Languages & Linguistics
Polysynthetic Languages
Polysynthetic languages are characterized by the ability to form complex words through the addition of multiple affixes, incorporating various grammatical and lexical elements into a single word. These languages often exhibit extensive word formation processes, allowing for the expression of complex ideas within a single word. Polysynthetic languages are found in various indigenous languages, such as Inuktitut and Mohawk.
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7 Key excerpts on "Polysynthetic Languages"
eBook - PDFNew Challenges in Typology
Broadening the Horizons and Redefining the Foundations
- Matti Miestamo, Bernhard Wälchli, Matti Miestamo, Bernhard Wälchli(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Rembarrnga polysynthesis in cross-linguistic perspective Adam Saulwick 1. Introduction At least since the period of classical morphological typology, specific clus-ters of properties have been claimed as identifying “polysynthetic” as a dis-tinct type from less synthetic languages (Whitney 1867: 348–354; Hum-boldt 1988: 128–130), but the precise nature of this difference continues to be the subject of ongoing debate. When we look at particular Polysynthetic Languages, clearly we are confronted with elaborate morphological struc-tures where the verbal word can be encoded with information about such things as core actants, temporal and adverbial modifiers, and valence-changers which are frequently independent of external material. 1 Various studies have proposed crucial properties of the polysynthetic type in terms of word unity (Boas 1911: 75), morphological synthesis (Finck 1910), obligatoriness of representation through bound material (Drossard 1996) or morphological representation of arguments on their head (Baker 1996: 14). A characteristic of some analyses has been an inor-dinate focus on the phenomenon of nominal incorporation as a crucial iden-tifying property (Whitney 1867: 348; Finck 1910). However, detailed de-scriptions of individual Polysynthetic Languages have shown great diversity in particular (sets of) properties. For example, on the basis of the absence of nominal incorporation in languages such as Athapaskan, 2 West Greenlandic, Haida and Tlingit, Boas (1911: 75) rightly pointed out that nominal incorporation should not be considered a defining property of polysynthesis, see (1) for West Greenlandic. 3 (1) West Greenlandic (Eskimo-Aleut; Boas 1911: 74) Takusar-iartor-uma-galuar-ner-pâ? look.after.it-go.to-intend.to-do.so-do.you.think.he-3. INTROG ‘Do you think he really intends to go to look after it?’
eBook - ePub- Robert Chambers(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Perlego(Publisher)
all of them features in common, proving them to constitute a group by themselves, without any regard to the very different degrees of civilization which these nations had attained at the time of the discovery. The common resemblance is in the grammatical structure as well as in words, and the grammatical structure of this family is of a very peculiar and complicated kind. The general character in this respect has caused the term Polysynthetic to be applied to the American languages. A long many-syllabled word is used by the rude Algonquins and Delawares to express a whole sentence: for example, a woman of the latter nation, playing with a little dog or cat, would perhaps be heard saying, “kuligatschis,” meaning, “give me your pretty little paw;” the word, on examination, is found to be made up in this manner: k, the second personal pronoun; uli, part of the word wulet, pretty; gat, part of the word wichgat, signifying a leg or paw; schis, conveying the idea of littleness. In the same tongue, a youth is called pilape, a word compounded from the first part of pilsit, innocent, and the latter part of lenape, a man. Thus, it will be observed, a number of parts of words are taken and thrown together, by a process which has been happily termed agglutination, so as to form one word, conveying a complicated idea. There is also an elaborate system of inflection; in nouns, for instance, there is one kind of inflection to express the presence or absence of vitality, and another to express number. The genius of the language has been described as accumulative: it “tends rather to add syllables or letters, making
eBook - PDFAnalyticity and Syntheticity
A Diachronic Perspective with Special Reference to Romance Languages
- Armin Schwegler(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
A polysynthetic lan-guage illustrates no principles that are not already exemplified in the more familiar synthetic lan-guages. It is related to them very much as a syn-thetic language is related to our own analytic English. Sapir (p. 136) stresses that 'the three terms are purely quantitative—and relative, that is, a language may be analytic from one standpoint, synthetic from another.' To illustrate the relativity of his classification, Sapir (136 nil) proceeds to explain that English, typed as analytic (see above), is analytic only in tendency since, relative to French—at least in certain aspects—it is still fairly synthetic. Sapir, in other words, does not aim at establishing a rigid classification, i.e., one in which a language must fit into either the synthetic or the analytic compartment, but rather seeks to highlight structural tendencies (the famous drifts) 38 within a given language. 39 By employing three sets of distinctions (conceptual type, technique, and degree of synthesis) Sapir offers a wide variety of possibilities for language characteriza-tion. 40 His matrix (p. 151, reproduced here as Table 1), with all its complex pos-sibilities of variation, 41 contains an unprecedented combination of features, some of which are mutually exclusive. Thus the languages given und» his type A are necessarily analytic. Languages of type C are also predominantly analytic and are, according to Sapir (p. 148), not likely to develop beyond the synthetic stage. Sapir does not limit his attention to merely establishing parameters for his morphology-based matrix. He clearly goes beyond such considerations when he attempts to draw inferences from the relationship between diachrony and structural type of language structure.
eBook - PDFTypological Changes in the Lexicon
Analytic Tendencies in English Noun Formation
- Alexander Haselow(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
As Schwegler (1990: 46) argues, any classification of a language or the expression type of a particular category of a language has to operate with an ill-defined, unde-fined, or simply indefinable fundamental variable, the word, and must therefore be unreliable. This view may be true, but it is probably too strict. The question is not whether the classification should be used at all, but how to use it. As it has been shown, the notion of syntheticity is of no help if it refers to the structure of an entire language. One may, however, document processes of isolation of formerly synthetic structures occurring in particu-lar domains, at least in those cases where a more or less clear segmentation of word-forms into lexical bases and affixes is possible. In the present study, the terms synthetic and analytic will refer to the encoding technique of lexical information and are applied to the field of nominal derivation only. 3. Language change and morphological typology 3.1. Sapir’s concept of ‘drift’ Sapir’s modification of the typological classification discussed above also changed the interpretation of a typological change of languages. By sug-gesting that languages may gradually change from one typological state towards another, Sapir introduced a dynamic conception of language types into the field of linguistic typology. The idea that the typological character of a language may be subjected to change had been proposed by Schleicher and Humboldt before. However, Sapir offered a different conception of such a change: it does not correlate with the evolutionary stage of a culture and thus with cultural progression or decline, and it is not a unidirectional, linear development, but one that follows a cycle. Languages move continu-ously between syntheticity and analyticity, a phenomenon for which he introduced the term ‘drift’ ([1921] 1949: 154): We must return to the concept of “drift” in language.
eBook - PDFHistory of Englishes
New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics
- Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Irma Taavitsainen(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
This shows again how important it is not to follow preconceived notions and to set out with precise formulations of analyticity and syntheticity. Neither Vachek nor Pennanen offer any such definitions, probably taking for granted the existence of a commonly accepted but vague scholarly con-sensus. Be that as it may, the criteria of the present paper suggest that the developments considered in this subsection are synthetic (from a semantic point of view) rather than analytic. Without aiming at a full inventory of all the grammatical structures in Modern English that could qualify as synthetic, one could also mention here the rise of its in Early Modern English, aptly described by Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1990: 28) as more synthetic than of it, although it need not necessarily be seen as an exception to the general drift. On the contrary, it could be considered as part of a new trend towards syntheticity during the Modern English period. 3.3. Lexical syntheticity One could begin with the highly productive patterns of nominal com-pounding in English (and many other languages — cf. Tauli 1958: 83 — 87), where the movement towards syntheticity can often be witnessed in action, so to speak. It is reflected in the spelling of the originally free collocation loan word through loan-word to the single lexeme loanword and of a host of other examples (with a good deal of variation, of course). There is a degree of overlapping between lexical and phonological syntheticity in the transition from transparency to opacity of earlier compounds such as lord, lady, Essex (cf. also Tauli 1958: 84). One can agree with Trnka (1928: 139) that productive word-formation patterns with the affixes un-, ex-, re-, extra-, pre-, -ness, -ship, -ist, -like, -less, -able, -ize, to which some more could be added, represent synthetic developments.
eBook - PDFVariation, Selection, Development
Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Change
- Regine Eckardt, Gerhard Jäger, Tonjes Veenstra(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
But these observations must be seen in context: they hardly imply that anything but a small subset of a given grammar will submit to analyses such as these. Any realistic perspec- tive on natural language grammars must acknowledge that the bulk of any grammar – morphophonemics, extent of overt marking of semantic roles, word order, ergativity, extractability constraints, phonological derivations, and most of the things that one attends to in controlling a grammar – has arisen quite disconnected from the culture of its speakers. Hill (1993: 451–452), for example, argues against the notion that poly- synthetic structure is the product of small societies based on intimate rela- tions, the volume of shared information presumably allowing the null ana- phora, loose word order, absence of a distinct subordinate clause structure, and other “pragmatic mode” features (in Givon’s (1979: 229) terminology). The Aztecs created a hierarchical civilization, and yet Nahuatl is polysyn- thetic; meanwhile, languages of Southern Australia are not polysynthetic, despite their speakers having been small bands of hunter-gatherers. Baker (1996: 510–511) presents various features of Mohawk society and pointedly observes “Does it follow from any of these features of their traditional soci- ety that their syntactic constructions should be consistently head marking?” In general, it is impossible to propose a cultural aspect uniting Germans, people of India, Ethiopians, and the Japanese that would predict verb-final word order, or one uniting Celts, Polynesians, and inhabitants of the Philippines that would predict verb-initial. 342 John H. McWhorter Few if any linguists would contest any of these observations. And they highlight the simple fact that inflectional affixation is no more “cultural” than any number of other grammatical features, and more importantly, that it is on the contrary a random, accidental development in natural languages.
eBook - PDF- William A. Foley(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Noun incorporation and linguistic representation 27 languages. For example, the intuitive notions of agent, patient, locative, etc. are left undefined, with no attempt to characterize their boundaries; nor have semantic roles like experiencer, manner of action or nat-ural force been integrated into the system. All of these require further study. Furthermore, it is perfectly possible that different cultures some-times conceptualize events in slightly different ways, such that the argu-ment structures of equivalent items may be different. For example, some might view dying as an active quasivoluntary event, whereas others view it as a highly involuntary one. Then in one the relevant verb could take an agent argument and be unergative, while in the other it would take a patient argument and be unaccusative. 11 Finally, the possibility must be left open that the formal grammatical system permits a limited number of pure exceptions to these principles. What then about the differences between Polysynthetic Languages and the more isolating languages, which seem so vast at first? The very idea of an abstract universal level of linguistic representation assumes that there is also at least one other, more concrete level of representation; it is at this level that the individual character of each language fully man-ifests itself. Polysynthetic Languages differ from isolating languages in the way that surface representations are related to D-structures. The basic difference can be stated very simply. (20) Surface realization rules: A. If X is a member of the D-structure phrase headed by Y, then the head of X can be morphologically combined with Y in surface structure. B. If X is a member of the D-structure phrase headed by Y, then X is a member of the surface structure phrase headed by Y.
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