Re: Polysynth Question

On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:59:20 -0700, David J. Peterson
<dedalvs@...> wrote:

>Jeff Jones:
><<
>Has anyone done a polysynthetic lang with a small phoneme inventory?
>I'd like
>to see what you've done.
> >>
>
>Oh, I guess my polysynthetic language counts.  I always think
>of the inventory of phones rather than the inventory of phonemes.
>Here are the phonemes:
>
>Stops: p, t, k, q
>Fricatives: P, s, X
>Nasals: m, n
>Approximants: l, w, j
>Vowels: a, i, u, @
>
>Technically, that's it for the phonemes (and actually, /w/ and /j/
>might not be phonemes in the historical sense...).  That translates
>synchronically into 22 different consonants and 10 vowels, but it
>at base it's 12 and 4.
>
>This is the main page for the language:
>
>http://dedalvs.free.fr/epiq/
>
>Jeff:
><<
>Aspects (special or not), mood, tense, personal agreement, including
>adjectival and adverbial uses -- and how they interact with the
>phonology.
> >>
>
>All this information is detailed in the verbs section, primarily:
>
>http://dedalvs.free.fr/epiq/verbs.html
I read the verb section two or three times. I've considered using the root
vowels (both, not just the latter) for verb classes in Poly9 (not the same
classes as yours though), but will more likely go with consonant infixation in
Poly8, marking only the derivations, not the original classes.

>Generally, you start with a noun, then use a specifier...
>
>http://dedalvs.free.fr/epiq/specifiers.html
>
>...to turn it into some kind of verb.  Then you add all the verbal
>stuff.
>
>-David
>**********************************************************
*********
>"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
>"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
>
>-Jim Morrison
>
>http://dedalvs.free.fr/