Re: me and my languages

Tom Wier wrote:

>It is certainly possible, although it would probably be unique among human
>languages.  There is a language spoken by about 300 or so people on a small
>island in the Bering Strait  (it may be a dialect of Aleut, but the memory
>fails) which, it is claimed, is the most morphologically complex language
>on Earth. It has subject, object and indirect object
>agreement, noun incorporation, modal, voice, tense and/or aspectual markers
>all as parts of the verb.
Would that be Alutor? My prof and advisor has actually done
fieldwork on that language in her youth. I really recommend
a paper she wrote on it. It was the main inspiration for my
polysynthetic language Nakiltipkaspimak. The reference is:

Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. & I. Muravyova. 1993. Alutor Causatives,
Incorporation and the Mirror Principles. I: Comrie, B. & M.
Polinsky (eds.,) Causatives and Transitivity. Amsterdam /Philadelphia:
John Benjamins Publishing company.

||| daniel


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