Re: lexicons

On Wed, 31 Mar 1999, dunn patrick w wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Mar 1999, Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> > What I've been doing with Tazhi is discovering one single root, and applying
> > all the various prefixes and suffixes that Tazhi has to derive related
> > words.  That way I get about a dozen new words in my dictionary for every
> > new root I discover.
> >
> > --gary.
>
> I do something similar with Telu'at'a.  For instance, the suffix -'e means
> "one who performs the action of", while the suffix -le means "tool by
> which ones performs the action of."  But isn't it a little artificial to
> do this slavishly?  After all, English has "write" and "writer" but not
> "writer (i.e. pencil)".  We have "cook", but no "cooker (i.e. one who
> cooks)
It's the way I do it too, but not slavishly; when a new root comes up
I look at all productive affixes and determine (by intuition) which
ones "fit". Also, sometimes a compound means something very different
from what would logically follow from root + affix - for instance,
from _for_ "worship" we get, predictably, _foran_ "priest"
("professional worshipper"), and with the -sen "thing" suffix:
_forsen_ "holy object, holy symbol"; the collective plural of that
_forsin_ means "religious supplies" (like candles and oil used in the
temple service), _fora_ is "to worship", but _forsina_ doesn't mean
something like "to provide temple supplies", but "to put on a show of
devotion" and _forsinan_ is, predictably again, "a hypocrite". Not
all roots have so large a range; some have no compounds at all (that
I know of).

   Irina

            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastinay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
     http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/frontpage.html (English)
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