Re: average syllables per word?

At 14:29 29/06/99 -0300, you wrote:
>Christophe Grandsire <Christophe.Grandsire@...> wrote:
>> >
>> >Cool! I never thought of non-syllabic roots!
>> >
>>
>>         I have some in my Azak, as roots morphology obliges roots to
have at least
>> a final consonnant, but nothing before is mandatory (Azak is heavily
>> agglutinating with only suffixes and words used without at least one suffix
>> are very rare (mostly interjections)). The most important consonnantal root
>> is 'n'. It is used to transform some suffixes into nouns or verbs (like
>> person suffixes into pronouns) and is widely used.
>
>Could you give an example? It's a very interesting thing
>to transform affixes into roots!
>
        Well, everything is on my webpage (can you learn French?), but here are
some examples. In fact, the basic role of 'n' is to make a root from a
suffix. This root can generally be translated as a pronoun (or pronominal
adjective, as adjective is a case of the noun (it's called
'complementative'). I call those new roots 'grammatical words'.

        With -ek, which is a question suffix (like the 'ka' particle in Japanese),
I can make 'n-ek': what? With the declination suffixes, I can make other
question pronouns:
n-ek-ev (at what?): where (are you)? when?
n-ek-av (because of what?): why?
etc...
        With the indefinite suffixes, you make indefinite pronouns:
n-ab: something
n-oz: this, that (yes, I know that's not indefinite, but -oz is put in the
same list as indefinite suffixes. Not my fault)
n-eg: everything
n-ab-ab: a few, a little
n-ek-ab: how much? how many?
        Numerals are normally suffixes. To make a numeral pronoun, just use the
suffixes with 'n'.
        With the absolutive personal suffixes, you make possessive pronouns:
n-in: mine
n-esh: yours
etc...
        With the ergative suffixes, you make personal pronouns:
n-ef: I, me
n-ash: you
etc...
        With '-as' (a suffix meaning 'certainly', 'of course', something like the
Japanese 'yo'), you make 'n-as': yes. With '-am' (the negative suffix, and
the only negative part of word you can find in this language), you make
'n-am': no. Those words are nouns, so they are not used exactly like 'yes'
and 'no' (and they are not widely used either).

        Finally, you can use it with any other suffix (even declination
suffixes!). In this case, the root formed can be used to name the function
of the suffix (like in Euskara where the different cases are named after
the declined forms of 'nor': what). For example: n-ak: ergative.
        The strangest use of this form is the so-called 'redundancy form'. Take
any suffix (for example '-oz': this), put 'n' before it, and '-on' (the
complementative case) after (here: 'n-oz-on'). You have created an
adjective (or adverb) that has exactly the same meaning as the suffix
itself! It can be used with any suffix, even case suffixes with nouns and
modal suffixes with verbs, even with the so-called 'contextual suffixes'
(suffixes functioning like question 'ka' and particles 'yo' or 'ne' in
Japanese). For example, number isn't mandatory in Azak. You have a suffix
'-ar' which means 'various' or 's' plural, but which is only used when
plural is relevant. In this case, 'tar-ar' can be translated as 'some
people' or 'people'. With exactly the same meaning, you can also say 'tar
n-ar-on'. 'person' in the ergative case can be 'tar-ak' or 'tar n-ak-on'
(imagine, the ergative case showed by an adjective!).
        The grammatical meaning of such 'redundancy forms' is exactly the same as
the suffixes alone. The difference lies more in prosody and feelings you
want to give. A 'redundancy form' has its own stress and is longer than a
simple suffix. So it insists on the suffix (as if in the sentence: 'the
glass is on the table', you would like to insist on the fact that it is
'on' - not 'under' - the table by saying 'it is on that the glass is the
table'). It can also have a light change in meaning ('-oz' means 'this',
'n-oz-on' is nearer to 'that'). Finally, such redundancy forms can be used
in informal speech with no special meaning, but it's considered very
familiar (even incorrect).

>Georgian has a lot of roots that consist only of consonants.
>For example: -rch- 'remain', -tkhr- 'tell', -vl- 'come',
>-d- 'come' (another one), -tsv- 'wear', -khvd- 'meet', etc.
>These I found in an online grammar, just by looking at
>conjugated verbs. Georgian (like your Azak) is heavily
>agglutinating too (24 possible affix slots per verb root!),
>so there tend to be vowels around those roots, but not always.
>
>(Speaking of consonant clusters... my favorite Georgian word
>is _vprtskvni_ 'I am peeling it', which is supposed to be
>one syllable. I don't know which part is 'peel', but I'm quite
>sure it's not the vowel.)
>
        How is it supposed to be pronounced? With a lot of schwas or with a
consonnant cluster of 8 consonnants?

>
>--Pablo Flores
>
>
                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html