Re: Speedtalk attempts

The Keenan Establishment wrote:
> And that they mostly turn out unintelligible.
Logically.  It's almost certainly impossible to distinguish between all
 the phonemes that would be required.

> And can someone tell me in plain English the difference between
> agglutinating and isolating? (give examples?).
Isolating simply means that there are no affixes.  English is somewhat
 isolating.  Vietnamese is perhaps the best example, but Chinese is more
 famous.  Examples (from Mandarin Chinese):

Ta    chi fan  le.
(S)he eat meal past
Ta    chi le   fan.
(S)he eat past meal

(S)he at the meal.

The order does not necesarily have to be free.  For example, in English:
I will   have    eaten (not a perfect example)
I future perfect eat
*I have will eaten

But the order can be rearranged to indicate questions:
Will I have eaten?

Agglutinative means that segmentable affixes are used.  From Turkish:
Ev-ler-den (the hyphens aren't used in normal writing)
House-plural-ablative
>From the houses
Fusional means that non-segmentable affixes are used.
Dom-is
House-Ablative.plural
>From the houses.
The greatest degree of fusion is _suppletion_, when a form is completely
replaced, for example, from English: went = go+past

Polysynthetic is a fourth type.  However, this is sometimes considered
a subtype of agglutinating.  In this type, entire clauses may be expressed
by a single word.  Example, from Inuktitut:
Qasuiirsarvigssarsingitluinarnarpuq
qasu- iir-sar        -vig      -ssar    -si  -ngit-luinar    -nar    -puq
tired not cause.to.be place.for suitable find not  completely someone 3rd.Singular
Someone did not find a completely suitable resting place.

Of course, no language is completely one or another of these types.

--
"A silent mouth is sweet to hear" - Irish proverb
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