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Re: Polysynthesis and Clauses

From:Amanda Babcock <ababcock@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 14, 2004, 21:29
On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 12:21:37AM -0500, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> In general, I find that the best way to understand how polysynthetic > languages work is to study a few.
That was my plan, but I found out it's really hard to learn a language when there's no pop culture being published or transmitted in it... and it's tough to get ahold of a lot of Mohawk stuff (why hasn't UToronto printed a Mohawk dictionary like their recent Oneida, Tuscarora, and Onondaga ones?)
> Some polysynthetic languages *do* > inflect the verb for intraclausal relations. In Meskwaki (Algonkian), > to form relative clauses you lop off the Modal suffix at the end, and > replace it with a suffix agreeing in number, animacy and obviation with > the head noun:
Very cool. Thank you. I looked up Fox (and Cree) in Mithun, and apparently these are exactly the languages I'm trying to reinvent :) Now I know what direction to head in.
> head noun. Phaleran also likes "headless" relative clauses, with no > overt head NP. These can be seen in my (very incomplete) Grammar of > Phaleran here: > > <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier/phaleran/PhaleranGrammar.pdf>
Thanks! Amanda