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

> 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