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Cases vs Affixes etc

 
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 7:52 am    Post subject: Cases vs Affixes etc Reply with quote

Hey,

I was reading through the grammar of Ithkuil/Ilaksh (www.ithkuil.net) which have literally dozens/hundreds of affixes which are catagorized into different types (eg valence, illocution, version, etc), and I'm working on an affixation system that combines morphological and syntactic features into affixes (though I'm not sure what rules I'm going to have for prefixation or suffixation as yet).

The thing is a lot of these affixes seem to overlap with the uses of cases, or vice versa, and the naming of these as cases seems almost arbitrary.

An example from my work-in-progress affixation system - the Augmentative:
when used on a noun: it implies a big or strong noun
on an adjective acting as a noun: it implies a hearty or ardent adjective (eg taste)
and on verbs: it implies that it is done with force (forcefully, loudly, strongly, etc).
(I'd put in the translations but my hard drive is rather under the weather and I don't even have any of my original notes anymore, so I'm having to work from memory for the older stuff and work around it with new stuff...)

On a noun or noun-adjective, the Augmentative describes the noun (as in an adjective), while on a verb it indicates the manner (as in an adverb).

Another, the one that indicates a 'not enough'ness (with the tag HYPO) can indicate description, amount, or manner. The only other things that are indicated from what I've seen so far are time and position. Some of the ones in Ithkuil indicate manner, and others simply replace verbs or groups of similar verbs.

The groups of cases given by Wikipedia are: location and motion (the most common I've seen), morphosyntactic alignment, relation, semantics, and state.

I don't know if my ramblings got anywhere, but hopefully they mean something Razz

I am glad to be out of classes again - I'll have a bit of time to do this stuff again (though hopefully I'll get my hard drive back with files intact sooner rather than later...)
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eldin raigmore
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Joined: 03 May 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wouldn't call the augmentative a case.
It doesn't show the grammatical, nor yet the semantic, relationship of the noun it is affixed to, to the verb nor to the clause-as-a-whole nor to some other noun in the clause.

In most languages that have an augmentative, it's the opposite of the diminutive.
The use of the diminutive isn't always "little"; sometimes it's "dear" or "intimate". In such cases "augmentative" can often be like "you big oaf".

When applied to a verb or a modifier (adjective or adverb) I think it's more usually called an "intensifier" than an "augmentative".

Italian (and/or some other Romance language or languages?) at one point had an augmentative suffix /-jon/ or /-(V)on/ where V is/was a high (close) vowel. So if "mille" is a thousand, "million" is "a big thousand"; if a certain kind of boat is a galley, a bigger one is a "galleon"; and so on.
Mostly if it's called "augmentative" then it applies to nouns; in languages with "substantives" (that is, nouns are not much differentiated from adjectives, nor are adjectives much differentiated from nouns), I suppose an "augmentative", if it exists, probably applies to adjectives too.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I also wouldn't call the shortfalling or elliptical (see "ellipse" meaning "something left out" or "deficiency"; related word, "lipogram" meaning "a stretch of writing that leaves out a certain letter") or insufficiency affix a case. At least not in the examples you gave. A language could easily have such a case, though I know of no natlang nor conlang that does. Consider

nail-HYPO the shoe was lost;
shoe-HYPO the horse was lost;
horse-HYPO the rider was lost;
rider-HYPO the battle was lost;
battle-HYPO the kingdom was lost;
and all nail-HYPO.

meaning
"For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
for want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
for want of a horse, the rider was lost;
for want of a rider, the battle was lost;
for want of a battle, the kingdom was lost;
and all for the want of a horseshoe-nail."

It would be kind of like the abessive or caritive(sp?); except it would indicate lack of a sufficiency rather than complete lack.

The opposite of the -HYPO affix might be a "hyperbolic" ("overthrow") or "surplus" affix.
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I didn't expect most of the examples I have to be actual cases, but you're right in that the HYPO one is similar to the Abessive/Privative (though both the HYPO and Privative will exist in the system I'm working on).

As for the (adage?) with HYPO, in my conlang at least I'd use the Privative ('for lack of') or even the Causative ('because of' when applied to verbs taking the place of nouns).

The augmentative an diminutive though, I think they're going towards what you mention they should be - they do both indicate size or quality, but also manner; the diminutive at least could also easily be used as an affectionate marker eg 'my life.DIM' /= 'my little life', but 'my life (with affection)'

For the list of amount affixes including HYPO, I have: hypo (not enough), hyper (too much), ultra (extremely), omni (all) [no name yet, but meaning none], comparative (same/as ___ as), less/more, arch (highest), hemi (half), per (completely), and poly (many).

Thanks for your input Smile
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Sat May 01, 2010 1:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aert wrote:
ultra (extremely)
"ultra" actually means "beyond".
If you look at the Lingua Questionnaire's list of cases, you'll see "ulterior vs citerior"; "ulterior" means "on (or to or from or past) the other side of" and "citerior" means "on (or to or from or past) this side of".

"Infra", OTOH, means "beneath", I think.
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Sat May 01, 2010 2:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah you're right - I'm combining a couple different affixes for some of these, or just a specific one.
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