Re: Infixing in interlinears

Mark P. Line wrote:


>
>       http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/files/morpheme.html
>
One of the more useful sites mentioned recently.
>
> So assuming your example root 'fish' means "cumquat" in English, and
> assuming that the -il- infix is left-peripheral, your example in Leipzig
> glossing would be:
>
>       f<il>ish
>       <DIM>cumquat
>       'little cumquat'
>
> If you needed to treat -il- as right-peripheral instead, you'd gloss it as
>
>       cumquat<DIM>
>
But if it were R-peripheral, wouldn't that imply that the infix form was
**-li-? Given that both the infix vowel and the stem vowel happen to be the
same in this case, it's open to debate. Any other ex. -- perhaps "dash
~?dilash or ?dalish" '(little) mango"-- would show which it is.

I have an on-going argument (in my head, that is) with some of my
Indonesianist colleagues over this.  In a certain group of languages,
there's a nominalizing infix that works as follows:
herun (vb.) > henerun (n.) 'exchange'
pali (Vb) > panali (n) 'anchor(age)
hukum (vb.) > hunukum (n) 'judge(ment)' etc.

Wedded I guess to the Gospel truth that in synchronic analysis you _mustn't_
peek at the history, many persist in claiming the infix to be -nV- (at least
they get the V-harmonizing part right), whereas the slightest knowledge of
AN history would show that the infix is -Vn- and is the local form of the
Object Focus *-in- seen in Philippine langs. </rant>

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