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Rex May - Baloo wrote: > > on 4/8/02 12:27 AM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > > > If we go with all non-particles being verbs and requiring some > > particle to convert them into nouns, it seems that there are many > > categories of nouns that should be derived from verbs. Arabic does > > this a lot. > > > > It seems that the following are the minimum number of derived forms > > that need to be covered: > > > > verb: to cut > Xnay > > verbal noun: the act of cutting > How will this be used? Here I get very fuzzy minded. What wd some English > examples be? The verbal noun would be used whenever the verb has to be used as the subject or object of another verb--and such a noun should be able to be followed by the object of that modified verb. Go bu joy xnayka karn. I don't enjoy cutting meat. Komka kansa karn bura. Eating dog meat is evil. The verbal noun would also be used when the verb is modified by a noun. Dasa xnayka karn bon. His meat-cutting is good. Or, when modified by a stative verb. Bon xnayka karn ben kul per. Good meat-cutting benefits everyone. The glossary has "komka" as "meal". To me, this seems more like an instance of eating. (I assume that you aren't using "meal" to mean "that which is eaten", which I would guess as being something like "bekomdiq".) > > instance: a cut > Here we maybe have two things. An event and a result. The surgeon's cut > went well. That's the verbal noun. > I have a cut on my arm. More clearly. Building is an art. He > lives in a building. We need a suffix for act of, and one for result of. > > actor: a cutter (person) "Result" is a bit ambiguous to me. A building is a built thing, but is a cut thing a cut, or is it a cutting? This demonstrates the problem of trying to create a logically consistent--and consistently logical--language. We have to divide the world of experience into categories, but our categories are inescapably arbitrary. They may be reasonable, and useful, but they are not logical. Logical categorization requires so much detail that it becomes too unwieldy for practical use. > here you could use To xnay or To xnaycel (xnayper) Probably per, as it > combines more smoothly. > > instrument: a cutter (blade or machine) > Could be Xnaytul, Xnayxin, or, maybe even Xnaytayl for a blade of a machine. > > > > Arabic also has a way of deriving a place of action from a verbal > > root. This might be useful in some cases, e.g., for the verb "to sell". > > > > Some of these will be more obvious with other examples: > > > > verb: to sell > Sel > > verbal noun: the act of selling > > instance: a sale > > actor: a salesperson > Selper > > instrument: n/a > > place: a store, market > Seljay, Seldom. > > > > verb: to saw > > verbal noun: the act of sawing > > instance: a saw cut > > actor: a sawyer > > instrument: a saw > > place: a sawmill? > > > > There might also be a use for a noun of faculty: > > > > verb: to see > > verbal noun: the act of seeing > > instance: a sighting > > actor: a seer (person) > > instrument: a scope Also a "viewer". > > place: ? > > faculty: vision > How about Xawfeyxen. See able-ness. That should work, though it might be misinterpreted by English speakers to mean "visibility", which is a property of the seen object, rather than of the seer. But that's probably because the English "able" gets a passive meaning when it's used as a suffix. (A person is "able to sing" but a song is "singable"--and has some degree of "singability", while a person has "the ability to sing".) BTW, I don't see "xen" in the C-E glossary. > > In particular, I would avoid creating new morphemes where derived > > forms would work. Given the limited morpheme structure, it's probably > > best not to waste them unnecessarily. > Yes and no. I just realized that we don't need Pon, put, when we have > stakaw. Cause to be located. On the other hand, there are an infinite > number of possible morphemes, just a limited number of one-syllable > morphemes. When you get to two syllables, I think the math will show that > there are plenty. I agree, tho, that we should not overproliferate > morphemes. > > > > There are several existing Ceqli forms that already work: > > > > verbal noun: -ka > > instance: ? > > actor: -pe > > instrument: -ju > > place: -jay > > faculty: ? > > Absolutely. Now, the ones in CV form will have to be changed, but the > principle is the same. Pe can be per or go back to cel, Actor is the > unadorned t-ed verb, i. e. Ja is go and To ja is the one who goes, goer. Ah. I would have expected that to be the verbal noun. > But of course in many cases you'd also have a combining form with pe > because you want it clear that it's a person, not a thing, doing the going. > And Ju is too short, wil have to be, say 'tul.' Jay is fine. Dom can > frequently work for 'place of', if you are in fact referring to a building. > maybe replace 'ka' with 'xen', from English '-tion.' > To Xawxen. Seeing. -- Mike Wright http://www.CoastalFog.net ____________________________________________________________ "The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, however, there is." -- Anonymous