Re: Arabic and BACK TO Self-segregating morphology

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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