Re: Deriving words that aren't too long

On Mon, 16 Nov 1998, Simon Kissane wrote:

> For example, I have the root "chit" (gift), and by adding the endings
> "il" and "a" I get the word "chitila" (to take). Is there any way I
> could still have regular derivation, but keep the size of the words
> down?... it makes a single English sentence 3 times as long translated.
        Well, some might argue that that's a thing of beauty, but you
might try something a la Navajo, with regular phonetic changes. With your
example, for example, you might get:

        chit+il > chilt+a > chilta

        say you had another derivational suffix, -m, and another lexeme
top /tOp/ which meant 'a hit' you could form the following words, still
fairly small:

        chit-m > chint+a > chinta "to give"
        top-m > tomp+a > tompa "to be hit"
        top-l > tolv+a > tolva "to hit"

        I could help more if I had more of the suffixes which make
everything so long. But I hope this gives an idea nonetheless...

        Clinton,
        who's reading up on Navajo verbal paradigms at the moment