Re: TERMINOLOGY: Re: another new language to check out

On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 05:07:06PM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
> My rule of thumb would be that in agglutinating langs. the particles mark
> only 1 maybe 2 features: plural-- genitive-- past-- IO  etc. and are
> discrete and readily identifiable. There may be some morphophonemic changes,
> but also identifiable. Whereas inflectional particles combine features into
> an inseparable whole:  e.g. Lat. -a:rum marks
> genitive+plural+(mostly)feminine, no part of which can be said to mark
> plural or genitive by itself.
Although it decomposes nicely into -a:=feminine + -rum=genitive plural,
v. -o:=masculine/neut + -rum=genitive plural. :)

> (Though historically I gather agglutination was involved at the PIE
> level at least.)
I think current theory holds that most if not all inflections started out
as agglutination in earlier stages of the language involved.

But to return to the question at hand - how to analyze Esperanto?  Most
of the affixes are single morphemes with a single meaning, hence
agglutinative.  Certainly the noun/adjective declension is agglutinative
as well: part of speech (-o or -a) plus number (zero or -j) plus case
(zero or -n).  The verb conjugation endings can *almost* be analyzed as
combinations of tense (-a, -i, -o) + mood (-s or zero) or aspect (-nt-,
-t-), but that analysis is foiled by the tenseless mood endings -i
(=infinitive), -u (imperative), -us (conditional).

It seems to be mostly agglutinative, but it "feels" inflected to me.

-Mark

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