You all may have noticed - from the resounding silence - that I'm having a very exhausting week. We had a wedding last weekend, and a Sharks game. I could comment on the blog about each of those, and I'm planning to, in fact, but collectively they meant starting the week already exhausted. Then complications ensued, including a top-to-bottom autumn cleaning in honor of houseguests!
I'm hoping to get back with the program as we head into next week, but today I found a little funny pattern in English that I thought I'd share, and see if we can collectively expand upon. In general, the rule we learn is that when you take an adjective and add "ly", you end up with an adverb.
slow (Adj) + ly = slowly (Adv)
interesting (Adj) + ly = interestingly (Adv)
quick (Adj) + ly = quickly (Adv)
etc.
However, I noticed one case today where adding "ly" to an adjective doesn't actually change the part of speech.
low (Adj) + ly = lowly (Adj)
And then there are these two words, both nouns, to which you can add "ly" and get an adjective.
dastard (N, I think) + ly = dastardly (Adj)
coward (N) + ly = cowardly (Adj)
Have any of you noticed any more of these? I admit I'm guessing that Mike Flynn will jump in and illuminate all (he often does). I'm going to be looking in my etymological dictionary over the next day or so and see what I can come up with.
I think this must be one of those notorious "exceptions" for which English is so famous, and which makes it a thorny language to learn.
Showing posts with label morphology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label morphology. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
How morphology can help you!
Morphology is a fantasy and science fiction writer's best friend.
Seriously. Why? Because everyone uses it, and I mean everyone, whether they know it or not. Every story that makes up a name for a group of people and then pluralizes it is using morphology. Every story that takes a nice-sounding made-up word and then adds on a suffix to make the name of a country or city is using it too.
Morphology is prefixes and suffixes (and infixes). It is the study of the tiny pieces of meaning that make up words. Each of these pieces is called a morpheme. Some morphemes are free, which means they can occur by themselves and still have meaning. Examples:
cat
do
blend
Yes, these are words. But not all words contain only a single morpheme. Most contain one or more bound morphemes, which are meaning units that can't occur all on their own. Examples:
-s
re-
-er
-ness
anti-
-ville
-ia
So if we use these in combination we get words with one or morpheme, as follows:
cat+s=cats (2 morphemes)
good+ness=goodness (2 morphemes)
paint+er+s=painters (3 morphemes)
etc.
If you have a fantasy or science fiction language, I urge you to think through the morphemes you use. There are a ton of people out there who make plurals by adding -i, or who make names of countries by adding -ia. But you shouldn't necessarily fall into the default pattern.
Think first about the feel you want your language to have. A choice like -i for plural is different from -s, which gives the word a slight foreign feel (because of its Latin roots), but it's still very under the radar for readers. This can be a good thing. On the other hand, your language could potentially use any sound or combination of sounds in its repertoire to pluralize (or it might not pluralize at all!). Using an unusual pluralizing suffix might stand out at first, but if it's supported by the surrounding text so that its meaning is unequivocal, it can make your language seem far more interesting. The same goes for -ia, which is if anything more standard than the pluralizing -i.
Remember also that your morphemes don't have to have the same meanings as English words. In my work I don't use plural morphemes, and I don't use a morpheme that means "country," but I do have one that means "place" and another that means "person." Examples:
The capital city is named after a man named Pelisma, and the suffix -ra means "place."
Pelisma + ra=Pelismara, the place of Pelisma.
The title of a city ruler is Alixi, which actually breaks down like this:
Alhi=one
-iks=most
-i=person
Alhi+iks+i=Alhiiksi, pronounced Alixi, or the firstmost person.
Morphology is a lot of fun, and when you create a system that makes sense, it shows in the story.
Seriously. Why? Because everyone uses it, and I mean everyone, whether they know it or not. Every story that makes up a name for a group of people and then pluralizes it is using morphology. Every story that takes a nice-sounding made-up word and then adds on a suffix to make the name of a country or city is using it too.
Morphology is prefixes and suffixes (and infixes). It is the study of the tiny pieces of meaning that make up words. Each of these pieces is called a morpheme. Some morphemes are free, which means they can occur by themselves and still have meaning. Examples:
cat
do
blend
Yes, these are words. But not all words contain only a single morpheme. Most contain one or more bound morphemes, which are meaning units that can't occur all on their own. Examples:
-s
re-
-er
-ness
anti-
-ville
-ia
So if we use these in combination we get words with one or morpheme, as follows:
cat+s=cats (2 morphemes)
good+ness=goodness (2 morphemes)
paint+er+s=painters (3 morphemes)
etc.
If you have a fantasy or science fiction language, I urge you to think through the morphemes you use. There are a ton of people out there who make plurals by adding -i, or who make names of countries by adding -ia. But you shouldn't necessarily fall into the default pattern.
Think first about the feel you want your language to have. A choice like -i for plural is different from -s, which gives the word a slight foreign feel (because of its Latin roots), but it's still very under the radar for readers. This can be a good thing. On the other hand, your language could potentially use any sound or combination of sounds in its repertoire to pluralize (or it might not pluralize at all!). Using an unusual pluralizing suffix might stand out at first, but if it's supported by the surrounding text so that its meaning is unequivocal, it can make your language seem far more interesting. The same goes for -ia, which is if anything more standard than the pluralizing -i.
Remember also that your morphemes don't have to have the same meanings as English words. In my work I don't use plural morphemes, and I don't use a morpheme that means "country," but I do have one that means "place" and another that means "person." Examples:
The capital city is named after a man named Pelisma, and the suffix -ra means "place."
Pelisma + ra=Pelismara, the place of Pelisma.
The title of a city ruler is Alixi, which actually breaks down like this:
Alhi=one
-iks=most
-i=person
Alhi+iks+i=Alhiiksi, pronounced Alixi, or the firstmost person.
Morphology is a lot of fun, and when you create a system that makes sense, it shows in the story.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
How linguistics can help you!
As a lead-in to my language design workshop, I'm going to do a little sequence of "How ____ can help you!" pieces concerning various areas of linguistics. These aren't intended to be technical, or even introductory discussions of linguistics itself. I'm going to try to make them short, practical pieces which relate linguistics topics to the use of created languages in science fiction and fantasy. Certainly they will be useful for people who are digging into creating an entire language that penetrates an SF/F world. I hope they can also be helpful for those who are using minimal-penetration languages in SF/F - languages that consist mostly of names for people and places.
Here are some of the upcoming topics:
Articulatory phonetics, a.k.a. how to match sounds to an alien physiology
(I've discussed this a bit before, but I'll try to take it a bit further)
Morphology, a.k.a. how words are broken into smaller pieces of meaning
Syntax, a.k.a. how sentences are put together
Semantics, a.k.a. how meanings are structured
Pragmatics, a.k.a. how language implies more than it "means"; how people define insincerity vs. politeness
Sociolinguistics, a.k.a. how people use language for social purposes including drawing distinctions between social groups
FYI I seem to be having internet problems again, this time intermittent ones that make me go argh! but don't keep me off for entire days. I think this neighborhood must be cursed by the internet gods or something. Anyway, I'll try to address the problem and hope it doesn't get any worse.
Here are some of the upcoming topics:
Articulatory phonetics, a.k.a. how to match sounds to an alien physiology
(I've discussed this a bit before, but I'll try to take it a bit further)
Morphology, a.k.a. how words are broken into smaller pieces of meaning
Syntax, a.k.a. how sentences are put together
Semantics, a.k.a. how meanings are structured
Pragmatics, a.k.a. how language implies more than it "means"; how people define insincerity vs. politeness
Sociolinguistics, a.k.a. how people use language for social purposes including drawing distinctions between social groups
FYI I seem to be having internet problems again, this time intermittent ones that make me go argh! but don't keep me off for entire days. I think this neighborhood must be cursed by the internet gods or something. Anyway, I'll try to address the problem and hope it doesn't get any worse.
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