Re: THEORY: Evolution of infixes/ablaut?

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 :)
>