Re: Tekem, the language (aka deriving verbs from nouns)

On Thu, May 03, 2001 at 10:33:49AM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
> Yeah, very minimal phonemics, only 9 phonemes :) (I think it holds the record
> with Hawaian and Tahitian :) ).
Yeah, I'm definitely pushing a few limits with this language :)

> Well, in fact I don't see what's unnatural about it. To me it's plain normal
> that if you put together a stem and an affix, some phenomena of assimilation,
> dissimilation or whatever take place.
I think I got the idea from rendaku in Japanese (where some compound nouns
show voicing of the initial consonant of the second word).  So I guess it's
not all that far-out.

> Wow, that's a nice thing to define what's a word in a certain language :) . In
> fact, I don't think we can come to a better definition of that word :) .
Thanks!  Although I don't think I made it up myself.  But if I'm going to
have sound changes only within words, I kind of needed a definition of
"word" :)

Which, I just realized, I've already broken.  My noun-incorporated words have
two parts, each of which could stand on its own, so they don't fit the
definition as I intended it.  Oh well.

> In front of stops, so that al-ta -> arda? I don't think it's necessary but it
> could be neat :) .
If I were to do it, it would either be before stops, or before (which is to
say between) vowels.

> [snip of derivational stuff]
> Wow! Nice derivations. Add a little culture-oriented irregularities for words
> whose derivations don't have an immediate sense and it becomes very nice! :)
Thanks :)  I'm planning to have more derivations of the "toska" type (the one
that meant a perception using/to perceive using).  That way I'll be able to
get all kinds of verb meanings out of a noun :)

> Well, your incorporation system looks quite correct to me, since you incorporate
> only bare stems, which is usual
That's a good point.  Maybe I should limit it to non-derived nouns.  It's
not uncommon to have length restrict what a language can do with a word.
Sentences which would require incorporation of fancy derived nouns would
simply have to be rephrased.

Thanks for the feedback!

Amanda