Re: Arabic and BACK TO Self-segregating morphology

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

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