Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 11:27 am
What concepts are covered by preverbs? Could someone provide a list?
I generally have the pronominal details of a free-standing descriptive word like 'the-stars-light-our-battles' be determined by the subject or agent of the word[1]; in this case, 'stars', which is animate proximate plural; thus, the free-standing descriptive word 'the-stars-light-our-battles' is marked as animate proximate plural. This is purely grammatical; speakers would understand the word to refer to the Starlit War.Eddy wrote:I've noticed that many verbs used to describe things are not marked for the thing itself. For example, JBurke named one of the wars in his conworld something to the effect of the-stars-lit-our-battles and another more general example mentioned is they-fought-nine-nights. The war itself is not actually headmarked in the verb (unless I'm misunderstanding something). In cases like that, how do other verbs agree with it? Do they take headmarking for the implied number and class?
chris_notts knows a lot about preverbs. AFAICT he'd agree with Whimemsz; I don't know if either of them could add to what the other would say, but if they disagree about something its probably something that a preverb-noob such as myself would find to be quite a fine distinction.XinuX wrote:What concepts are covered by preverbs? Could someone provide a list?
To a certain extent. Many meanings expressed by serial verbs in such languages tend to be expressed by morphology in polysynthetic languages: for example, whereas languages with serial verbs may use "go" and "come" to indicate movement away from or towards some reference point, a polysynthetic language may have affixes which express directionality, or instead of using a verb like "use" or "take" to mark instruments a polysynthetic language may have applicative suffixes for the promotion / addition of obliques to a core argument of the clause.weldingfish wrote:
I was wondering: are the types of serial verbs seen in creoles/West African languages like Sranan/Akan represented in any way in polysynthetic languages?
Ojibwe does this sort of thing sometimes. Kind of. For example, the verb baasindibeshin, "fall and crack one's head", is composed of the morphemes: baas-indib-e-shin, "split/crack-head-BODY.PART.VERB-fall/lie". -indib- is the incorporated form of the noun "head", and -e is the suffix generally used when a body part is incorporated into the verb (which I've chosen to gloss here as BODY.PART.VERB or BPV). -shin is a very common suffix on verbs, and conveys, depending on the verb, connotations of falling, lying, sitting, or being situated in a place. It's not strictly a verb itself--rather, it's what's known in Algonquian linguistics as a "final", a suffix on the verb which identifies the verb class/valence, and optionally adds additional semantic information--but in a case like this it's essentially performing the same job. There's a number of other similar verbs too:chris_notts wrote:Leaving aside morphology which performs a similar function, many polysynthetic languages, although by no means all, allow the compounding of verb roots to achieve similar ends to verb serialisation.
Not contradicting anything chris_notts said, but rather emphasizing a tendency:weldingfish wrote:I was wondering: are the types of serial verbs seen in creoles/West African languages like Sranan/Akan represented in any way in polysynthetic languages?
An animate and an inanimate person in a complex participant is treated as a plural animate with regard to the verb marking.There are two exceptions to the above prohibition on two animate or inanimate third persons in an expression. First, when two or more identical (in terms of animacy) third persons are part of a complex subject or agent--i.e., a subject or agent composed of more than one distinct entity--they will all be third person; obviation will not occur among them. Of course, as above, in the context of complex participants obviation may be reversed in an expression, so that the subject or agent is obviated over the object or patient when one or the other must undergo obviation; if this occurs, a complex object or patient behaves just like and is subject to the same rules as a complex subject or agent. Also, when any one member of a complex participant is obviated, all members will likewise be. Second, in cases of dual subject agreement with identical (in terms of animacy) subjects, both participants are considered to be the same, usually third person.
psygnisfive wrote:I don't think you're getting my point tho. -3sSEN and 3sSEN.poss don't do anything to mark the car as being possessed by the man, without needing to ASSUME that. I mean, consider:
Bob-3sSen ... Frank-3sSen ... car-3sSen.poss ... bike-3sSen.poss
There's no way to tell, just by the idea that the words agree in gender, number, and person, that it's Bob's car and Frank's bike, or vice versa.
Informative. Thanks. Is it true that statistically languages that allow unlimited-depth subordination tend toward being analytic rather than highly synthetic, and languages that are polysynthetic tend to have limits on the number or depth of subordinate clauses?Eddy wrote:Mohawk, being constrained in its clause-forming abilities, can't handle complicated clauses like "This is the dog that worried the cat that ate the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built" as single sentences, not anymore than English can produce a single word like sawalaokanonhsakonye~?s 'it had lain inside his house'. A similar method would be used to handle a long possessive construction--it'd be broken down; there'd be no need for 20 or 30 different sets of pronominal and possessive markers. I've never seen or heard such a long possessive construction in Mohawk, but that's how it would be translated.
Good motivation for extra numbers, for extra genders, and for object-incorporation. Quite useful. Thanks.Eddy wrote:Rarely in a Mohawk or Cheyenne sentence are you going to have three or more 3rd (or 4th) persons of identical animacy, gender and number. In Cheyenne, you can theoretically have up to five distinct 3rd persons: an animate 3rd singular, an inanimate 3rd singular, an animate 3rd plural, an inanimate 3rd plural, and an obviative (4th person); Mohawk has three numbers and four genders, so the possibilities there are even larger. And in cases where there are multiple persons that fall into identical pronominal categories, remember what I said earlier: they'd break down such a complicated or confusing clause into smaller pieces. (It's likely that obviation in Algonquian and the multiple numbers and genders of Iroquoian evolved from a need to disambiguate 3rd persons; so the pronominal distinctions that these language families possess are well-suited to the uses and needs of the speakers--the languages have as many pronominal distinctions as they need for everyday conversation; when things get more complicated, there are ways to work around that, just as English has its share of work-arounds.) (Another strategy of Mohawk/Iroquoian here is to incorporate the patient or object into the verb; when you do this, you don't mark the incorporated participant on the verb with a prefix; this typically frees up a pronominal category you can then use elsewhere in the sentence.)
I would imagine so. For all the positives of polysynthesis, it does have its limitations and it wouldn't surprise me if this turned out to be one of them.Informative. Thanks. Is it true that statistically languages that allow unlimited-depth subordination tend toward being analytic rather than highly synthetic, and languages that are polysynthetic tend to have limits on the number or depth of subordinate clauses?
I doubt that anyone's really saying that noun-class agreement, or the existence of noun classes at all, is a requirement for a language to be "polysynthetic". The definition of that term is fuzzy at best. Nahuatl and Inuktitut may not have noun class agreement, but look at the overall lineup of traits that they do have in common with other languages generally agreed to be "polysynthetic":Eddy wrote:Incidentally, why do Nahuatl and Inuktitut fall into the polysynthetic category when neither marks agreement for noun class the way Jeff says polylangs must do in order to identify the arguments of a verb? Does this represent a difference in definitions or something?
You're only now realizing this? Languages like Mohawk are constrained in their clause-forming abilities generally; instead of adding new words or clauses to express something, they tend to build bigger words. This is their way of adding detail to an expression, whereas in English we add words or clauses. Mohawk is capable of morphology that's way beyond anything English can do; and English syntax and clause-formation eclipses Mohawk's considerably. All languages have ways of adding detail; it just varies how they do it, i.e., the degree to which they use synthesis or analysis. Some languages, like Finnish, are a middle-ground between syntax/clause formation and morphology.Eddy wrote:For all the positives of polysynthesis, it does have its limitations and it wouldn't surprise me if this turned out to be one of them.
When did I say this? I've never (TMK) offered any set criteria for a language's inclusion in the "polysynthetic" catgeory. It's a vague term that I try to avoid, usually, unless someone else uses it first.Incidentally, why do Nahuatl and Inuktitut fall into the polysynthetic category when neither marks agreement for noun class the way Jeff says polylangs must do in order to identify the arguments of a verb?
Ah, you did say that they were the hallmark of polythesis more or less near the beginning of the thread, unless I misunderstood your quote.When did I say this? I've never (TMK) offered any set criteria for a language's inclusion in the "polysynthetic" catgeory. It's a vague term that I try to avoid, usually, unless someone else uses it first.
JBurke wrote:One of the hallmarks of poly languages is the marking of subject and object on the verb. While not absolutely necessary for comprehension, it greatly helps. E.g., in Mohawk, a word stem is made of a verb root and a noun root; the noun root is not inflected, so you need some indication of the person and number of the object--and this comes from the pronominal prefix (which for transitive expressions provides information on both subject and object). Another instance when object agreement markers are useful is when using free-standing objects. Object incorporation is always optional in Mohawk, e.g.; and if you have a free-standing object and subject both, you often need that object agreement marker to help you discern which free-standing noun is the subject and which the object.
(1) You meant "polysynthesis" rather than "polythesis", I'm sure.Eddy wrote:Ah, you did say that they were the hallmark of polythesis more or less near the beginning of the thread, unless I misunderstood your quote.
Obviously this depends on what a "word" is.Hroþgard wrote:one of my pet peeves about polysynthetic languages is that I wonder "How do they know if it's polysynthetic? It might not be. What if the speakers of the languages just talked really fast so that it sounded like one word, so the linguist thought that it was one word with many morphemes?". Just something that irritates me about them.
Using that definition, linguists can decide what a word is.SIL Glossary wrote:What is a word?
Definition
A word is a unit which is a constituent at the phrase level and above. It is sometimes identifiable according to such criteria as
- being the minimal possible unit in a reply
- having features such as
- a regular stress pattern, and
- phonological changes conditioned by or blocked at word boundaries
- being the largest unit resistant to insertion of new constituents within its boundaries, or
- being the smallest constituent that can be moved within a sentence without making the sentence ungrammatical.
A word is sometimes placed, in a hierarchy of grammatical constituents, above the morpheme level and below the phrase level.
Kinds
Here are some kinds of words:
- What is an adjective?
- What is an adposition?
- What is an adverb? (Linguistics)
- What is a classifier?
- What is a conjunction?
- What is a determiner?
- What is a dummy word?
- What is an emphasis marker?
- What is an exclamative?
- What is an existential marker?
- What is a fossilized term?
- What is an honorific?
- What is an ideophone?
- What is an interjection?
- What is a particle?
- What is a pro-form?
- What is a substantive?
- What is a verb? (Linguistics)
- What is a clitic? (Grammar)
Generic
A word is a kind of
What is a construction?
Sources
Hartmann and Stork 1972 256
Crystal 1980 168, 383–384
Cruse 1986 35–36
Mish 1991 1358
Pike and Pike 1982 462
Context for this page:
Concept module: word
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): W
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics
This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]
Page content last modified: 5 January 2004
To my knowledge, no, and I believe some polylangs inflect their nouns very little if at all though I'm not absolutely sure.Is this necessary, for polylang that is?
Having at least some nominal inflection is handy since at the very least you probably want to distinguish singular and plural nouns. That goes a long way toward helping you parse agreement and so forth. On the other hand, you can probably get away without marking case if your lang includes a decent substitute on the verbs. Disadvantages mainly arise with more elaborate nominal morphology and often involve nominal and verbal inflections becoming redundant.What are some of its advantages/disadvantages?
But it can go the other way as well, with noun roots becoming verbs, which is very common in English (to google, to xerox, etc.). IMO there is a constant tug of war between forces that create distinctions between word classes and forces that erode such distinctions.jburke wrote:<Clears> I can't prove it, but I strongly suspect that polysynthesis was the hallmark of the most ancient human languages; moreover, I think most or all human languages began as kinsesthetic, too. The typical scenario we construct when thinking about how language originated--of proto humans hanging word-tags on things, of roaming about creating nouns by naming animals and trees--I think that's a totally false picture. I think language began with man's body feelings and his own motions, and he extended those concepts by analogy to describe the world. Naturally he would have described the world in verbal terms then. Over time, as we see in the Algonquian languages, certain morphemes tend to break away and become nouns, and take on classic nominal characteristics, and no longer refer back to any motion or process. Thus begins the development of a separate nominal morphology.