Re: Attached Verbs
| From: | dirk elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, February 20, 2001, 22:39 |
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On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Patrick Jarrett wrote:
> Hey guys, I just got back from a trip. It seems I do my best conlanging on the
> road. I dont know if this is new, and since my reach of real languages is
> short I do not know if it is something I created or not.
>
> In my language, most verbs are regular words. But some more common ones, (forms
> of be, make) are attached to the nouns which do the actions.
>
> An example is the verb for be is -slo
> If I wanted to say "I am man" I would do as follows.
> pa (long a) is the pronoun for I,
> pa + tah (ergative case) + -slo + -ntel (the present tense ending) akee +
> ma(long a) (absolutive ending)
>
> the final sentence would be
> "patahslontel akeema"
>
> Is this new? Or did I reinvent the wheel :)
Shoshoni has several suffixes which derive verbs from nouns
which behave in a fashion similar to what you have described.
-pai 'have X'
suten tainnappe kahni -pai
that man house -have
'The man has a house.'
-nai 'make X'
suten teinnappe kahni -nai -nnu
that man house -build -past
'The man built a house.'
-pekka 'be afflicted with X'
suten tainnappe tuhu -pekka -si
that man anger- be.afflicted.with -SS
teittse tenisua -nna
terrible say -past
'The man got angry and said terrible things'
-mai ~ mahai 'go get, go after, hunt, gather X'
himpaisen nemmen noha tepa -mmahai -'yu
long.ago we(excl) used.to pine.nut -gather -durative
'Long ago we used to gather pine nuts.'
-tuah 'become, turn into X'
seepa kia imaa tapai -tuah -kanto'i
perhaps tomorrow sun -become -will
'Perhaps tomorrow the sun will shine.'
It's a feature I like so well, that I borrowed it into Tepa,
which has the suffixes -pa 'have' and -na 'make' (note the
phonological similarities to Shoshoni as well).
Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu
"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists." - Edward Sapir