Re: palindrome to pluralize

Charlie wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 10:44 PM, Vincent Pistelli <pva003@...
> > > wrote:
> > > I just came up with an idea for a language I have been working on
> > > that I thought everyone would like. The idea is that if the nouns
> > > in your language are single syllables you can just turn the word
> > > into a palindrme to make it plural.
> >
>I understoodd the original idea not to include reduplication, simply
>palindrome.  Thus:
>
>tas > sat
>kin > nik
>
>I guess it would work as long as there was no homophone sat > tas.
>But then there's always context.
>
That was my understanding too. It would require very strict rules of
morpheme structure (so that you couldn't have words like mom, nun, sis, tat,
cock (just to use some Engl. exs.), and as you point out, you might not be
able to have both sat and tas, unless they were distinct parts of speech
(Engl. gets along OK with "read" /rEd/ past tense and /rEd/ color) and it
might also require a rather large phonology to provide enough distinctive
CVC forms.