Word compounding

Compounding is the art of bringing two words together to form a third, different word. A number of compounding models are used in Gevey.

Words in Gevey fall into two fundamental types: key words, which demonstrate objects, actions, states and modifications; and structure words, which glue the key words together into phrases, clauses and sentences.

Key words in turn can be divided into three groups: objects, actions and modifiers.

All key words come in two parts - the stem (also known as the root, but see below) forms the core of the word, the part of the word that carries the meaning or label, while the affixes (prefixes, infixes and suffixes attached to the stem) help refine and define the key word's meaning, and its role within the phrase or clause.

The words root and stem are not being used interchangably in the above text. While a key word root will also be a key word stem, a key word stem may not necessarily be a key word root. This is because a number of related key word stems can be generated from a single key word root by using the appropriate wordbuilding affix - these are dealt with in a lot more detail in the wordbuilding webpage elsewhere on this website.

A key word stem can change groups if the appropriate affixes are attached to its stem to show the change. Indeed much of the rest of this online grammar deals with how to manipulate affixes, for example through noun declension or verb conjugation. Further details on how stems can be amended through wordbuilding affixes can again be found on the wordbuilding webpage.

Compounding words

Compared to Ramajal, Gevey has a relatively small number of words in its lexicon. Even so, anything that can be said in Ramajal can also be said in Gevey. To overcome the small lexicon, Gevey relies heavily on word compounding - the bringing together of two words to make a third word. Metonymy and metaphor often play a role in this process, so that on first impression the compound word seems to have no relationship to its constituent words or to the object it is labelling - sometimes it's best to just treat the compound word as a word in its own right.

Noun compounding

Noun compounding is the practice of bringing two nouns together to form a third noun - for example garden and path can be bought together to make garden path. Gevey routinely uses coordinating conjunctions to marry two or more nouns into a compound noun.

Unlike in Ramajal, where the head noun tends to be placed at the end of the compound (in the example above, "path" is the head noun, with "garden" modifying it), in Gevey the head noun goes at the start of the compound noun

• goegu tet tusre - "room for dog" - kennel
• kliyu ïzdaet ândenu - "path within garden" garden path

Gevey can also form compound nouns by using the stem of the compounding noun as a modifier:

• kliyu ândenixu (yu ândenixu kliy) - garden path
• pwiidu ândenixu (yu ândenixu pwiid) - garden glove
• pwiidu tusrixu (yu tusrixu pwiid) - dog glove
• goegu tusrixu (yu tusrixu goeg) - dog room (kennel)
• goegu rjesixu (yu rjesixu goeg) - day room
• goegu ândenixu (yu ândenixu goeg) - garden room (greenhouse)

Note that only two nouns can be compounded in this manner. If a third noun is introduced to the compound noun, then it must relate to the compound noun using coordinating conjunctions.

Finally, a limited number of compounds are formed by directly compounding two noun stems.

Compounding nouns and verbs

When a verb takes on the role of a modifier, its stem is inserted into the noun, between the noun stem and its suffixes (ue can be placed before the verb stem to prevent unsightly consonant clusters, if necessary):

• The broken chair
• fresluecaablu, yu fresluecaabul
• from freslu chair, and caablan to break
• The bitten man
• loiftralje, ye loiftral
• from loife man, and traljan to bite
• The dead dog
• tusruezvedxu, yu tusruezvedx
• from tusre dog, and zvedxan to die

Classical and genitive compounding

Another form of compounding is using modifiers with nouns and verbs. This is covered in some detail on the modifiers webpage.

Closely related to classical compounding is genetive compounding, where an object in the genetive case is used to demonstrate possession of the head object. Genetive nouns are covered on the noun webpage and genetive pronouns are covered on the pronoun webpage.

Compounding with structure words

There are a number of occasions when structure words will compound with other words - which can often lead to sound (and spelling) changes within the new word. These include:

• prepositional compounding, where the preposition associated with a motive or spatial principal verb will compound with the dissociated noun complex of the verb's direct object. These compounds are listed on the prepositions webpage
• coordinating conjunction compounding, mainly with the word daet (and to a lesser extent pout), where the conjunction will compound with a preposition. This is explained further on the conjunctions webpage
• verbal aspect compounding, which occurs in some Gevey dialects, is where a list of verbal aspects before a principal verb will concatenate into a single word
• focus mark compounding, which is explained further in the focus webpage.