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Re: THEORY: Evolution of infixes/ablaut?

From:Padraic Brown <pbrown@...>
Date:Thursday, March 16, 2000, 2:11
On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Eric Christopherson wrote:

>Hi. I'm wondering if anyone has any information or even ideas about how >languages develop alternation inside of morphemes? That is to say, where >morphemes can be inflected or otherwise modified by changing, adding, or >deleting elements _inside_ the morphemes themselves, such as with infixes >and ablaut (vowel alternation). I'm really fascinated by the idea but I >can't figure out how the mind would allow a morpheme to be modified from >the inside -- just seems like morphemes "should" be concrete, unbreakable >elements to me. It's a bias in my conlanging instinct I guess :)
And of course, you've used vowel-change inflection 3 times so far. :) Though no infixes that I can see. I'm curious, though: why would you think a morpheme is inviolable?
>The point of this is that I'd like to use infixes and/or vowel alternation >in a conlang, but I'd like to be able to demonstrate that they evolved >(intra-conlang) somehow from an earlier form without internal alternation.
I kind of wish I knew _how_ it happened as well; I just know it happens. Certain ones, like umlaut changes in English, could be demonstrated through successive stages of the language: maniz > mani > meni > men; where i raises a kind of thing. If your language is ancient enough and written, such changes would be recorded, rather than inferred like in English. Padraic.
> >Thanks :) >