Prenoun ordering

Started by wm.annis, September 09, 2010, 04:45:10 PM

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wm.annis

In the grammar (section 3.3.6, currently) I have a table giving the ordering for the various prenoun elements.  I didn't want to take up space there explaining how I came to that ordering, but it occurred to me today that I should at least document my thinking somewhere.

Things to note:

First, the fixed correlatives (fìkem, tsakrr, pelun, etc.) are a bit odd in some respects, but are nonetheless clearly and simply created from nouns (or noun fragments) combined with the prenouns.  So, I have to rely on them for some of my leaps of logic, even though I know the correlatives have odd pluralization patterns.

Second, in Human languages, morphosyntax (the ordering of morphemes, like nouns and prenouns here) is always quite strict — much stricter than the word-order syntax may be.  So, I'm making an assumption of regularity.

Three, I wrote a long and scary email to Frommer a while ago about prenoun combinations (I remain especially concerned about fra-).  He's told me he's thinking about the issue, but I've had no other comments from him.  My hope is that this means that the basic frame is correct, with the warning that my mail to him was largely about questions relating to the semantics of fra-.

Finally, I'm assuming fra- will be somewhere close to the number markers, simply because it's quite nearly a number marker itself.  Whether fra- and number markers may combine, we don't yet know.

So, here we go:









fì-skxawng-ìriCorpus
f-ay-vrrtepCorpus
fne-lì'uCanon
pxe-fne-'upxareNa'viteri
tsa-fne-syulangForum post
pe-fne-txintìnNa'viteri
ts-ay-fne-sänumvi-tForum post
lì'u-pePF lexicon

If someone can find me a Frommerian example of suffixed -pe with a case ending following, that'd be great.  I'd also accept that if you sent such a word to Frommer and he didn't correct it.  I'm 99% sure that is correct, but confirmation is always nice.