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Let's ... constructions in Ayeri

From:Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...>
Date:Thursday, January 13, 2005, 19:18
Manisu!

I fetched my Payne from the bookshelf for binding it into a
"dust jacket" (as my dictionary calls this). The corners are
already bent and the cover is scratched -- although I
haven't used that book very much and only took it with me
to school for few times. I didn't manage to wrap it
into that damn plastic film because it was so slippy, but I
leafed through that book again. Seems to get interesting.
Somewhere, I saw an example of a language explaining how it
manages "Let's ..." constructions. By reduplication! Neat
idea, I immediately had to steal it.

   Let's go:   saru-saru!   <- saráo
   Let's see:  silvu-silvu! <- silvao - also means "watch"
   Let's hear: tangu-tangu! <- tangao - also means "listen"
   Let's eat:  condu-condu! <- condao

What I did was first applying the imperative mood to the
verbs (stem+u) and then duplicating the verb.

There only is a problem with "Let's do this again":
"again" is formed reduplicating the first bit of a verb,
this would yield:

   Let's go again:   *sasaru-sasaru!
   Let's see again:  *sisilvu-sisilvu!
   Let's hear again: *tatangu-tatangu!
   Let's eat again:  *cocondu-cocondu!

This is too long however, so as of writing this, I'm
thinking about how to make things shorter ... I'd favour
something like either "tatatangu!" or better "tatangu-ta!".
This idea could be developed further into applying the
rules for consonant mutation and dissimilation I already
use for the conditional, so this would lead to
"tatangu-na!". Things get funny with [k] because it changes
to [N], yielding e.g. "cocondu-anga!".
Any other suggestions? I think I'd stick to
<ve>verb.IMP.-<ve>

Cutanoie tangyam!
Carsten


NB: I'm thinking about to change the orthography so that the
plural with nouns is "-ye" as well, just like with
adjectives. Maybe I'll also change [k] = |c| to |k| and,
more likely, [Ng] = |ng| to |ngg|. See the sig.

--
Eri silveváng aibannama padanggin.
Nivaye evaenain eri ming silvoieváng kaparei.

Reply

Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>