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Re: Thoughts on Word building

From:Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date:Monday, December 5, 2005, 12:54
On 12/5/05, Taka Tunu <takatunu@...> wrote:
> Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote: > <<< > There are some derivational suffixes, I think, e.g. 'zhe3' in Chinese > for the agent ('-er' in English): 'xue2zhe3' - 'learner'. Searching > Cedict does not seem to reveal any exception of this referring to an > agent and '-zhe3' being suffixed to anything but a verb. Anyway, I > think that that is an exception and that the majority of words are > ad-hoc compounds. But we'll need figures for comparison. > >>> > > "Agent"? What's that? :-) > I use "person", "workman", "specialist", "master", "disciple", etc.
I have an "agent" morpheme "tu" in gzb that is used to derive: 1. the agent case postposition, "tu-i" 2. -er type derivations: "tu-~" 3. active participles, "tu-~-bô" (~ is the verb root) The second type is in contrast to derivations with the suffixes -tla and -pja (roughly equivalent to Esperanto "-ist"); the "tu-~" forms refer to someone who is actually doing this action now, the "-tla" and "-pja" forms refer to someone who does it habitually whether professionally or as an amateur/volunteer. Other people-word derivations: a lot of words derive from "mâ" "human, person" - mostly mâ + adjective. Where Esperanto has "-an" I have several morphemes, the suffix "-lô" (adherent of a religion or philosophy) and the root morphemes "jqwâ" (inhabitant) and "sqlâ" (member of an organized group of people). Volapük "-an" is pretty vague, covering the territory of Esperanto "-ul", "-an" and "-ist". It seems odd given that overall Vp has a larger affix set, I think, including many that are of very specific use for a limited set of words; e.g. "-üf" for deriving musical terms. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm ...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field