In the last post, we talked about basic numerals, one to ten and their ordinals. We can now talk about complex numbers.

To give an example, eleven, is formed by infixing ten into one. So, eleven can be percieved as the 10th one. Then the mid vowel is lost to get the final form.

a    -to  -z
one+ ten  +one => eleven

this becomes,
atoz --> atz

But, to get twenty, this derivation will not work. Twenty is to be percieved as the second ten.

to   -bi  -z
ten+ two  +ten => twenty

this becomes,
tobiz --> tobz

Now, to quantify nouns, these will be infixed in the following way.

Behaviour to notice :

• Although every ordinal ends with z, it does not figure in the infixing process except for az
• Noun does not agree with the quantifier and vice-versa like english does.
• Observe the pairs, 2,8; 3,7; 4,6 b/p is conjugate/kind of allophonic phonologically with kh or k. Similarly, c -> v and n -> y.
• miz, mil can either be used to mean five/fifth and half/halfth.
• The ordinal for sez is not sel because, sel means let in crang

Similarly, ordinals also infix …

PS : (x) indicates that x is added and [x] indicates that x is removed

Coming up ! : Numbers-Part 2 -> How to make complex numbers..

Let us start with the basic numerals in crang. The numbers are counted in base 10. This post also covers ordinal numbers as well.

As it is with any linguistic device in crang, numbers become particles. These are then infixed to become modifiers.

Now, to quantify nouns, these will be infixed in the following way.

Behaviour to notice :

• Although every ordinal ends with z, it does not figure in the infixing process except for az
• Noun does not agree with the quantifier and vice-versa like english does.
• Observe the pairs, 2,8; 3,7; 4,6 b/p is conjugate/kind of allophonic phonologically with kh or k. Similarly, c -> v and n -> y.
• miz, mil can either be used to mean five/fifth and half/halfth.
• The ordinal for sez is not sel because, sel means let in crang

Similarly, ordinals also infix …

PS : (x) indicates that x is added and [x] indicates that x is removed

Coming up ! : Numbers-Part 2 -> How to make complex numbers..

In crang, colors are particles. They infix internally to the word ‘color’ Otha to form the nominal form of the colors. For example

Secondary Colors

Just as colors combine naturally, color particles are serialized to make secondary colors.

Realize that, the serialization can make Lighter versions of the colors as in 1, 2 & 3, it can make complex colors as in 4 & 5 and can make darker or more pronounced versions of the colors with reduplication as in 7 & 6.

Infixing of color particles in other words

Color particles are infixed into many words to act as modifiers. Look at the following examples.

When it comes to infixing, I define two types. They are Serialized Infixing and Internalized Infixing. Let us explore more about these two.

A Small Introduction

The topic of these types of infixing comes when we have more than one affix to be infixed. In the posts before, we have not seen this phenomena because we were looking at one feature, adjectivals, gender and plurals. But, if we need to combine any of these, we need a plan to follow.

Serialized Infixing

Given a word with an affix infixed into it already, Serialized infixing places the second affix abutting the first.

Though this seems like the easy way, this is not the general case of infixing. This kind of infixing is primarily done when the second affix is a grammatical case (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Ablative etc).

Consider this example. We have iE <boat> and we attribute an adjectival property to it, ‘speed’ this becomes i-hOn-E <fast boat>

i     -hOn   -E => fast boat
Boat+  speed +Boat

ek which is ‘accusative case’ in crang is generally, serialized to the already existing i-hOn-E <fast boat>.

i     -hOn   -ek- -E => fast boat (accusative)
Boat+  speed Acc  +Boat

Internalized Infixing

Although, serialized infixing is used with cases and morphs which are very frequently used, the much more productive and general method of infixing is the internalization of infixes.

So, except instances like case affixation, everywhere else, affixes are internalized. What that entails is, given a word already infixed with an affix, the second affix is placed in such a way that it is infixed to the original affix thus internalized by the original(first) affix.

Consider this example where from before we already have i-hOn-E <fast boat>, to attribute the male gender to it, we bring in the gender affix which is the word for adult human male ti.

i     -hO     -ti   -n        -E => fast boat (accusative)
Boat+  speed+  male +speed   +Boat

i     -hO     -tin    -(a)n        -E => fast boat (accusative)
Boat+  speed+  female +speed   +Boat

* a is added phonologically.

Crang does not have any seperate morphological process for gender. In this post we will be dealing with how it encodes the major genders ‘male’ and ‘female’.

For any word, we get the ‘male’ version of the word by infixing the crang word for human male, ‘ti’. Similarly, we get the ‘female’ version by infixing ‘tin’, the word for adult human female.

A few examples,

For the people of crang, there are male and female trees.

The cases 6,7 are different. Although they donot encode the gender directly, they rather attribute the ‘maleness’ or ‘femaleness’ to the modified noun. In this case gA-ti-z is a fierce wave opposed to gA-tin-z which is a rather pleasant wave.

Crang not only has the ‘male’ and ‘female’ genders but has an elaborate nominal classification much like kiswahili bantu.

What we will see later is that these constructions are very confusing. E-ti-A can either mean ‘male fish’ or it can also take the genitive and mean ‘his fish’ because as you will see later in a more detailed fashion, crang lacks pronouns too. So, this confusion is because ti can either mean ‘a man’ or a third person eg. ‘him’.