Esperanto: european or asiatic language? - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Claude Piron (II. INFLECTIONAL LANGUAGES) #3

II. INFLECTIONAL LANGUAGES

In all of these languages, roots transform both in derivations and with changes of grammatical function. Comparing them with Esperanto, in which the root never varies, makes this property of the inflectional languages clear. To underline the unchangeability of the Esperanto morphemes, we separate them with a hyphen in the following list and compare them with German, English, and Russian:

German:	denken	pens-i
(ich) dachte	(mi) pens-is
Gedanke	pens-o
English:	sell	vend-i
sold	vend-it-a, vend-is
sale	vend-o
Russian:	xodit’	ir-i
(ja) xožu	(mi) ir-as
xažival	ir-ad-is

The Semitic languages are also considered inflectional. But their inflectionis somewhat different: the form of the derived words changes, but the basic consonant frame remains constant. In Arabic, for example, the consonant frame KTB means “write, compose”:

KaTaBa	he wrote
KuTiBa	was written
yaKTuBu	he will write
yuKTaBu	will be written
meKTuB	written
aKTaBa	he had (something) written
KiTāB	writing, a book
KuTuB	writings, books
KāTiB	rapid / rapidlywriter
KaTB	writing (an act)