THEORY: 'true' nature of nouns vs. 'illusionary' nature

Well I decided to incorporate a feature in Tech where a noun can be marked
to indicate that something is either really what it appears to be, or that
it only has the appearance of being that but isn't necessary inherently what
it claims to be. The suffix -i is roughly translated into English as the
suffix '-like' or the prepositioned 'so-called', but it doesn't always have
a negative meaning. I'm wondering if there's a natlang that has this
feature.

Here are some examples from my language, all nouns and adjectives
(functioning as nouns) in the masculine nominative singular:

/t>@q>/ someone or something that is truly Techian
/t>q>i/ someone or something that appears to be Techian but isn't
necessarily Techian

/m@l/ good, delightful
/mli/ appears to be good, but may be evil

Everything above in my conlang is subject to change; I'm just theorizing
over theory here.

Reply