Clarification on peme+ and pepe+

[Tan Jala]

I was wondering if pem+ and pep+ are productive, thus asked Karyu Pawl about it along with Wllìm and Tekre.

Kaltxì ma karyu, I hope it's all going well.

I was wondering if pep+ and pem+ are productive for all the nouns or there should be pepe+ and peme+ instead. Why I think they're not: when they were first introduced in https://naviteri.org/2011/07/number-in-na%e2%80%99vi/ they were used with a few words which should be in dictionary, like pemstan. I saw -hem examples there too, but it's not entirely covered as blog ends saying "As for such questions as how pe- interacts with fne- 'kind, type' and how it works with the full variety of nouns, we'll leave those for another time."
So, despite there was mentioned a general paradigm. I guess, it wasn't made clear yet?

I also think about their productivity as "why not", but I see that pem+ and nouns starting with "m" would look like *pemmauti, *pemmikyun etc; pep+ and nouns starting with "px" would look like *peppawpxun, *peppazang etc. As well as that some question words would look like, for example, as *pemu and *pepu for "what two things?" and "what three things?" I don't know if those look strange or unnatural, but they certainly cause questions. Thus it's one of questions I was wondering about.

Eywa ngahu,
ta Tan Jala

Kaltxì ma 'eylan!

[I'm writing this same response to Tekre and Wllìm, who asked a similar question.]

Faysìpawmìri akosman irayo! 

You raise some very good points. 

The forms I gave for the paradigms involving tute, tutan, tuté, etc., where the second e, which is unstressed, was deleted, are special, "frozen" forms that evolved over time and are included in the dictionary as separate lexical items. As you've rightly pointed out, applying this process to general nouns would result in some strange forms, as in: 

Pe + pxe + pxun --> pepepun --> peppun 'what three arms' 

The main problem here is that this is now indistinguishable in pronunciation from: 

Pe + pxun --> pepun 'what arm'   

And that's unacceptable. So we stop at pepepun, which is the correct form. (I'm trying to think of a context where it would be natural to ask "What three arms?" 😊 ) 

So with general nouns, the rule is: don't delete the e in me- and pxe-. Start with the usual form for the singular, dual, trial, or plural of the noun in question; then prefix pe-. For the trial make the further change pe + pxe --> pepe.

Therefore, 'what two ikrans' is simply pemeikran.

One more thing: It might appear that pemeylan 'what two friends?' is an exception, but it's really not. 'Two friends' by itself is meylan:

me + 'eylan --> meeylan (lenition) --> meylan (two identical vowels coalesce into one)

Prefixing pe- to that, we get pemeylan.

I hope that answers your questions. But if there are still things to be clarified, please let me know! 

Hayalovay. 

ta P.

[Wllìm]

Good to know, this question has come up at least four times in the community in the last few years

I'm trying to think of a context where it would be natural to ask "What three arms?" 😊 )

Maybe something with a syaksyuk? They have four arms...

[Toliman]

Good to know, thanks for sharing!

[Vawmataw]

Thanks for the answer!

[Toliman]

Good to know, this question has come up at least four times in the community in the last few years

I'm trying to think of a context where it would be natural to ask "What three arms?" 😊 )

Maybe something with a syaksyuk? They have four arms...

Good idea