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Re: First Conlang...? (Was Re: some insane West Greenlandicsentences)

From:Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
Date:Thursday, January 8, 2004, 5:33
Muke Tever wrote:
> I think that'd just be a fusional polysynthetic language. > Doesnt the idea of mutations undermine the idea of one-to-one mapping? If > something has mutated, then it expresses both its original meaning and and > the mutation's meaning, doesnt it?
I suppose it would depend on the details of the language. Suppose, for example, that in the language, all words had to begin with voiceless stops. Then there's a "prefix" that consists of "+voice" and another "prefix" that consists of "lenition" (stop -> fricative). Then you could easily parse the word. Thus, a word beginning with /p/ contains neither prefix. One beginning with /b/ contains the root /p/ and the prefix + voice, while /f/ is /p/ + lenition and /v/ is /p/ + voice + lenition. I would consider that agglutinating (although an unusual kind). However, more likely would be a language where parsing is much less easy. So that, for example, /v/ could represent a root consonant, or it could represent /b/ + lenition, or /f/ + voicing, or even /p/ + voicing + lenition. That would be more like a fusional language. -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42