Re: Knowledge-related roots in sabyuk

On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 04:37:39PM +0200, julien eychenne wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Aug 2002 10:13:58 -0400
> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 03:53:47PM +0200, julien eychenne wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > This is a fine system.  Is |kuta| related to french /ekute/ and/or
> > > spanish /escut^Sar/ or is just a coincidence (of course you can keep
> > > your receipe secret!)? I must confess that my favourite game around here
> > > is to try to guess from which languages roots are borrowed, if they are.
> >
> > Heh, I never realized this coincidence :-)  (I don't know French or
> > Spanish, so this *is* pure coincidence.)
>
> Interesting. I'd be curious to know if other people have such
> coincidences in their languages . I have a <sabi> "to know" that looks
> like spanish <saber>, but this is also a pure coincidence.
Well, another funny coincidence in Ebisedian is _kara't3_ [ka"r`at@\].
It means "to throw", "to hurl", and has nothing to do with the Japanese
lookalike "karate". Of course, one should keep in mind that while the
lexical form of Ebisedian verbs are incidental inceptive, the most common
form in usage is the incidental perfective, which in this case would be
_karww't3_ [ka"r`u":t@\]. Nevertheless, the lexicon entry does look
temptingly similar to the Japanese word. :-P

> > _kuta'me_ is, in fact, derived from another Ebisedian word, _kuta'mi_,
> > "ear", which itself is derived from _ku_ and _ta'mi_. The t-m- root is
> > related to _ta'ma_, "to speak", and the _ku_ prefix implies a receptive
> > meaning. Hence, _kuta'mi_, the ear, is the organ which is caused to hear
> > speech. The derivative, _kuta'me_, is simply the verb form of "ear".
> [snip]
>
> Wow. I'll warn you as soon as I have such a robust lexicon
Many Ebisedian words are derived from each other in similar ways. However,
there is no consistent derivation rule, these roots being no longer
productive remnants of productive phonemes in a now-forgotten ancestor
lang. That's my excuse, of course. In reality, what I do is to make
related words resemble each other so as to be temptingly suggestive of a
productive process, but not actually *have* any such process.

There are many examples of this in the current Ebisedian lexicon. For
example, the secondary color words all have a _-mi'_ suffix, which in the
plural becomes _-mei'_ [m&"?i]. E.g.,
        omi' [?o"mi], "aquamarine" --> `omei' [o_^om&"?i], "aquamarines"
        si'mi ["simi], "yellow"    --> 3simei' [@\sim&?i], "yellows"
        etc.

This seems to suggest that the -mi suffix comes from an old root _mei'_
meaning "color". However:

(1) the (current) word for "color" is _k0'rumi_ ["kAr`umi], which has a
  plural _3k0rumii'_ [@\kAr`u"mi:] -- it does not have the expected suffix
  _mei_.

(2) The primary colors do not have the -mi suffix at all: _ki_ "red",
  _3k0i'_ "reds"; _ci_ "green", _3cui'_, "greens", etc..

(3) Unrelated words also exhibit the -mi suffix but do not have the _mei'_
  in the plural, eg: (a) _t3mi'_, "word", plural _3t3mii'_; (b) _g3mi'_,
  "name", plural _3g3mii'_, and of course, (c) _kuta'mi_, which you have
  already seen, which has an epicene plural _3kutamii'_.

It is possible to craft plausible etymologies of this -mei suffix, but I'm
deliberately leaving it up to my readers to find their own explanations
for it. :-)

> > Oh, and BTW, _kuta'mi_, "ear", is a noun inflected for gender. _kuta'mi_
> > is epicene; _ku'tami_ is a man's ear, and _kutami'_ is a woman's ear.
> > (Just thought you'd like to know. :-P)
>
> Of course I'm pleased to know. But is <ku'tami> a true epicene word,
> because epicene words are supposed not to change at all, and seems that
> the accent doesn't stress the same syllable (if I understand the <'>
> properly) ?
Ebisedian has 5 genders, masculine, feminine, epicene, neuter, and double.
In this particular case, _kuta'mi_ is a poly-gender noun that occurs in
the masculine, feminine, and epicene. The epicene locative happens to be
the canonical form used for lexicon entries, so we say that _kuta'mi_ is a
poly-gendered noun, although _kuta'mi_ itself is actually the epicene form
of this noun.

For the case of _kuta'mi_, gender is indicated solely by the placement of
the stressed syllable. For other poly-gendered nouns, it may also be
accompanied by consonant gradation, the most prominent example being
_bis33'di_ [bi"s@\:di], "person", masculine _pii'z3di_ ["pi:z@\di],
feminine _biz3tai'_ [biz@\ta"?i]. The epicene plural, _3bis33'di_
[@\bi"s@\:di], "people", is where the word "Ebisedian" comes from.

As far as /'/ is concerned in Ebisedian orthography, it marks the
*previous* syllable as a stressed syllable. This may be a bit confusing if
you're used to X-SAMPA where ["] marks the *following* syllable as a
primary stress. Ebisedian is actually pitch-accented; so stressed
syllables are high-pitched. (It's not quite that simple, but that's the
gist of it.)


T

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