To Doug Ball (was: beautiful scripts (to Christophe/Amber))

--- Doug Ball <db001i@...> wrote:
> The word you're looking for, I think, is
> polysynthetic, although I'm not
> sure if that is the word that describes how Vya:a:h
> is.
Thanks, even if you're not sure!  Any advice I greatly
appreciate.

> It is my understanding that polysynthetic means a
> lot of morphemes in one word, and
> some muddying has transpired (over time) that has
> blurred the morpheme boundaries.
Grateful for the Navajo example you gave, but my
terminal will not allow me to view some of the
characters so it was hard to follow.  I'm guessing
that something like the following example would
exemplify this?
(Finnish "street")        katu
(Finnish "of the street") kadun
(Finnish "in the street") kadulla
where the t becomes d for pronunciation. Isn't this
also the case of "muddy morpheme boundaries," or am I
way off?

> However, Vya:a:h might be agglutinative, which is
> close to polysynthetic, but not quite the same.
You're right that Vya:a:h is agglutinative - like
Finnish or Estonian.  I'm not sure now about
polysynthetic.  Vya:a:h, the little I've done, remains
quite regular in forms except that it tends to
distinguish many words by the letter "y" against the
letter "yy" (ie, /Y/ vs /Y:/), so I may end up
cancelling some of those vocab words out and make
"muddier" morpheme boundaries for perhaps quicker
recognition of distinguishing between words.

> There are still a lot of morphemes, but they segment
> very nicely, as in this Turkish verb:
> veriyorsunuz
> ver-i-yor-sunuz
> Give-epenthetic vowel-PRESENT-2PL
> 'You (pl.) are giving'
Very nice example, and much closer to what I initially
meant!  So, something similar in Vya:a:h might be

(my own personal transliteration)  iiL "(to) greet"
(IPA transliteration, I think???) /i:I/

iiv
     (ii + v, verbal stem + 3rd pres pl marker)
     *actual written form: iiL'yyuu
     *meaning: "they greet"
iivoo
     (ii + v + oo, oo indicates hope/desire/wish)
     *actual written form: iiL'yyuuoo[tsu]
     *meaning: "may they greet (him)"
rrh'aux-iiv
     (rrh'aux + ii + v, rrh'aux is past marker)
     *actual written form: rrh'aux[tsu]iiL'yyuu
     *meaning: "they greeted"
rrh'aux-iivoo
     (rrh'aux + ii + v + oo)
     *actual written form: rrh'aux[tsu]iiL'yyuuoo[tsu]
     *meaning: "may they have greeted (him)"

> However, you should probably take the above with a
> grain of salt--this is
> more my take on polysynthesis than an definitive
> definition,
No prob!  Thanks again.

> I have the impression that there isn't a lot of
> consensus as to what would be a definite definition
From what I've seen in this forum, I agree!  But, for
me, it does not matter -- I just enjoy following along
with some of the conversations here, regardless of
whether I find out definite definitions.

> Perhaps more than you wanted to know
No, I welcome it!

Regards
Matt33


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