Muai - Compounds
There are many ways of making compound nouns and verbs in Muai. The
most simple is building compound roots by means of -a-.
For instance,
- nafiem- : being female
- nimant- : being human
- nafiem-a-nimant- = nafiemanimant- :
being woman (human female)
If sioki means "player", we must have a
way of saying "football player". In Muai, we do that by means of -o-
:
- sioki : player
- sefuoti : football
- sioki-o-sefuoti : player of
football, football player
On the other hand, sioku means "game"
and we can specify "women's game" by means of -e- :
- sioku : game
- nafiemi : female, woman
- sioku-e-nafie : women's game, lit.
"game-played-by-woman"
Briefly, -o- specifies the sioku of the
sioki and -o- specifies the sioki
of the sioku. Similarly, all -i words
can be followed by -o- and all -u words can be followed by -e-.
But... Can an -i word be followed by -e-? Can a -u word be
followed by -o-?
Well, you can do it, but if you write sioki-e-sefuoti,
it doesn't mean a "player of football" anymore, but
something that is a game and is also football: "football game". It
means the same as simply sioki sefuoti,
so the -e- is somewhat superfluous; it
only establish that sioki-e-sefuoti
is a word from a compound root (it can actually be
written without hyphens: siokiesefuoti),
while sioki sefuoti is a two-word
concept that means the same.
I have already told you that, if a root is followed by -a-,
it forms a compound root with the following one. There is some
arbitrarity in it. If we write siokanafiemi,
what does that mean? We know siok-
is the root for "player" (sioki), but it is also the root for "game"
(sioku). Then, is siokanafiemi a female player or a woman
that likes games (maybe only to watch)? And why not a "female
game"? To avoid this last interpretation, let's establish that the
last root of the compound has primacy over the previous ones ("the
last will be first"), so that siokanafiemi is
necessarily a female related to game, not a game related to women.
However, that only applies to roots followed by -a-.
If a complete word is followed by -a-,
the opposite occurs: the first word has primacy over the later ones.
So,
- nafiemi-a-sioku means "female related
to games",
- nafiemi-a-sioki means "female related
to players",
- sioku-a-nafiemi means "game related
to women",
- sioki-a-nafiemi means "player related
to women" and
- sioku-a-nafiemu means "game related
to femininity".
All of those, without the final vowel, are considered compound roots
as well.
Specifiers and pronouns can also be linked to nouns and verbs by
means of -a-, forming compound-root words:
- nou-a-sioki = nouasioki :
non-player
- nou-a-nimanti = nouanimanti
: non-human
- hei-a-sioku = heiasioku :
"pre-game"
- muai-a-honti = muaiahonti : Muai
word
Note that a specifier like nou normally apply to the
preceding entity:
.kioi tinto hikiani nou.
I'm not a dog.
In this case, it would mean the same if written as
.kioi tinto nou-a-hikiani.
I'm a non-dog.
But see what happens if the predicative (or the object) is formed
by more than one word:
.kioi tinto hikiani fonki nou.
I'm not a strong dog.
.kioi tinto nou-a-hikiani fonki.
I'm a strong non-dog.
The sentences have not exactly the same meaning, since we know that
the speaker of the second one is strong although he is not a dog,
while all we know about the first sentence speaker is that he or she
or it is not a "strong dog", but he or she or it might be strong and
might be a dog. In short, when used with -a-,
the specifiers (or pronoun) applies only to the following word, but
when used without it, it apply to the whole preceding entity that
can be formed by multiple words.
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