I was thinking this morning about the
noun view in English, and what it means in a sentence such as:
My hotel room has a great view.
In
this sentence, view is
describing what is seen, or what is viewed. English is also capable
of using nouns derived from verbs to indicate the agent, most often
by the use of -er, or
even the object of the action, sometimes with -ee,
though this is a bit rare. For example, a payee
receives funds from the payer.
This -ee suffix is
used fairly productively in colloquial speech, at least in certain
parts of the US, even when the resulting word is never used in print
or on official documentation. Theoretically, at least, one could take
any verb and attach -ee
to make a noun denoting the object of the action. In such a case, the verb that we take would be the takee.
Considering
this made me think about conlanging, and how it might be used
to explore such an issue, which is precisely what this blog is
supposed to be about. Let's begin with a further explanation of the English
case, particularly the agentive -er
suffix.
This
suffix is in fact, a little ambiguous at times, because
viewer could technically mean
the person or other being doing the viewing, but it usually refers to an instrument of
some kind used to view specific things, like a kaleidoscope viewer,
or software for viewing pictures, etc. Why the ambiguity? The short
answer is to shrug our shoulders and chock it up to the fact that,
sorry, it's just English, which is a very typical explanation I give
to my ESOL students.
This
is where conlangs could come in. Let's imagine a conlang that derives
nouns from verbs corresponding to several semantic roles. This
language will have a marker for agent,
patient, theme, and instrument, which correspond roughly to the
syntactic roles of subject, direct object, indirect object, and well,
instrument, respectively. Each of these will be indicated by a
different suffix (I suppose if we really wanted to be cool, we could
use prefixes, infixes, or some sort of root mutation instead, but
we'll keep it simple for now).
Let's
use the following suffixes:
agentive:
-(e)r
patient: -i
theme: -(e)n
instrument: -u
For the fun of it,
and to make look a little less like English, let's make verbs by
spelling them backwards from English, with simplified sounds and
letters. In other words, we'll reverse the spelling of English verbs
and turn complicated sounds like th, sh, ch, q, and
x into simply t, s, s, k, and k, respectively.
We'll also ignore any silent letters like k in kn, w
in wr, and the silent e on the end of so many verbs. So let's take about 10 common English verbs and
apply these transformations:
1. be - ib
2. see - is
3. go - og
4. write - tair
5. think - nit
6. do - ud
7. sleep - pils
8. love - vol
9. want - naw
10. have - vah
So, attaching the
suffixes we would have the following words:
1. iber be-er,
being, person
ibi what
is, being, existence
iben something
to or for which things exist
ibu something
by or with which things exist
2. iser seer,
someone who sees
isi something
that is seen, a view, or perhaps a picture
isen something
to or for which one sees
isu something
by or with which one sees, viewer, spectacles, a telescope, etc.
3. oger someone
or something that goes, goer, perhaps car or other vehicle
(ogi) not
used, as go is an intransitive verb
ogen a
person, thing, or place to or for which something goes
ogu something
by or with which one goes, a vehicle, car, etc.
4. tairer someone
who writes, writer, author
tairi something
that is written, literature, a poem, or written story
tairen someone
or something to or for which one writes, addressee of a letter, theme
or purpose of a work
tairu something
by or with which one writes, pencil, pen, or other writing instrument
5. niter someone
who thinks, thinker, intellectual, scholar, philosopher
niti something
that is thought, a thought, idea, belief, or philosophy
niten something
or someone to or for which one thinks, the cause or theme of thought,
the object of thought (perhaps especially a loved one)
nitu something
by or with which one thinks, the mind
6. uder someone
who does or acts, actor, agent
udi something
that is done, action, act
uden something
to or for which one acts, goal, purpose
udu something
by or with which one acts, will
7. pilser someone
who sleeps, sleeper
(pilsi) not
used, sleep is intransitive
pilsen something
to or for which one sleeps, rest, recuperation
pilsu something
by or with which one sleeps, bed
8. voler lover
voli beloved
volen something
to or for which one loves
volu something
by or with which one loves
9. nawer/nawr someone
or something who wants
nawi someone
or something wanted
nawen/nawn something
to or for which one wants, an intended recipient of a gift
nawu something
by or with which one wants, desire
10. vaher someone
who has, possessor
vahi something
that is had or possessed
vahen something
to or for which one has
vahu
something by or with which one has
A system like this
has two possible uses or results. In the first place, it could simply
be used as a productive means of vocabulary building, such that isu,
for example, would be used for optacle devices like spectacles or
telescopes. On the other hand, this system could result in little
need for the bulky relative clauses that English has to employ,
unwieldy phrases like that by which (something) is seen,
he who sees, that which I saw, and so forth. These could be
reduced to one simple word each in such a language: isu, iser,
isen.
Of course, there is
no reason why both uses could not co-exist, but there could be
ambiguity that results. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it
could be fruitful in producing puns and jokes, or clever poetic turns
of phrase, but we might want some way of clarifying the meaning where
necessary. Similarly, if we only had one of the two possible
applications of this system, we would require other means to get the
meanings that aren't covered. If we chose the first application of vocabulary building, we would
probably have to have relative pronouns or particles to indicate the
meanings covered by the second application. If we chose the second option of relativizing,
we might have to have still more derivational suffixes to create
words meaning lover and beloved, love, etc.
This is perhaps
what interests me most of all about conlanging: devising various
systems of grammar and testing their possible applications, and
experimenting with the results of such systems, like lack of
relativizers in the case of the example language here, or lack of
adverbs in adjectives in my main conlang Paiodd. I find this stuff
absolutely fascinating!
