Marcus Smith wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Mangiat wrote:
>
> > > We all know about agglutinating and inflecting languages where
morphemes
> > are
> > > added to a root to change its meaning or function in the sentence. I
was
> > > wondering: are there instead natlangs marking a morphologic feature
> > deleting
> > > a part of the root?
>
> Most definitely. This is usually called "trucation".
'trucation' or 'truncation'?
> In the Uto-Aztecan languages Papago and Pima, a verb
> forms the perfective by truncating the word: neid > nei 'see', maak > maa
> 'give', nolavt > nolav 'buy', etc. Sometimes a VC sequence is removed
> instead of just one phoneme.
>
OK, that's what I was looking for!
Now some questions... If these languages are inflecting (perhaps
agglutinating), as I suppose, are inflections directly added to the
trucated/truncated form? Is there a possible historical/phonological reason
which caused the last consonant to vanish? Is such a feature particular of
these two languages - do we have analogue cases in the other U.A. languages?
Thanks in advance,
Luca