On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Roger Mills wrote:
> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >I get the idea. :-) The example I *was* going to use myself was the
> >morpheme that (depending on the form) means horse, wind, journey, run or
> >race, but I'm still not sure what verbing "horse" would mean. Your
> >example's a lot better!>
>
> This sort of thing is fun to play around with in Indonesian. (and English
> too-- you can get some very strange meanings):
<G> I wish I knew Indonesian (or a great many languages, for that matter).
> INDONESIAN: air 'water' : meng-air-i 'to water (the lawn), irrigate (the
> fields)'-- but it can also mean 'to pee on...'
> terang (adj.) 'clear, bright': menerang-kan 'to explain (caus. of clear);
> menerang-i 'to brighten, illuminate'.
Huh. Neat.
> So kuda 'horse': ?menguda-kan ?'to turn s.o. into a horse'; ?menguda-i ?'to
> add horses to...', 'to put a horse on/in...'. Maybe: ?mengudai tentara 'to
> supply horses to the army'.
<pounce> Supply horses to the army. That's it! That works. May I
steal that?
> kerbau 'buffalo': perhaps the old Halloween trick, ?mengerbau-i gereja
> '(they) put a buffalo on the church' !? (I started with sapi 'cow'-- but
> you can't suffix -i to base-final /i/; interesting).
Halloween trick? <puzzled look>
YHL