Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Arabic and BACK TO Self-segregating morphology

From:Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 20, 2005, 0:44
On 12/19/05, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> There would be no inflections, and any change of vowel > would mean a change in the meaning, not in case, > tense, plurality, etc. Those would be marked by > particles. > > The vowel changes would be uniform and and consistent. > Thus if -a-i-a was the primary noun and a-a-in-a was > the negative of the primary noun the with "nlj" we > have "nalija" = knowledge and "analinja" = ignorance; > with "wlt" we have "walita" = wealth and "awalinta" = > poverty. Thus knowing the roots and patterns one can > coin a new word or recognize a word not encountered > before. So if we know that "sakisa" is success then
Good.
> Also, since every base word is three consonants long > when we encountered a four-consonant word we would > know that a prefix or suffix had been added, and by > the vowel patterns we would know which. And likewise, > five-consonant and longer words would, by their vowel > patterns be easily broken down into their roots and > affixes according to vowel patterns, thus retaining > the self-segregating property.
If compounds of two or more words are allowed, and your derivational patterns include both prefixes and suffixes, it seems that a word of seven syllables might be ambiguous, e.g.: (prefix + word1) + word2 or (word1 + suffix) + word2 or word1 + (prefix + word2) or word1 + (word2 + suffix) This might also be an ambiguity re: the word boundary in a two-word phrase. You could avoid that by setting aside certain consonants for use only in suffixes, others only in prefixes, some only in roots; or by selecting certain vowels to occur in prefixes, others in suffixes, and others as the first or last vowel of a tri-vowel pattern. Either way, no prefix or suffix could ever look like the first or last syllable of any actual root with any possible vowel pattern. E.g., if "pe-" is a prefix or suffix, then you could: 1. make sure no roots begin or end with p-, or 2. make sure no vowel patterns begin or end with -e-. Either would ensure that a phrase like "kulaji pe-nalija" could only be parsed as KLJ + u-a-i ... pe- + NLJ + --a-i-a, and not ku- LJP + a-i-e ... NLJ + a-i-a = ku-lajipe nalija, or or KLJ + u-a-i ... PNL + -e-a-i + -ja = kulaji penali-ja. In this example you would also want to ensure either that K, J, and N never occur in prefixes or suffixes, or that u, i, and a never occur in prefixes or suffixes. Also, unless you want phonemic gemination, you need to exclude /n/ from the set of consonants that can form roots -- else the /n/ in a root and the /n/ in a derivational vowel pattern could end up adjacent. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry

Replies

Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...>
Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>
Patrick Littell <puchitao@...>