Re: Polysynthesis and Clauses

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