Re: What have I done???!!!!

* Tom Pullman said on 2001-05-27 22:42:21 +0200
> --- taliesin the storyteller <taliesin@...>
> > wrote:
>
> >I don't know the verbs in târuven well enough yet but when it
> >comes to nouns, I have you beat... almost 60 *million*[1] possible
> >forms! This
>
> ?!? How on earth (or wherever) did you manage that?
My first estimate was over 160 million, but then I realized that
certain affixes could definitely not occur at the same time on the same
word, like the vocative prefix and a grammatical case suffix, or a
number-suffix at the same time as the absence-prefix... dang, I forgot
the negator! Uh, the number is slightly higher then...

There are three possible prefixes: the vocative, the absence-marker, the
generalizer and the negator... doh! there are FOUR possible prefixes...
:) These are all optional, but can also all be used at the same time...
but wait, they're ordered, where's my combinatorics textbook, but
wait, the negator really shouldn't be used at the same time as the
absence-marker, unless it negates just the root and not the entire
inflected word... Uhm.

Furthermore, there are about (looks through vocab) 60 suffixes (this
might change both ways, the location-system isn't 100% yet), ordered,
all which are optional (in the right circumstances), but they can't
all be used at the same time; there's the diminuitive/augmentative
slot, the adjective slot, the case slot, the three (four? dang!)
locative slots, one of which is divided into four sub-slots, the
second which is divided into three sub-sub-slots, the possession slot,
the number slot and the time/ordering slot... and I forgot about the
evidentiality-markers. Another slot then. But you're right, it is a big
number, I guess I'll have to check the script I made to calculate it one
more time.

The funny thing is, of course, that since it is agglutinative, I have no
problem using the system:

ïÿaìrâhvunvarudiuaivyilaqeðin

"O, next little group of small wild hares that something/someone is
moving around at about the center of the outside of while touching the
surface[*], and that itself is located relative to something else, that
is owned by someone!"

That word uses two prefixes and 12 suffixes, and consists of 16
syllables. Primary stress falls on _râh_, marking the end of the root
and the start of the suffixes.

[*] A flea, perhaps?


t.

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