Re: Circumfixes?

At 10:31 am -0400 7/6/01, Douglas Koller, Latin & French wrote:
>Ray wrote:
>
>>Both circumfixes & circumpositions are found in natlangs. According to
>>Trask, Tigrinya has a circumfix _bi-.....-gize_ = "at the time when" and
>>Mandarin Chinese has a circumposition _dao2......li3_ = "into" (acc. to
>>Trask _dao2_ = "to" and _li3_ = "in" - he gives an example: _dao2 guon2
>>li3_ = (literally) to can in = into the can).  I'm feeling tired this even,
>>but I seem to recall that such circumpositions are not uncommon in Mandarin.
>
>If I understand your use of the word "circumposition", then I have a
>slightly different take on it in Mandarin. "Dao4" is a coverb (though
>it can also stand on its own, meaning "arrive, get to"), while "li3",
>I think strictly speaking, is a noun. So literally, it's: to/toward
>(something's) inside.
>
>Ma3yi3 pa2dao4 guan1tou2 li3mian4 qu4.
>ant  crawl-to can inside go
>The ant crawled into the can.
>
>This pattern is indeed not uncommon in Mandarin,
Just what I thought.  I had known the coverb origin of the preposited part
of the 'circumposition' and the nominal origin of the postposited part.
Personally, I'm not sure that I'd readily call the construction
"circumposition" either, but some people do.

>but seems a little
>different to me than the "bi-...-gize" structure of Tigrinya (though
>I know nothing of this language).
Yep - the latter, in any case, is clearly a circumfix.  And circumfixes
have about as much in common with 'circumpositions' as prefixes & suffixes
have with prepositions or postpositions, i.e. a suffix might have arisen
from a postposition attaching itself rather intimately to the end of a
word, but can (and often does) have quite different origins.
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At 1:17 pm -0400 7/6/01, Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
>
>Comparable to Indonesian usage:  ...kedalam kaleng '(to) inside~into the
>can' more lit. to interior of the can.  Cf. e.g "correct" kedalaman kaleng
>kotor 'the inside of the can is dirty' (the two ke- prefixes are not
>identical!)  ~ colloq. dalamnya kaleng kotor.  Still, the status of dalam is
>odd; it's also an adjective meaning 'deep'-- how about "li3"?
Yes, of course - I knew I'd seen similar construction somewhere else.  I
quite like this sort of usage - must use it in a conlang somewhen  :)

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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