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Re: Reply to Sarah's condensed message

From:Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
Date:Monday, January 13, 2003, 7:36
Sally Caves wrote:
> > spring zhoshra > > seagull zhoskei > > universe, cosmos zhoslka > > library zhosllei > > Hmmm. Yes, but Teonaht started out like this, too. It means you like the > sound "zhos." I liked the sound "ilz." Eventually, I made it a root, but > there are still not enough basic roots in Teonaht, because so much of it was > engendered in its "salad days." You could invent some extremely broad > meaning for zhos, so old that it has lost its meaning. Perhaps zhos has > several meanings. For the first three, it could mean "sky." for library, > it could mean "book." Vaguely related to "sky." <G>
Or just coincidence, perhaps from the collapse of several phonemes. Maybe the first three were Zhos- and the last one was Jos- (assuming there's no /dZ/ in the modern language)
> > mother, father, sister, brother, man, woman, wife, husband, home, drink, > > food, love, life, hope > > Why these words in particular? (I'm asking these questions not having read > through all of the other questions posed by other participants. Sorry!) > These would all seem to fit into one category of noun: family/hearth words.
Which could represent an archaic inflectional system. :-) Perhaps the original language had several declensions, and most of them merged with one class, but the family/hearth class resisted assimilation. -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

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John Cowan <jcowan@...>