Re: Polysynthesis & Oligosynthesis

Muke Tever writes:
 > Well, according to Payne's _Describing Morphosyntax_:
 >
 >     >> The index of *synthesis* [...] has to do with how many
 >     >> morphemes tend to occur per word.  This index defines
 >     >> a continuum from *isolating* languages at one extreme to
 >     >> highly *polysynthetic* languages at the other.  A strictly
 >     >> isolating language is one in which every word consists of
 >     >> one morpheme.  The Chinese languages come close to this
 >     >> extreme.  A highly polysynthetic language is one in which
 >     >> words tend to consist of several morphemes.  Quechua and
 >     >> Inuit (Eskimo) are good examples of highly polysynthetic
 >     >> languages.
 >
Most interesting.  3 questions: 1) which definition of "word" is
relevant to the above definition? 2) is this definition of
"polysynthetic", essentially as the inverse of "isolating", the only
sense of the word in common use?  3) at what point is it appropriate
to describe a language as essentially polysynthetic (it would appear
that there is a midground of languages which are not normally
described as either isolating or polysynthetic, if this is indeed the
same use of the word "polysynthetic").

 >
 > (Also, typing "polysynthesis" which has two y's next to each other like that is
 > quite disturbing.)
 >
I know what you mean.  Also, in the past couple of days I've been
surprised by two words which contain consonant-delimited sequences of
three (orthographically) identical vowels - initial and unusual.

 >
 > >From what I remember reading about Whorf, it seemed like the idea of
 > oligosynthesis is farther from the idea of isolation/polysynthesia and closer to
 > what we think of proto-languages now:  English has and has had millions of
 > words, but the vast majority of them are derived (through various means) from a
 > much, much smaller set of morphemes (those of Proto-Indo-European).   Or,
 > possibly a better example (if it works, because I know nothing about the actual
 > theory), the way that Semitic triliteral roots would be derived from a
 > [necessarily smaller?] set of biliteral roots with extensions.  (Wasn't it some
 > mystical analysis of Hebrew along these lines that inspired Whorf to see
 > oligosynthesis in Nahuatl?)
 >
 >

I don't know.  Here's something from Brad Coon's website:

|[...] Oligosynthesis is an idea first proposed by Benjamin L. Whorf, a
|fire insurance inspector who dabbled in Linguistics. He proposed that
|Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, was based upon a very small
|number (35 to be exact) of elements from which all other words were
|formed. Nova is an attempt to model a language which also uses a small
|number of word forming elements (morphemes) which may combine to form
|new words. Nova has considerably more basic elements than Whorf
|proposed for Nahuatl, but the total is still less than 1000 and over
|300 of those are inflections or a class of morphemes called integers
|which basically stand alone.

I can't imagine a language operating with only 35 morphemes.

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