Re: Polysynthesis & Oligosynthesis

Tim May writes:
 >
 > |[...] 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.
 >

Now what I _should_ have done to begin with, of course, knowing that
Brad Coon had an oligosynthetic conlang and also knowing that he used
to be on the list, is to look through the list archives and see if he
said anything else on the subject, which he did.

|Date:         Tue, 6 Oct 1998 20:07:05 -0500
[...]
|Tom Wier wrote:
|>=20
|> Hawksinger wrote:
|>=20
|> > Thanks to Nova oligosynthetic nature, this allows for very thorough
|> > color terminology when needed.
|>=20
|> Could you explain this a little more? This is quite interesting...
|
|
|
|
|Sure.  Oligosynthesis is an idea that goes back to Whorf.  He mentions
|it briefly in Linguistic Structures of Native America but the heart
|of it was in 2 unpublished papers now on microfilm at the University of
|Chicago.  He believed that Uto-Aztecan lgs were made up of a very
|small number of elements (35 if I remember correctly) and that all
|words and apparent morphemes were made by combining those to get
|the forms we normally call words.  This not the same as aglutination
|where you take a basic root and derive new words from it nor is it like
|polysynthesis where one word =3D one sentence (an oversimplification I
|know).  Rather these elements have no independent existence.  Now 35 is
|too small for me, so Nova currently stands at 980 (of which about 70
|will soon be discarded in the next reform).  Of these, 148 are
|inflectional morphemes, 157 are particles and words that can stand alone
|(e.g. numerals and the equivalents to prepositions), and 675 that I call
|Incohates that are used to make 'words'.

According to another old post, Dirk Elzinga's seen those papers of
Whorf's, and he's on the list now, so maybe he could supply more
information if there's anything further of interest to be said.

The basic principle, IIUC, seems to be one of compounding from a small
set of root morphemes, many of which cannot stand alone (I say
"compounding", rather than derivation, because he later says that
Jeffrey Henning's Dublex looks oligosynthetic, but it's perhaps not a
meaningful distinction in this type of language).

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