Re: How naturalistic is this? Colors & Composition in Sein'

    Neat, IIRC some Australasian languages do... and some South East Asian
tribal languages as well. Don't quote me on that tho'...

Hanuman Zhang


on 9/21/05 11:44 AM, Shreyas Sampat at ssampat@GMAIL.COM wrote:

> So, I've just discovered that Seinundjé has an unusual way of marking
> the color and composition of objects. The usual word order in noun
> phrases is modifier-head, but with color marking, it turns to head-modifier:
>
> dháta jzwul
> dry earth
>
> jzwul lúyun
> earth blue
>
> That's not all that interesting.
>
> But there's a closed set of materials that are marked in a special way;
> the head takes an infix that denotes the category of material, and the
> modifier indicates the specific material, like so:
>
> rómo
> sword
>
> rómot lédh
> sword-METAL black
> "iron sword"
>
> rómot tháya
> sword-METAL red
> "copper sword"
>
> rómonh fála
> sword-WOOD white
> "ivory/bone sword"
>
> rómonh sádha
> sword-WOOD yellow
> "birchwood sword"
>
> Is this totally weird? Do natlangs do stuff like that?

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