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classifier vs. CCM+POS

In a message dated 2002-10-14 1:39:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lsulky@hidden.email writes:


I'm having trouble understanding how the classifier "-sno"
(= "weather") is distinguished from the CCM "-sn-" with the adjective
suffix "-o" (= "essential quality"). It's probably a stupid question,
so if the answer is "just keep studying, it's in there", that's okay.
Thanks ---larry


larry,
i asked a similar question a few months ago.  here's the answer rick gave me:
===
>
> In a somewhat related issue, how does one know when a final '-nsi',
> e.g., is the CCM -ns- plus POS -i and when it is the classifier for
> large divisions?  A lot of the classifiers look like CCM + POS, and I
> have a lot of trouble telling them apart. Any suggestions?
>

I don't know why you're having trouble.  Parsing of a root stops as soon
as a classifier is found.  Any consonant-clusters that immediately
follow it can only be parts of suffixes.

In case you're having any doubts, I assure you that Katanda is truly
self-segregating.  When the computer translates Katanda sentences, the
software first strips out all spaces and punctuation, and converts all
upper case letters to lower case before it feeds the result to the
parser.  For example, for the sentences "Tenda Kapedebyo cavu binsa
va. Kibe lisi tumi cahi?", the parser only sees the string
"tendakapedebyocavubinsavakibelisitumicahi".

I don't understand why you're having trouble, unless you're trying to
parse by sight, without knowledge of which syllables are prefixes and
classifiers.  I admit that it's not possible to parse all Katanda words
without this knowledge.
===
good luck!
steven