Coming back to my previous post, I mentioned that I developed my own system for creating protowords and a lexicon of simple words.

Melym Nominative

A way in which a word is considered a noun in its nominative form is with an article affixed to the front. I decided that the definite article would be r(a)+, with the roots of the word tracing back to the protoglobal word meaning “this/that.”

ra: Melym

œra: Proto-Melym

eirei: Protoglobal

When I really think about this part, I could make the case that Melym words have inherent predictability in the sense that every rootless word is a verb describing a thing, while the definite article is there to make the word into its own predicate. If, for instance, the word “wood” were to be translated into its rootless form, it would simple mean “to be wood,” while the definite article would be translated in its most literal form as “the wood-being” or “the being-wood.”

(Def.Art.)+(Verb) or (rootless noun)=Noun

So the Melym word for “wood” would be:

dargiaˤ: to be wood

radargiaˤ: wood [n]

Nominalization also works with morphological shifts throughout the language:

(“man”)+(Adj.)=Determinative Noun [“great” to “great one.”]

ɽambaˤ: to swell

kiɽambaˤ: swelling one/great one (Of course, I want to focus on adjectives and the genitive case in another time, but for right now, this is what I can do for now)

(Verb)+(Abstr.): Abstract Noun [“to help” to “help/assistance”]

Inspirations

The direct inspirations for the Melym nominative case is the Big Nambas and Northeastern Malakula languages. I could not find much about Northeastern Malakula, so I included Big Nambas which is supposed to be a relative within the Malakula language family that has more documentation.

Future Analysis On Melym Hypernominatives

I want to explore more the in-depth components of Melym nominative cases, since I intend to have a more intricate system. From what I can see, Big Nambas already has a complex system of for nouns based on derivation. Because I also intend to use Big Nambas for polite/honorific inspiration, then I will also factor in its reverential nouns into my research as well.

Primary Sources

• Fox, G. J. (1979). Big Nambas Grammar. Pacific Linguistics.