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Rex May - Baloo wrote: > > on 3/3/02 9:44 AM, Rob Speer at rob@hidden.email wrote: > > > On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 06:43:18AM -0700, Rex May - Baloo wrote: > >>> Do you mean the first syllable of morphs only? > >> > >> No, morphs and compounds. I've been going thru the vocabulary so far, and I > >> can't find a problem with that rule, whereas penultimate stress does indeed > >> make trouble. > > > > In the Ceqli vocabulary, there's no way to tell the difference between a > > word that could form a compound with another similar word (pe) and a > > grammatical word that would never form compounds (to). So you'd have to > > know what the words mean, or at least what grammatical class they're in, > > to pronounce the stress correctly. > > > > As an example: I believe "to xi" and "pe xi" would have different > > stress. > > That's sort of true, which is why I've made the 'the' words all in the form > tV(V), as an assistance. > > 'pe xi, ' BTW, would be a strange combination. Normally, as Mike would > point out, it would be 'xi pe,' or 'xisa pe.' So why does this not > invalidate 'pexi,' etc. Answer is that it does, sort of, but the thing > about a compound is that it is _not_ a modifier/modified relationship any > more. Bluebird is a compound, blue bird isn't. 'pexi' is -defined- as a > female person, on the principle that a compound is actually a new morpheme, > made out of two or more morphemes squished together and given the same > meaning-status as a morpheme. > > 'Blufaul' means a particular kind of bird. 'Blu(sa) faul' can mean that > same kind of bird (provided that it is indeed blue in color), or any bird > that happens to be blue, or is wearing a blue collar to indentify it in a > bird race, maybe, or a picture of a bird done with blue ink. All this is an > attempt to make Pamzo, pexi, frazo, etc. palatable. But the reason these remain unpalatable to me is that "blufaul" means "bluebird", and has the modifier preceding the head, as specified, but "pamzo" means "parentmale", "pexi" means "personfemale", and "frazo" means "siblingmale". They are all backwards. Why do only sex morphemes follow the head? blue bird blu faul female bird faul xi Or, is it only in compounds? white dog byel kan female dog xi kan bitch kanxi Sorry, but it still doesn't make sense to me. It seems very early in the game to be introducing irregularities into the morphology. That should be saved for the second generation of native speakers. -- Mike Wright http://www.CoastalFog.net _______________________________________________________ "When they wired us humans up, they really should have labeled the wires--don't you think?" -- Ed