Grammar

MORPHOLOGY

Morphology in Dai Lue involves compounding, derivation, reduplication, and elaborate expressions. There are no inflectional affixes on words, such as the plural or tense endings of English.

Compound words

Compounding is the most important morphological process in Dai Lue. Over 60 per cent of the words in this dictionary are compound words. Compound words occur in all parts of speech.

In English, verb-verb compounds are rare (sleepwalk, stir-fry). In Dai Lue they are very common. See for example:

ᦶᦂᧉ ᦺᦃ kææ³xaj¹ undo:open = ‘to explain’

ᦉᦱᧂᧉ ᦶᦔᧂ saaŋ³pæŋ¹ build:make = ‘to manufacture’

Derivation

These are some of the common derivational prefixes in Dai Lue.

Nominalisers (turn verbs and adjectives into nouns)