Polysynthetic Conlang

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:05 pm

So they're nouns?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:10 pm

Eddy the Great wrote:So they're nouns?

No, they're verbs usually. E.g., my Cheyenne name is Vohpenonoma?e, nominalized as White Thunder, but it really means something like 'he-thunders-whitely'.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:12 pm

No, they're verbs usually. E.g., my Cheyenne name is Vohpenonoma?e, nominalized as White Thunder, but it really means something like 'he-thunders-whitely'.

I see. What other examples do you have?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:20 pm

Eddy the Great wrote:
No, they're verbs usually. E.g., my Cheyenne name is Vohpenonoma?e, nominalized as White Thunder, but it really means something like 'he-thunders-whitely'.
I see. What other examples do you have?

Leman has a huge list of traditional Cheyenne names on his site. Today, Cheyennes typically have an English name and secondary Cheyenne name (e.g., Eugene Little-Bear).

Mecislau · Post by **Mecislau** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:22 pm

jburke wrote:
Eddy the Great wrote:So they're nouns?
No, they're verbs usually. E.g., my Cheyenne name is Vohpenonoma?e, nominalized as White Thunder, but it really means something like 'he-thunders-whitely'.

How did you get a Cheyenne name? Do you just choose one?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:27 pm

Maknas wrote:
jburke wrote:
Eddy the Great wrote:So they're nouns?
No, they're verbs usually. E.g., my Cheyenne name is Vohpenonoma?e, nominalized as White Thunder, but it really means something like 'he-thunders-whitely'.
How did you get a Cheyenne name? Do you just choose one?

It was given to me by friends, when I stayed on the reservation with them for a couple weeks back in the late 90s. Naming of outsiders is an ancient tradition among the Cheyenne (and many other tribes as well).

The meaning is not terribly flattering: I made a lot of noise when I moved through the house; but that's all a part of the teasing and joking the Cheyenne are famous for.

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Mon Sep 29, 2003 6:14 pm

I usually try to make my own names fit the person (or place) both in terms of meaning and sound. Among my favorites are the grizzley bear gods Ayaaloama and Sagodaama, and the otter/shaman god Yaxoamashe. I also like Kamoatka a good deal; I did some twisting of morphemes and grammar to hang onto it.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Tue Sep 30, 2003 6:42 am

Is it true that Blackfoot only has 100 morphemes?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Tue Sep 30, 2003 8:02 am

Eddy the Great wrote:Is it true that Blackfoot only has 100 morphemes?

No; the theory is that all of its current morphemes can be accounted for by 80-100 historical morphemes. But this has yet to be shown, and I consider it somewhat unlikely.

But the language of the Hyakuro, which I never explicitly named, does work on about 100 morphemes. Dudicon, at the moment, is trying to construct his own language on this kind of model; he may decide to share his adventures with you...nor not, depending.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Tue Sep 30, 2003 4:16 pm

Do any natlangs have this model? Are there any that have a low number of morphemes like that?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Tue Sep 30, 2003 4:23 pm

Eddy the Great wrote:Do any natlangs have this model? Are there any that have a low number of morphemes like that?

Whorf first came up with the idea, and thought maybe Nahuatl was; it isn't, and none have yet been found.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Tue Sep 30, 2003 9:22 pm

It's so cool how one can say an entire sentence using one heavily inflected verb in a polylang.

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Tue Sep 30, 2003 10:10 pm

Eddy the Great wrote:It's so cool how one can say an entire sentence using one heavily inflected verb in a polylang.

I've long been in love with their elegance and succinctness. E.g., e?eomo is four syllables, while its English equivalent 'He-hits-him-repeatedly' is seven. But this kind of compactness is not merely due to heavy inflection; it's due (in this case) to reduplication that indicates iterative action. The real secret to Algonquian compactness lies in stuff like reduplication, initial change and sound symbolism, all of which function morphologically to help pare down the length of words.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Wed Oct 01, 2003 2:23 pm

I've long been in love with their elegance and succinctness. E.g., e?eomo is four syllables, while its English equivalent 'He-hits-him-repeatedly' is seven. But this kind of compactness is not merely due to heavy inflection; it's due (in this case) to reduplication that indicates iterative action. The real secret to Algonquian compactness lies in stuff like reduplication, initial change and sound symbolism, all of which function morphologically to help pare down the length of words.

I also like how a word can be a noun or a verb and how different they are from the standard Latin based model. One person even asked my how a lang could have free word order without case marking on nouns.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Wed Oct 01, 2003 8:16 pm

Do Mohawk and Cheyenne have something like adverbs? You mentioned the name he-thunders-whitely.

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Wed Oct 01, 2003 8:18 pm

Eddy the Great wrote:Do Mohawk and Cheyenne have something like adverbs? You mentioned the name he-thunders-whitely.

Cheyenne has preverbs, some of which modify in an adverbial-like way; and Mohawk has certain suffixes which do the same. But they don't have adverbs, no.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Wed Oct 01, 2003 8:22 pm

Do they have something like locatives that serve the role cases have in IE langs(ie, they have a locative-like thing for "for the president")?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Wed Oct 01, 2003 8:34 pm

Eddy the Great wrote:Do they have something like locatives that serve the role cases have in IE langs(ie, they have a locative-like thing for "for the president")?

That would not be a locative; it would be a benefactive. And, yes, there are ways of indicating that in both languages.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:42 pm

Does it have tenses?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:45 pm

Eddy the Great wrote:Does it have tenses?

No.

Mecislau · Post by **Mecislau** » Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:45 pm

jburke wrote:
Eddy the Great wrote:Does it have tenses?
No.

How does that work?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:53 pm

How does that work?

I really don't understand the question. Mohawk has no tenses, and gets along just fine. The concept of time among the Mohawk doesn't match up too well with the neat past, present, future paradigm of IE languages.

Mecislau · Post by **Mecislau** » Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:56 pm

So no distinction in time is made at all? There's no difference between statements like 'I live in...' and 'I used to live in...'?

jburke · Post by **jburke** » Thu Oct 02, 2003 6:00 pm

Maknas wrote:So no distinction in time is made at all? There's no difference between statements like 'I live in...' and 'I used to live in...'?

There's no time distinction made per se, no. But from use mood and aspect combinations, you can deduce certain temporal things, if you wanted to. E.g., manifest+continuative = roughly the present;
manifest+perfective = roughly the past. But as a rule Mohawk speakers don't trouble themselves about time in the way Europeans or Americans do.

Aurora Rossa · Post by **Aurora Rossa** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 10:44 am

Do these langs have something like -ism or -ment or un-?