Re: VMs: comparison of word changes

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004, Marke Fincher wrote:
> The appearance and disappearance of specific prefixes is fairly
> balanced.  Similarly with suffices.  Some sequences are only
> prefixes.  Nothing shocking here.
>
> The INTERESTING thing is that whilst there were 184 insertions
> to the middle of words, there were only 6 removals from the middle.
>
> I don't know what to think of this...

Sorry to bring up Siouan languages again ... and with the same caveat that
this is intended only as an example of linguistic phenomena ... but there
are languages in which inflectional material is added medially.  For
example, providing examples of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd persons, from
Omaha-Ponca, a language I can inflect verbs in fairly well:

Prefixal inflection, regular:  anaN?aN, dhanaN?aN, naN?aN=i 'hear'
Prefixal inflection, dh-stems:  bdhathe, nathe, dhatha-i 'eat'

Infixal inflection, regular:  z^uahe, z^udhahe, z^uha=i 'wade'
Infixal inflection, dh-stem:  maNbdhiN, maNniN, maNdhiN=i 'walk'

The last verbs here are simply compounds of some sort in which the source
of the leading element is now obscure.

There is another infixal pattern involving a class of derivational
particles added to verbs and taking inflection sometimes after, sometimes
before, the derivational prefix.

It is also possible to find verbs consisting of two logical roots, both
inflected, e.g.,

Doubly inflected, k- and dh-stem:  kkaNbdha, s^kaNna, gaNdha=i 'want'

I don't know of an example of infixed nominal inflection off hand, but in
Eskimo languages the difference between a singular and a dual or plural
form in the oblique cases typically amounts to a change in consonant atr
the start of the last syllable, resulting from the forms being
historically built on the ergative singular and ergative plural, with an
additional element added.  The ergative is also the possessive, and
presumably forms like 'in X' derive from 'X's inside'.

Of course, as long as an inflectional scheme is more or less
agglutinative, piling up pieces one after another, a change in one of the
inner orders, not accompanied by a change in one of the outer orders, will
look like infixation.

All this is not to say, of course, that internal variations in Voynichese
words are necessarily to be taken as inflectional.
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