Mærik also uses active/passive participles as agent/patient nouns but it uses zero derivation, i.e. just uses the participle as a noun without further ado. From the POW of Mærik itself there is no ‘double meaning’; that lekartan can or must sometimes be translated as ‘the one who is speaking’ and sometimes as ‘the speaker’ is a complication of English grammar which is simply absent in Mærik grammar.
That lekatan can mean both ‘that which is spoken’ and ‘the one spoken to’ is OTOH a real ambiguity in Mærik grammar. It can however be disambiguated by using a full relative clause for the former meaning, if context doesn’t make things sufficiently clear. BTW Mærik is like English in that -rt, properly the active participle suffix can be attached to a noun or adjective to get a new noun or adjective meaning ‘someone who works with/keeps/makes etc. X’ as quikert ‘goater/goat-herd’ jwart /’ju:art/ ‘shoemaker’, amnort ‘belittler’ made from the words for ‘goat, shoe, little’. At the same time the passive participle ending -t is also a general ending for deriving adjectives from nouns, so amn is ’ a little fellow, a halfling’, while amnot is both the adjectives ‘small’ and ‘belittled’, the latter meaning normally being disambiguated by the addition of a suitable noun, pronoun or name in the instrumental, e.g. amnot Thormodh(o)gh ‘belittled by Thormod’, amnot roogh ‘belittled by him’. The fly in the ointment is that here is no verb *amno; there is a verb klæghia ‘make small(er)’ and an adjective grøt ‘small’, but ‘belittle’ is tera amnot, literally ‘make belittled’.
It is still an open question if the people referred to as amnon ‘the little fellows’, probably the Mærik speakers, were actually physically smaller than verghen ‘the big fellows’ or if it somehow has a meaning ‘the belittled ones, the belittled people’. It seems pretty clear that they were an original people pushed aside and enslaved by the verghen. Other terms for them are døirt ‘the plowers’ for verghen and (the more common) tortullun ‘the mattockers’ for amnon. Amn clearly had negative connotations which tortull hadn’t. (BTW -ull is another ending for deriving ‘man associated with X’ nouns. The difference is that -ull makes predictions about the gender of the person which -rt doesn’t. The ‘feminines’ corresponding to -ull words are compounds with wan ‘woman’ and men(n) ‘girl’, e.g. tortwan ‘hacker-woman’.)
Tags: Conlanging, grammar
If amnot means ‘small’ I wonder if it means ‘small of people’ as against grøt ‘small of things’?
Comment by melroch — 19 May, 2009 @ 10:04