In Bodding's Santali dictionary there are many forms that are infixal
derivations, but not all are marked as such. Given the degree of
expressive sound symbolism in the Munda (and larger Austroasiatic)
family (though not necessarily in all the individual languages), which
is formulaic as a kind of phonosemantic algebra, are people absolutely
sure that all supposedly infixed forms are in fact straightforwardly
derived morphologically?

If one starts with a basic form of CVC, with infixed CVXVC's, one ends
up with a family of semantically related terms. At the same time,
though, examination of the larger dictionary landscape reveals that
one can also substitute initial and final C's, V's as well and STILL
often have related terms, leading to questions about what constitutes
an infix as well as a root. How deep does combinatoriality go?

Such questions then may relate to the difficulties one often finds in
getting exact correspondences between Munda languages etymologically,
or at higher taxonomic levels.

Perhaps they can also help shed some light on functional ambiguity of
some infixes (and suffixes). Such ambiguity would not be expected in
normal morphology, would it? It would, OTOH, be par for the course in
expressives and ideophones- a kind of 'antimorphology'.

Opinions? Thanks.

Jess Tauber
phonosemantics@...