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Re: CONLANG Digest - 28 Sep 2003 to 29 Sep 2003 (#2003-275)

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 1, 2003, 17:16
> Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 23:41:45 -0400 > From: Rob Haden <magwich78@...> > Subject: A Survey > > I'm curious to see everyone's answers to the following questions: > > 1. Does your language(s) distinguish between active ("X breaks Y"), middle > ("X breaks (apart)"), and passive ("X is broken (by Y)")?
Tairezazh: Nope. However, there's a kind of "passive" construction which is simply to leave out the subject. Altaii: Sort of. You get "X breaks Y", "X breaks (smth)" and "Y is broken".
> 2. If the answer to #1 was "yes," what method(s) does your language(s) use > to make some/all of the above distinctions?
Altaii: Verbal suffixes - essentially, the lost argument is replaced by an inflection on the verb.
> 3. What method(s) does your language(s) use to distinguish between basic > nouns and verbs of the same root (i.e. "a hit" vs. "he hits")?
Tairezazh: Usually thru different derivational (stem) suffixes. There are however examples where the same unadorned root is used both as a verb stem and a noun stem, and there's plenty of cases where some inflected form of a noun/verb looks like one or another form of the the corresponding verb/noun. Altaii: In older words, usually by derivational affixes. In the modern language, there's a strong tendency to use nouns as verbs without any change of stem form. Andreas