nmnmv123 wrote:Soap wrote:However, I agree that in a stereotypical polysynthetic language, "toy" is not likely to be a single indivisible moirpheme, unless recent sound changes have compressed something that used to be composed of morphemes meaning something like "kids play with (it)" into a shorter word.
I think it's also likely that "determination" won't be a single morpheme either, and that you could solve your problem by taking just one piece of that word and using it as a verb instead of a noun. In English, I would analyze "You are filled with determination" as simply an emphatic form of "You are determined", and in my language I simply wouldnt bother to nominalize the word for "determination". Even the English word "determined" has one more morpheme than I would like to use, since there is no reason why a verb emphasizing a person's strong will should need to be marked with a passive participle marker like English -ed.
Good to know. So polysynthetics tend to function somewhat like oligiosynthetics in a way? As for why I treat it as a single word, primarily because my lexicon has literally 30 words, so its just kind of a place-holder for now so I dont need to make 5 new morphemes every time i want to translate something, though I guess it'll just end up impeding me later on in terms of realism, so I'll go through and re-define things when I have some time.
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Well oligosynthetic is really just polysynthesis done to such a degree that it becomes ridiculous and nearly unworkable. You may get some parts of your lexicon which are full of single-morpheme words (like in Nuu-Chah-Nulth there are separate words for all of the different types of salmon that are found in their territory), but mostly you are talking sizeable amounts of derivation. There's also the issue of the Western perception of a "toy" as "something kids have fun with" as opposed to the more historical "miniature versions of invaluable tools and skills they will need as grown-ups."
nmnmv123 wrote:Frislander wrote:I'd probably express them more like so: 1.SUB-teach-HAB, 1.OBJ-teach-NOM, 1.SUB-teach-ONG, and I'd not have the last one because you don't actually need action nominals.
Action nominals are deriving a verb from a noun, like the Inuit languages, right? If you don't have them, then how would you handle something like the last one - 1.SUB-teach, and just have context differentiate it from the verb? Also, a little side question - what is ONG in your gloss?
It's to other way round - noun from verb. I linked to the WALS chapter which talks about it, and it suggests one of the ways you can overcome this is to use a subordinate clause (e.g. something like "when I teach it is good") or equivalent construction. If you played around with this you'd probably find other interesting ways of expressing similar ideas.
ONG stands for Ongoing, which is kind of a synonym for imperfective aspect, though generally with a more present-tense interpretation, I find.
nmnmv123 wrote:Frislander wrote:2s-toy-buy-PST-3s 1s-cat
Note that the noun "cat" has lost its case marking; that it has "gone".
So, the benefactive (or whatever adposition/other case it could be) just kind of gets implied by the verb already having an incorporated noun, and inferred by context?
getting into the polysynthetic minset is hard (>_<), but thanks for all the help guys!
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You got it!
garysk wrote:mèþru wrote:Slots are really the key to any inflecting verbal system.
True for PS and agglutinating languages, only marginally and inconsistently true for fusional languages. That's why they're fusional.
The closest thing to a counter-example in agglutinating languages is Eskimo-Aleut, where the post-bases and most of the inflection can occur in any order to get the meaning you want. However, even there the person inflection always occurs at the end of the verb complex, so there's your answer.
There must be some language somewhere which only uses stem changes for its inflection (it's probably Nilo-Saharan).