Re: word relations

Mario Bonassin wrote:


> Has anyone put together a list or tree of word relations, to use to create
> words for their langs that have that similarity?
>
> example:  Death, Dead, Die
>
I have something like this in Kash, which involves (historically) adding (or
subtracting) a nasal infix to the medial consonant.  It is still
semi-productive in the modern language, e.g.

tikas 'to see' < *tikat_s
tingas [tiNgas] 'look at, inspect' < *ti-n-kat_s

modern "reduction" tihas [tixas] 'catch a glimpse of'

If necessary, I could create "tiñas" < **tiNat_s or even "tiyas" /tias/
assuming loss of the *k (these would probably be loans from some relative).

A similar process creates colloquial forms--
meçar 'to hoist, lift by mechanical means'
ambeçar 'a hoist, crane'
colloq. peçar 'elevator, lift in a bldg.' via dropping the initial vowel,
then "adjusting" the /mb/, which can't occur initially.

There was also an old *r infix (also still semi-productive but less used) (ë
is *schwa)--
*mamëh not found in modern Kash (it would be **mame)
*ma-r-mëh > modern mambre 'brother'
modern marem 'male term of affection' probably from a dialect that added an
epenthetic vowel to the r-C cluster **ma-r(ë)më, then deleted the original
final V.