Re: Arabic and BACK TO Self-segregating morphology

On 12/21/05, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

>
> This is a really interesting problem, from the
> theoretical viewpoint. But as a practical matter, I
> wouldn't want any conlang of mine to have words as
> long as "kainalijaupalitaosa" anyway, so I doubt I
> could find any real-world use for anything more than
> the most rudamentary system of compounding.

Oh, of course; as a practical problem it's kinda silly.  Any complete
implementation would be nigh-unspeakable.

Hmm, although if we're just talking derivational morphology here it
doesn't much matter.  You don't really need access to derivational
morphology on the fly; when you need the abstract noun of GROW you
just choose "growth" out of your lexicon.  You don't create it out of
GROW and -TH every time you need it.  (Well, certainly not for
"growth", maybe you do for... hmm... "cuteness".)

The internal structure is there, and can help if you've never seen the
word before, or are trying to learn it for the first time, but you
don't need it to speak.

---------

Anyway, here's my favorite structurally unambiguous morphology so far.
 It has only two requirements, the first one modified from your
starting post:

(1) Every morpheme has a long vowel in its first syllable, and only in
the first syllable.  This vowel tells you how many syllables are in
the morpheme.

(2) Affixes (and non-head constituents of compounds) are added to a
stem/head constituent by infixing them before its final syllable.

That's it; no further phonological or morphological requirements.
(Well, except for the one that follows from these: that no root can
have less than two syllables.)  Let's try it with the roots "gooko"
and "huumalir", and the suffix "vraaN"...

gooko + vraan = goovraanko
huumalir + vraan = hummavraanlir
gooko + huumalir = goohuumalirko
huumalir + gooko = huumagookolir

(gooko + huumalir) + vraan = goohuumalirvraanko
gooko + (huumalir + vraan) = goohuumavraanlirko

A devil to speak, maybe, but I thought it was fun.

--
Patrick Littell

University of Pittsburgh
Fall 05 Office Hours: Friday, 1:00-2:00 by appointment
G17, Cathedral of Learning

CCBC
Voice Mail: ext 744
Fall 05 Office Hours: W 5:00-6:00, by appointment
Building 9, room 102