Re: Question: Verb Paradigms

David Peterson wrote:
>     Has anyone every invented a language that has internal vowel change
>for
>any type of tense/aspect marking on the verb?  I did so once in Megdevi
>where
>changing the short vowels from schwas to [I]'s you got the perfective,
>regardless of tense, thus:
>
>?oj dZarabi: I'm eating.
>?oj dZIrIbi: I've eaten.
>
>     However, what I'm really interested in is stuff like German and
>English
>with "sing/sang" and "sehe/sah".  I always try to come up with some sort of
>language that does things like this, but I'm always disappointed with the
>result because it ends looking too regular and/or too artificial.  Are
>there
>any out there?
Tairezazh has things like _mink_ "led", _mein_ "leads", "minst" "will lead".
These changes are, however, almost regular from a synchronical point of view
- /ei/ usually turns into /i/ before consonant clusters, tho' there's some
exceptions that involves /ei/s not descending form earlier /ei/ or /i:/,
like _veint_ "commune" from earlier _vexintu_ ("x"=[x]).

                                                    Andreas


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