Re: CHAT: query: where to start?

On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> > However, I *don't* know any Arabic except "salaam."  :-/  My question
> > was, should I hold off on this until I can learn some Arabic in the
> > nebulous future, and stick to the languages I know something about?
>
> Not necessarily.  Although it would help to learn more about the language
> (more info can always help), what's really important is that you understand
> patterns that occur across languages more than one language's patterns.
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.

Semitic is (very) cool, but it's not the only game in town!

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu