Re: Keeping Track of Ambiguity in your Conlang?

On Fri, Aug 30, 2002 at 07:56:44PM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:

> A certain amount of ambiguity can arise in Kash causative verbs, due to
> morphophonemic processes.  The caus. prefix is /ruñ-/---
>
> base-initial t, n, l and r all end up as /rund-/
> base-initial p and m both end up /rumb-/  etc.
>
> So far it hasn't caused any insurmountable problems......
I guess it's more of a worry with my obsession with derivational
affixes.  I want to make something with the equivalent of the long
derivational affix strings of an agglutinating language, only have
them be a fusional mix of prefixes/suffixes, infixes, and sound
changes within the word :)  The resulting mess should be chaotic and
unpredictable.

> A few 3 syl. forms ending in -mi (homonymous with the 1st.sing. poss.
> suffix) have back formed bases (due to childrens' speech)--
>
> compound sucami (su- 'water' cami 'sweet') 'soda pop' now usually suca.
> kusimi 'a small cat-like animal that can become friendly, esp. towards
> children' > popularly kusi
Aw, that's cute! :)

Amanda