores