Polysynthetic? Here's Dii,ntis!
From: | Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...> |
Date: | Thursday, June 10, 2004, 13:04 |
After a spate of polysynthetic-interest mails on the list, I thought I'd
post a bit about Dii,ntis, a language I'm working on. (That "ii," is
supposed to be a pair of i-ogoneks.)
Two questions come out of all this:
1) Is Dii,ntis a plausible language?
2) How is it like any real languages?
First, let's get the phonology out of the way - that part's pretty easy.
- Vowels
a, i, u - the same in SAMPA
- Vowel Stuff
a' - stress (acute accent)
aa - long
a, - nasalized (an ogonek, I think)
- Consonants
p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, f, v, w, l, h - the same in SAMPA
ch - [tS], j - [dZ]
th - [T], dh - [D]
sh - [S], zh - [Z]
kh - [x], gh - [G]
r - [4]
y - [j]
Nothing too esoteric, let's move on to sentences.
"There is a bee in your hat!"
Hi' natva,na' azhii di,naachi'!
Breaking that up by words:
hi' - An existential particle, cf. "there's" in English, or "hay" in
Spanish.
natva,na' = na - t - va,na'
na - Illative, which means "in".
t - Agreement marker, showing that "bee" is that which is in the hat.
va,na' - Hat.
azhii - Bee.
di,naachi' = di - naa - chi'
di - Genitive, which means "of", or more strictly, "belonging to".
naa - Agreement marker, showing that "hat" is what you own.
chi' - 2nd person pronoun, "you".
That's not too hard, so let's try another example. (I was skimming through
_Describing Morphosyntax_* at the time, so if these examples seem familiar,
that's where they're adapted from.)
"Frida put the bee in your hat."
Frida vikshaazhii natva,na' di,naachi'.
And breaking that up by words:
Frida - Frida, obviously. (No, wait - that should read "Frida.
(obviously)".)
vikshaazhii = vi - k - shaa - azhii
vi - Perfect.
k - Agrees with "Frida".
shaa - Causative.
azhii - Bee.
natva,na' = na - t - va,na'
na - Illative.
t - Agrees with "bee".
va,na' - Hat.
di,naachi' = di - naa - chi'
di - Genitive.
naa - Agrees with "hat".
chi' - You.
Let's rephrase these sentences in English, with more of a
morpheme-by-morpheme translation.
There's in-hat bee of-you.
Frida has-make-bee in-hat of-you.
So where are the verbs? Looking at "in-hat" particularly, it's not clear
whether "nat" means "in-X" or "to be in X". And there really isn't any
distinction in Dii,ntis. Let's try another example.
"Frida is a teacher."
Frida wikza'ha.
Skipping the obvious, let's look at the last word:
wikza'ha = wi - k - za'ha
wi - Essive.
k - Agrees with "Frida".
za'ha - Teacher.
This is, as I understand it, typical object incorporation. If anybody wants
to see other examples translated into Dii,ntis, let me know.
---
*A book which I heartily recommend, by the way. Not that I ever commended
it in the first place, but I recommend it anyway.