Re: CONLANG Digest - 28 Feb 2000 to 29 Feb 2000 (#2000-61)

Nik Taylor wrote:

>Muke Tever wrote:
>> Sounds like (what the last linguistics book I read called) an interfix.
>
>Infix, actually.  However, that's a general term.  I don't know what
>that specific kind of infix would be called.
>
No, I think Muke is correct. An infix is a morpheme inserted
within another morpheme, essentially breaking that other morpheme
in two parts. In Tagalog for example:

     ROOT:     bili 'buy'
     INFIX:    -um- 'perfect agentive trigger'
     NEW WORD: bumili 'bought:AT'

In the above example, there is no Tagalog morpheme *'b' nor a
morpheme *'ili. Only 'bili' and '-um-'.

This is different from the 'a' morpheme in Patrick's poem. Instead,
it joined two seperate morphemes to form one word, as in the word
for 'poem' in Patrick's poem.:

     lass-a-ata
     word-+-thing

My texts call this an interfix - keeping a distinction between
interfix and infix.

-kristian- 8)