[Lexicog] Derivations in Venda?

[yahganlang]

Hi folks, been a long time since last posting.

I'm currently working on a crosslinguistic survey of ideophones and 
related phenomena in Niger-Congo languages. Many Bantu languages have 
ideophones that do double-duty as verb roots, or extended stems.

I've spent the last couple of weeks doing an exhaustive analysis of 
forms from the Venda dictionary compiled by Van Warmelo. I've found 
that many of the forms with particular extender and derivative 
strings are very tightly knit semantically (for instance, undoing bad 
magical effects, or revealing hidden secrets for all to see, being 
repressed, etc.)- this despite having quite various roots affixed. 
Partially the semantics come from the spatial, voice, aspect senses 
of the individual morphemes, but I'm a bit confused.

Were these forms put into the dictionary by the compiler BECAUSE they 
have idiosyncratic meanings, or are they there because these 
derivations are semantically delimited in these ways, and aren't as 
productive as one might expect? Any advice here welcome. Thanks.

Jess Tauber
phonosemantics at earthlink.net



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