Re: Small Derivational Idea

----- Original Message ----
> From: David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>
> It occurred that the only way to prevent this would be using an
> infix:
>
> Greasy = "greasy"
> Groneasy = "non-greasy"
Not the only way. "Greasy," after all, consists of two morphemes. We could also
have a suffix that gets affixed before "y": "Greasuny," for example.

Or, of course, we could just have a separate morpheme that's an antonym of "greasy." :D

As for conlangs, another approach might be something like Pig Latin. To make the
opposite of a word, just say it in Pig Latin. "Non-greasy" would be "easygray,"
"left" would be "ightray," "tepid" would be "otthay," and so forth. I don't
think such a rule would come up entirely organically, but I could see it
starting off with someone having a bit of fun and it catching on so thoroughly
people eventually forgot the origin and it become a fully productive mechanism.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, once upon a time, I couldn't remember the Ukrainian
word for "right," so I directed some people to turn "nileevo" (not-left). It
was a source of great amusement, but then, I was the cute American who was
trying so hard despite his vocabulary of 50 words, so just about everything I
said in Ukrainian was a source of great amusement.... ;)

-- Paul