Re: A Self-segregating morphology (was: Guinea pigs invited)

--- Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:

> Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> > "Binyamin",
<snip>

> Sorry to interfere, the thing you are talking about,
> is called "binyaNIM
Yes, of course. My typing is terrible. I almost always
get all the right letters in a word, but I seldom get
them in the right order (that last word was typed
"rodre" before I went back and corrected it).

>
> > But it was my understanding that the Arabic
> alphabet
> > didn't include vowels.
>
> It does not. But certain consonants are used to
> indicate presence of long
> vowels. They are called "matres lectionis" (mothers
> of reading) in this
> function.
My intention was to use vowels in the writing system.

<snip>

> > Anyway, I didn't
> > think Arabic used vowels to alter the meaning of
> > roots.
>
> They do use them extensively! _kataba_ 'he wrote',
> _yuktubu_ 'he writes',
> _ka:tibu_ 'he who writes', _kati:bu_ 'written',
> _maktabu_ '(place) of
> writing' that is 'school' (with prefix m-) etc.
>
> -- Yitzik
Yes, that's it. Except for the inflections. My
intention was to create an isolating language where
the parts of speech and basic meaning of the word were
changed by switching the vowels, but there would be no
inflections for tense, person, case, etc. These would
be handled, where absolutely necessary, by particles.

--gary

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