Re: word derivation in sabyuka (some principles)

En réponse à Nik Taylor :

> > How do you pronounce 'r' in Sabyuka? Because I cannot even think of a
> > pronunciation of 'r' that would be impossible to pronounce after 's'.
>
> Trill would be my guess.  An s followed by a trilled r is very
> difficult.  Tap is also difficult after a /s/.  I find myself inserting
> a schwa when I try to pronounce /s*/
Trilled or flapped, as you prefer (I do a flapped r whereas my
girlfriend will do a trilled one).

> > > 'yol' "to cry" > 'yekol' "to rain"
> > > 'teq' "to tell" > 'tekeq' "to sing"
> > > 'mat' "to see" > 'mekat' "to desire"
> > > "dem" " to do" > 'dekem' "to build"
> > Is it a productive feature (i.e. you can apply it to any
> > verb and even to new ones) or just used with some verbs? (well, the number of
> > different meanings for the infix lets me think it's the latter, but I may be
> > wrong)
>
> It could be semi-productive.  Four examples isn't enough to see if there
> are any kinds of patterns.  There may be patterns which would make a new
> compound be predictable, or at least, semi-predictable.  Perhaps new
> words could be formed by analogy, so that a verb meaning -ek- added to a
> verb meaning "cry heavily" might make "rain heavily", or added to a verb
> meaning "to hear" might make a verb with the same translation as _mekat_
> but with some kidn of subtle difference.  :-)  But, I would also suspect
> that it's unproductive.
Semi-productive is a good word. -ek- will be the only infix that can
bring new words, but its use will be quite rare (but even though, it has
been productive in the language and has given a lot of derivated words,
with more or less fixed meanings).

Julien.