Re: Thoughts on Word building

On 12/3/05, Larry Sulky <larrysulky@...> wrote:
> On 12/3/05, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> > But is there in existence on the web such a list of
> > affix functions?
> I've generally found Esperanto's and Ladekwa's affixes to be a pretty
> good collection. Together they seem pretty comprehensive without going
> off the deep end.  ---larry
The Volapük affix list, though overall not as powerful as
Esperanto's, has a few good affixes that Esperanto
lacks.  I'm not sure where to find a comprehensive
list all in one place online, however; the best list
I know of is in Andre Cherpillod's _Konciza
Gramatiko de Volapuko_.

The gjâ-zym-byn suffix list might give you a few
ideas, too; it has some curious affixes not found in
the other lists.

http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/semantic.htm#section5

I also could see the value of a comprehensive list
of affixes or derivational methods; maybe we could
collaborate on such a list at the Conlang Wikicity?

One might turn it around and say: we want
to look for semantic patterns that suggest
factoring into two or more concepts, so
the word can be derived from two or more
morphemes.  A while ago I started compiling
a list of such patterns, most of them used
in Esperanto or gzb, a few of which I don't
think I've used or seen used yet.  Some of them...
(X represents the root the affix
would be applied to)

method, system, way of doing X
to produce, emit, give off X (milk -> suckle)
do X with attention (see -> look, hear -> listen)
sense for perceiving X (light -> vision -> see,
sound -> hearing -> hear)
generally cable of X (conceive -> female,
beget -> male, think -> intelligent )
actually capable of X (conceive/beget -> fertile)
to violate X (human law > crime, language > solecism,
moral law > sin...)

Other such patterns would indicate a
compounding of two root morphemes, perhaps
with a linking morpheme indicating their
relationship, or formation of an noun-adjective
phrase with some appropriate tagging
of the adjective:

an X made of Y  (brick house)
an X with property Y  (bluebird)
a mixture of X and Y (red+blue > purple, iron + carbon > steel)
an X that does Y, is associated with Y

You might look through the list archives
of the ceqli and konyalanguage mailing lists;
there have been discussions like this there
in the last year.  Also, just in the last
few days there have been similar discussions
in the AUXLANG mailing list about how
Esperanto's root lexicon might have been even
smaller with more extensive use of
compounding and affixing.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm
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