Re: ?? Re: a "natural language" ?

Ray wrote, in response to Rodlox:
> >>>> [ablauts] sometimes intersecting
> >>>> one another but sometimes not,
> >
> >  how does something intersect?
>
> Not a grammatical or linguistic term.
Well, in linguistics one does talk about intersecting distributions.

> It's meaning will depend upon context, of which very little is given.
Yeah... well, if I'd given too much more context, it'd'a driven the
thread way far afield! :)

> But if it follows on from the
> above, I would guess that the language has more than one type of ablaut
> patterning and that some nouns and verbs exhibits mixes where some forms
> show, say, pattern A and other parts pattern B
That's correct.  In Georgian some nouns and some verbs show
e.g. zero-grade ablauting (although it's not usually characterized as
such for nouns), but their origins are completely different.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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