Re: CHAT: query: where to start?
| From: | Tim Smith <timsmith@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, August 10, 2000, 0:15 |
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At 12:32 PM 8/9/2000 -0600, dirk elzinga wrote:
>Absolutely. That in mind, don't forget to look at Native America for
>other interesting examples of non-concatenative morphology, especially
>the languages of California (Miwok and Yokuts in particular). There
>are some very interesting patterns which don't look Semitic at all,
>but which play with the stem shape in similar ways.
>
>Tepa, my own project, emulates these languages to a certain extent.
>For example, a predicate word in perfective aspect must have a
>syllabic sequence of light-heavy at its right edge while a predicate
>in imperfective aspect must have a sequence of heavy-light at its
>right edge:
>
> |pite| 'see'
> /wapitee/ 'I saw' /wipte/ 'I see'
> /kupitee/ 'you saw' /kipte/ 'you see'
> /pitee/ 'he saw' /ipte/ 'he sees'
> etc.
>
>There are other kinds of modifications made for number and
>transitivity which involve processes such as gemination, infixation,
>and reduplication; person and modality are shown by affixation and
>cliticization, respectively.
Speaking of odd kinds of morphology: in the conlang project that's
currently getting the largest share of my attention (which doesn't have a
name yet), the way aspect is marked on the verb is that the imperfective
always ends in a nasal, and the perfective always ends in the corresponding
voiceless stop. For example:
/pelan/ = he/she sees him/her/it
/pelat/ = he/she saw him/her/it
/teraN/ = he/she is giving it to him/her
/terak/ = he/she gave it to him/her
In other words, the point of articulation of the final segment is part of
the stem, but the manner of articulation is the affix (if it can still be
called an affix when it's not even one whole phoneme). This sort of came
to me in a flash of intuition, but I don't think I've ever heard of
anything like it in a natlang. Does it sound at all plausible?
- Tim
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Tim Smith
"To live outside the law you must be honest."
-- Bob Dylan