Re: Languages

Am 11/03 16:18  Christophe Grandsire yscrifef:
> En réponse à Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:
>
> > Padraic Brown wrote:
> > > Actually, I find that a rather curious form of conjugation.
> >
> > Arguably, French has something like that at the end of adjectives, fem.
> > /gra~d/ masc. /gra~/, IIRC.  Essentially, it could be argued that the
> > rule is "to form the masculine, drop the final consonant".
> >
>
> I think there's nothing to argue about that! Even if in written language the
> rule is "add an -e to form the feminine", in spoken language the rule "drop the
> final consonnant to form the masculine" holds quite well (other examples than
> /gra~d/ vs. /gra~/ are /p@'tit/ vs. /p@'ti/, /vERt/ vs. /vER/, /mov'Ez/ vs.
> /mo'vE/, etc...). I once saw this rule taken as an example that grammatical
> rules of "deleting something" instead of "adding something" were possible and
> actually existed in languages, contrary to what was thought before. But of
> course, the written form of French long hid the actual rules...
>
Now, what would happen if a future development in French included a rule
such as "The feminine is formed from the masculine plus a morpheme that
marks it as feminine which is uniform except for irregular forms"?
Would this simplify the language or would it obscure it further?

Nothing personal against French, it is one of the few languages I can at
least read with some comprehension.  I'm speculating here.

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

Death is something you never live to regret.