Re: Keeping Track of Ambiguity in your Conlang?

Quoting Pavel Iosad <pavel_iosad@...>:

> Hello,
>
> > On Aug/31/2002, Roger Mills wrote:
> >
> > > Actually this is a quite productive means of producing
> > Engl. verbs from
> > > nouns (and probably the despair of foreign learners)--
> >
> >         Do you mean that verbs and nouns are different things in
> > english? Really? :-? };-)
> >
> >         It's always fun to me that you can "cd into a directory",
> > "bulldozer a house" and "cash in" :-) The whole concept makes
> > for a good
> > conlang without nouns, having only verbs :-m :-)
>
> Um, I may be wrong here, but what I've learned is that this is called
> conversion and is essentially derivation by means of phonologically
> empty suffixes.
Well, this really depends on your stance in morphological
theory.  One of the morphologists in my department, for
example, is real big into morphology without morphemes,
so of course he's not going to agree with analysis that
uses phonologically empty morphemes.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
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