Re: Grie Ka #1 (was Re: ,Language' in language name?)

> Date:         Sat, 1 Dec 2001 21:14:28 EST
> From: Elliott Lash <AL260@...>
>
> > Anyway, here I have a question (actually two). Even in a romance
> > language like French, IIRC, inflection (declension, conjugation,
> > etc.) is mainly carried out by changing the ending of the word,
> > not the beginning of the word. Am I right? And if I'm right, I'm
> > wondering why it is so. (Psycology?) Or would anyone on the list
> > provide me the interesting examples of languages where inflection
> > is done by changing the begining of words?
>
> TONS AND TONS of languages in fact.
> A quick sampling:
>
> [...]
>
> Finally Cree (spoken in Canada)
> -kime: to count > akimew: he counts
>                 > nikimen: I count
>                 > kaakimew: he will count
>                 > nikaakimen: I will count
>
> So..yeah, there's a bunch of languages that have prefixes as
> inflections...I don't see what's so strange about it.
And to bring together two threads, we have the Celtic languages where
sandhi between the usual IE postfix inflections (e.g., on determiners
and edjectives) and the starts of head nouns have been reinterpreted
as inflection of the head noun when the postfix endings were lost.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)