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Re: motion verbs in Tokana

From:DOUGLAS KOLLER <laokou@...>
Date:Thursday, February 24, 2000, 2:39
From: "Matt Pearson"

> Tokana used to have these constructions too, forms like "up-climb", > "out-go", "away-run", "back-come". But after I purged Tokana of > prepositions, having prepositionally-derived directional prefixes > began to seem anomalous. With the introduction of manner prefixes, > trajectory is now encoded solely by verb roots, and the directional > prefixes can be eliminated. So instead of "niokpenta" (= "back-run") > for "run back", Tokana now has "paniokta" (= "running-return", i.e. > "return by running"). This new way of doing things seems to me > to fit the 'spirit' of Tokana better.
Géarthnuns has a limited set of prefixes for direction: loma - up (lomakadiz - go up; ascend) malo - down (malothauth - come down; descend) nadí - in (nadíkadiz - go in, enter) dína - out (dínathauth - come out, exit) seme - back (semekadiz, semethauth - return) booooooring, hence the reason they're limited, but so entrenched, I can't purge them. Other prefixes have emerged over time, akin to Matt's "manner": sfaikü - "to death" (sfaiküzçül - bore to death) rhíana - moon-like (rhíanasíluth - smile from ear to ear) These usages, too, are *extremely* limited. There's room to maneuver here (perhaps more so in poetry), but as I think I've said before, I don't want to run amok with this kind of verb formation (nouns get greater liberty). Since verbs are clause final, prefixing seems the only option for verbs an sich, but in Géarthnuns I'd rather see motion and manner handled further up in the sentence. Kou