Re: Too long words

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 18:24:28 EST, David Peterson <ThatBlueCat@...>
wrote:

>Carsten wrote:
>
><<Ayeri
>is agglutinating, perhaps even fusional and somewhat isolating.>>
>
>This is kind of like saying, "My friend is a man, perhaps even a baby boy,
>and somewhat female."   Which is it: Agglutinating, fusional, or isolating?
>
>Anyway, here are some ideas on how to get smaller verbs:
>
>(1) Take some of your prefixes and turn them into auxiliary verbs.   This
>will give you two or three shorter words to express a given concept as
opposed to
>one long one.
>
>(2) Make your prefixes shorter. For example, have a class of prefixes that
come first that are maximally V-, then, have all the rest be CV- or V-,
where the two V's can combine to form a diphthong, which then might form
its own separate verb.
>
>(3) Just get rid of some affixes: You don't have to have one for
everything.
>
>(4) Combine affixes. This will increase the number of total affixes, but
>reduce the number of affix slots (which is what you're after). So, for
>example, make a whole bunch of prefixes that mean a tense and a person.
For example, maybe the present will be /n-/, the aorist /r-/, the near
past /d-/, the near future /y-/, the past /l-/, the remote past /v-/, the
remote future /m-/ and the normal future...uh.../f-/. Then first person
will be /a-/, second will be /i-/ and third will be /u-/ (number will be
unmarked). Now what cost you two (and in some cases three or four, I
notice) syllables before will now be shortened to only one.   And hey, if
you makes these all obstruents, then you can have a nasal mutation for them
all be the passive, or something.And, of course, you can also have a null
morpheme mean something (third person present active, for example).
>
>Those are some basic ideas. Also, it shouldn't be a problem that you can't
hear the morpheme boundaries. A speaker should probably not even be
>conscious of morpheme boundaries, I think. Sometimes you can never tell.
After all, can you hear the boundaries between "first person" and "present"
in the English verb "am"? Is the "a" the first person part and "m" the
present tense part? ;) That's being flippant, but you get the idea.
>
>-David
>
Hey! Thank you... Some of your suggestions would only mean I'd have to
completely change the grammar I made up until now and would have to write
many things new. Let's see what can be done... Heh, and of course I cannot
hear that distinction ;)

Carsten