[Lexicog] Circumfix?

[Kenneth Keyes]

Dear all, 

Would you all consider the following to be a circumfix? How would you classify this?

-ған бол  "pretend to"  This is a compound morpheme consisting of the participializing suffix  -GAn + the verb "to be" -bol, which is a root. 

Here's an attested example: 

Ол ойнаған болып ұзақты күн үйге кірмей жол қарайды. 
Ol  ojna-ɣan bol-ɯp     ɔzaqtɯ kʏn ʏj-ge            kɪr-me-j                  ʒol     qara-j-dɯ. 
He play-ptc  be-CNV   long      day home-into  enter-NEG-pres.  road   watch-pres-3S.
He watched the road all day pretending to be playing so that he wouldn't have to go inside.
 
There are a lot of cases grammaticalization of adverbial expressions (which would be outright lexical items in English and Russian) in Turkic languages, so thanks for considering this!
 
Regarding the question of how circumfixes are to be displayed in a dictionary, the previous discussions reminded me of paired conjunctions (not circumfixes) in Mandarin Chinese. For example, the paired conjunctions 虽然。。。但是 suiran /sʷejʐan/ danshi /danʂɯ/  "although"  is displayed in Chinese grammars as having an elipsis between them to demonstrate that the appearance of each at the head of both clauses is obligatory. Although Chinese is the only isolating language I know, from my superficial observation of Thai, these features are probably also found in Gam-Dai languages as well, owing to language's general tendency towards binarism.
Ken
 
 
 
 


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