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New discovery concerning Khangathyagon nouns

From:Peter Bleackley <peter.bleackley@...>
Date:Tuesday, April 15, 2003, 9:44
While on holiday in Japan, I finally worked out the noun system of
Khangathyagon. As I've mentioned before Khangathyagon is an agglutinating
language, and therefore nouns can take a number of postpositional affixes.
However, I'd been in the dark about how these were organised. However, I've
now worked out that the suffixes follow a system of ranks, each rank having
its own semantic role, as follows.

Suffixes of the first rank describe relative relationships - this, that, what.

Suffixes of the second rank describe relationships of proximity,
togetherness, and contact.

Suffixes of the third rank describe relative position.

Suffixes of the fourth rank describe senses of motion.

Suffixes of the fifth rank describe abstract relationships, such as
possession, instrumentality, benefit etc.

Finally, there may be a plural suffix.

Suffixes are arranged in order of rank, with the first rank coming closest
to the root.

Very fine distinctions of meaning can be created by combining suffixes,
especially between the second and fourth ranks (eg, coming into contact
with the left hand side of it). This is one of the wonderful things about
agglutinating languages!

This discovery brings Khangathyagon much closer to becoming a working
language. I know that VSO languages, like Khangathyagon, usually prefer
prefixes to suffixes, but I'm firmly of the oppinion that you should never
break a universal unless it seems like a good idea at the time.

Pete