Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ    Attic   

Re: palindrome to pluralize

From:Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>
Date:Monday, July 28, 2008, 16:28
On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:52:09 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>wrote: >On 7/28/08, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote: >>On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 10:44 PM, Vincent Pistelli <pva003@...> >>>wrote: >>>if the nouns in your language are single syllables you can just turn the >>>word into a palindrome to make it plural. >>[maybe it would also] work with words longer than one syllable; though the >>longer the root words are, the longer the pluralized forms will be, assuming I >>am reading you correctly (do an inverse reduplication of all or part of the >>root to pluralize).
I agree with Jim here. The longer the singular form of the noun, the fewer of its syllables you'll want to invert-redouble. Also; Have you considered how this would interact with other inflections of the nouns, such as case?
>>[snipped stuff Jim said that was good but I don't need to say again] >>... maybe your reduplication process never adds more than one syllable; >>with monosyllables it forms a palindrome, with longer words it does not. >>... >>There are various other things you could do with a more or less palindromic >>reduplicative affix like this; I think some time ago someone posted here a >>link to a study showing the most common uses of reduplication >>cross-linguistically. I vaguely recall augmentation, diminution, and iterative >>aspect as being among the common uses.
I seem to recall that too. If anyone finds the actual link could you re-post it? Message: 151407 THEORY: Uses of reduplication (Eric Christopherson rakko@... Mar 2, 2008 2:26am) and its sequelae look promising. Message: 151434 linguistlist Summary on reduplication (Benct Philip Jonsson bpj@... Mar 3, 2008 4:25 am) and its reply also look promising. They reference these links: <http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-52.html> <http://tinyurl.com/2sha4a> <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9501C&L=linguist&P=R4785> Finally, for more recent particular examples, look at the following threads: 151983 Reduplication in Indonesian (Kelly Drinkwater mizunomi@... Apr 6, 2008 4:24 am) 153007 Ainu day counting (was: Re: THEORY: Relation between counting, trial, and plural) (Alex Fink 000024@... May 21, 2008 5:22 am) 154194 Re: Beekes. (Edgard Bikelis bikelis@... Jul 27, 2008 2:25 pm) Does anyone have anything else?
>Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> >Inverted reduplication is a nifty idea.
I agree with Mark. I don't see it as any more difficult than ordinary reduplication, which does indeed indicate plural in many natlangs.