[YG Conlang Archives] > [Latejami group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
If you use a morpheme "the professional who does X" there is a
question. How specific do you want to be about the profession?
A fireman works against fires. An icecream man promotes icecream. Do
you want a speaker to be able to distinguish between the two?
There are guys somtimes called "firemen" who have the job of keeping
a fire going.
For simple generic reference to "that guy who's job has somthing to
do with fires" I would specify a simple morpheme that could be
attached to fire, or ice cream, or music.
This easily allows one to reference the supervisor of firemen, or
the trainer of icecream men.
But I would want a set of morphemes for more specific details.
"One who professionally does X"
"One who teaches X"
"One who manages the professionals who do X"
Also, I would not follow the English convention of calling the guys
who put out fires "fire+men" a compound. I would rather assign that
profession its own morpheme as is done with "police" the guys who
enforce the law.
RAM would probably want to derive the noun from a verb, so the
meaning of the verb could be "to enforce the law" and the guys who
do that would be "one who professionally enforces the law".
I like this approach because it leaves you alot of wiggle room. You
might decide that you want a separate morpheme to express "person
who does this professionally" and "person who does this but doesn't
get paid for it". It doesn't help us English speakers much with law
enforcment but its nice for guys who drive race cars.
Jim is a professional race car driver, do not try this at home.
John drives race cars, to the garage where he services them.
Both are drivers of race cars but we only want to call one a race
car driver.
FaqSphinx