Re: First Conlang...? (Was Re: some insane West Greenlandicsentences)

Muke Tever wrote:
> I think that'd just be a fusional polysynthetic language.
> Doesnt the idea of mutations undermine the idea of one-to-one mapping?  If
> something has mutated, then it expresses both its original meaning and and
> the mutation's meaning, doesnt it?
I suppose it would depend on the details of the language.  Suppose, for
example, that in the language, all words had to begin with voiceless
stops.  Then there's a "prefix" that consists of "+voice" and another
"prefix" that consists of "lenition" (stop -> fricative).  Then you
could easily parse the word.  Thus, a word beginning with /p/ contains
neither prefix.  One beginning with /b/ contains the root /p/ and the
prefix + voice, while /f/ is /p/ + lenition and /v/ is /p/ + voice +
lenition.  I would consider that agglutinating (although an unusual
kind).  However, more likely would be a language where parsing is much
less easy.  So that, for example, /v/ could represent a root consonant,
or it could represent /b/ + lenition, or /f/ + voicing, or even /p/ +
voicing + lenition.  That would be more like a fusional language.

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