Re: Unattested... but possible?

> it's not surprising that
> "prefixaufnahme" is so rare as to be nonexistent.  It doesn't,
> however, appear to be *impossible*.
Two corrections: In looking up the correct spelling of "suffixhäufung"
I came across a reference to "präfixaufnahme":

"In view of the scarcity of case prefixes, the chances are that Mara
and Nungali are the only two languages in the world with
Präfixaufnahme.  Since the prefixes undergoing Aufnahme here happen to
cumulate case with gender/class and possibly with number, there is no
analogue to Suffixaufnahme involving pure case markers."
(Plank, Double Case, 1995)

So that gives us an attestation of präfixaufnahme, although it opens
up a more specific unattested possibility.  (Too specific for
inclusion in this text, I think.)

What surprised me is it goes on to describe Tone-Aufnahme, which is
not something I had ever considered.  Apparently it exists in Maasai
and Ntaandu.  Later, it brings up the (formal, at least) possibility
of infixaufnahme and circumfixaufnahme, but these are probably too
cumbersome to be real possibilities in a naturalistic conlang.

--
Patrick Littell
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