Re: motion verbs in Tokana

On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, Brad Coon wrote:

> FFlores wrote:
>
> > And do they have anything to do with oligosynthesis? (I ask
> > this because UA, I think, was mentioned regarding this
> > phenomenon, and the idea of many small affixes coming
>
> As one of perhaps 3 living people who have actually read Whorf's
> papers on oligosynthesis (not kidding, I think the number is a
> maximum)
Make that 4. Thanks to Brad, I've also had a chance to read
these articles. It's not Whorf's best writing, but it is fun
reading.

> I must sadly relate that I think Whorf was quite wrong about
> its existance in UA lgs.  There are only 2 lgs that I know of that
> use the principle, one of them is my conlang Nova.  Based upon my
> admittedly limited knowledge of Duplex, I think it is the other although
> I believe the author (sorry, don't remember your name) arrived at
> the principle wholly independently from Whorf (or me for that matter).
Some might argue that Athabaskan is oligosynthetic as
well--languages of this family do seem to have a more limited
number of roots than many other languages. Young and Morgan, in
their Analytical Lexicon of Navajo, distinguish only about 550
verbal roots. This is perhaps not oligosynthesis to the extent
claimed for Nahuatl by Whorf, but 550 is not a lot of roots.

> FWIW, I hope to edit Whorf's 2 unpublished papers on oligosynthesis
> for publication this year.
Very cool; let us know when and where it appears!

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu