Re: Terkunan: rules for deriving nouns, verbs, adjectives

Hi!

Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
> On 2007-10-27 Henrik Theiling wrote:
>> Another change to Terkunan I made recently is to reduce
>> the verb endings to the normal -<consonant>, -i, -u, -e
>> scheme just like the nouns and adjectives. It was quite
>> impossible to justify why all verbs have an -a ending
>> regardless of their original ending. Now, the ending is
>> thoroughly dropped completely. :-)
>
> What about deriving the verb forms from the Latin infinitive
> with loss of -R(E), but with -R preserved long enough to
> prevent loss of the preceding vowel, and so the second and
> fourth conjugation coming to end in -i, while the first and
> third conjugation come to end in -(e).
>...
This sounds very good.  E.g. _audi_ sounds better than _aude_ ('to
hear').  Plus there could be _aude_ (< audere) and _audi_ (< audire).
This would also be an analogy to the preservation of -u- (and a few
-i-) in the declensions.

> That way the majority of past participles would become regular by
> adding a -t to the verb stem if that ends in -i and -at otherwise. It
> would take some analogy to make -e:re become -i, but I don't think
> it's unreasonable, since participles in -i(tus regularly become -it.
>...
This fits in well.  I already have the rule that the -a- in -at drops
after -u and -i, e.g. the past participle of _solu_ 'to solve' is
_solut_.

> The only problem
> I can see is a clash with diminutives in -ITTUS -- perhaps
> the productive diminutive ending of T. is -ELLUS/-ILLUS!
>...
Maybe.  I had thought about something derived from -icul(a/us/um), so
maybe -ikre.  Dunno yet.

> Verbs of the third conjugation would then by analogy adopt the first
> conjugation -at ending, unless the aparticiple ending is reanalysed
> as -t for them too and so both first and third conjugation verbs add
> -t to -(e), practically resulting in -et. I guess verbs with stems
> in -s, -r, -n and -l may get participles in -st, -rt, -nt and -lt,
> but stems in -t would have to get -tet. A participle ending -(e)t
> would also make a clearer distinction between participles and nouns
> in -ITATEM > -tat.
Ah, yes.  I'll consider this, too.  The verb 'fik' would form 'fiket'
instead of 'fikat' then.  Hmm...  Not sure, I'll have to check more
verbs.  At first sight, -et seems less 'colourful', if you know what I
mean.  But it does fit the rest of the structure well.

Do you have a suggestion about the -an ending < -ANDUM?  Would you
suggest -en there instead then?

>...
> You would also get a small class of verbs in -u with
> participles in -ut from verbs in -UERE. It may even get
> additions from verbs with perfects in -UI.
Yes, as mentioned above, some already exist, e.g. 'solvere'.

**Henrik