Re: Deriving words that aren't too long

Nik Taylor wrote:

> 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?
>
> One way would simply be shorter derivational suffixes, like "l"
> instead
> of "il", thus "chitla", or have derivations that combine several
> meanings.  For examples, you could have a suffix "-e" meaning the same
>
> thing as "il" and "a" together, thus "chite".  You could also use
> contrastive stress.  I'm guessing that -a means verb (am I right?), if
>
> so, perhaps you could simply stress nouns on the first syllable and
> verbs on the second, thus "CHITil" would mean "taking", and "chitIL"
> would mean "to take" (of course, that wouldn't work on mono-syllables
> like your root "chit", but perhaps on mono-syllables you could add
> that
> -a).
All good suggestions.  Another thing you could do - though this would
be a major modification, of course - would be to introduce phonemic
tone into your conlang.  A lot of derivational morphology could then
take the form of changes in the tone contours of words, leaving
the segmental shapes constant.

Matt.