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Re: Arabic and BACK TO Self-segregating morphology

From:Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 21, 2005, 16:37
On 12/20/05, Patrick Littell <puchitao@...> wrote:
> On 12/20/05, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
>> In fact here's another scheme: words are CV(n)...CV(n) >> as above, but not restricted to three consonants. >> Prefixes and suffixes also have the form CV or CVn. >> Prefixes are attached with a "linking: 'i', and >> suffixes are attached with a linking "o". When words >> are joined a linking "u" is used. Thus: >> (prefix)i(word)o(suffix)u(word).
> ........for things like (prefix)i(word)u(word)o(suffix) there are at least > five ways to parse it. We can figure out which morphemes are > prefixes, which are roots, and which are suffixes, but not their > hierarchical structure.
In other words, it's sometimes unclear whether a prefix modifies the first element of a compound, or modifies the whole compound -- & ditto with suffxes w.r.t. the final element of the compound or the whole compound word.
> Anyway, there are answers; I just want to see if anyone has any > interesting solutions that don't require infixation, circumfixation, > or the equivalent.
What about having high- and low-precedence binder morphemes? That would require a larger inventory of vowels, probably. But suppose i, o and u are the high-precedence binder morphemes and order of compounding precedence is left to right, then kainalijaupalitaosa could only be parsed as (((ka + nalija) + palita) + sa) But if y, e, and a are the low-precedence binder morphemes, you could also have, e.g.: kaynalijaepalitaosa = (( ka + nalija) + ( palita + sa )) This scheme may be too complex to speak and hear in real time; we would have to experiement for a while and see how it works. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm ...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field

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Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>