Re: Branching typologies

Thank you for this info!!

On Sat, 29 Sep 2001, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:

> > Date:         Fri, 28 Sep 2001 12:15:36 -0700
> > From: Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
> >
> > > In a message dated 9/28/01 1:54:06 AM, thorinn@DIKU.DK writes:
> > > << Inuit languages are called polysynthetic, even though the structure is
> > > quite simple, in the sense that the meaning is built up front to back,
> > > each suffix modifying the meaning of the stem so far, with a single
> > > syncretic tense/number/agreement morpheme at the end. (The phonemic
> > > rules for the joining of morphemes can be quite complex, though). >>
> >
> > Hm. So is Hungarian, with things like "megverethetnelek" derived from the
> > verb "ver-", "beat", polysynthetic?
>
> No. I chose Inuit as an example because it's a polysynthetic language
> with a relatively simple word structure, to show that they don't all
> have noun incorporation and infixes for the social status of the
> speaker, or whatever. That doesn't meant that all languages with a
> similar structure are polysynthetic.
>
> As far as I know, Hungarian does not change the various morphemes much
> when tacking them together (except perhaps for vowel harmony), and
> that's a more agglutinative trait.
>
> But a more decisive difference is that AFAIK, the list of affixes in
> Hungarian is short and stable --- they are in a sense syntactical
> items. On the other hand, about half of an Inuit dictionary is taken
> up by the affixes --- they have to be part of the speakers' lexicon,
> and the class is open to expansion.
>
> Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)
>