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Re: Diving In...

From:Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 31, 2001, 3:20
On Monday, October 29, 2001, at 10:36 , Doug Barr wrote:

> I just joined the list a week or so ago — I’ve been lurking to see what’s > what, and I’m very happy to have found a group of kindred > linguistically-minded maniacs. I feel quite at home… <smile> >
Hello! I guess I can't deny either charge, though I don't know much linguistics compared to the rest of this list. :-)
> Polysynthetic vs. agglutinating languages: > > Both types of languages tend to make long words; if I recall correctly, > the difference between the two types is based not so much on phonetics a > s on freedom of compounding. > > In the agglutinating languages I have some familiarity with, Turkish and > Japanese, the suffixes are added on in a definite order and their number > is usually limited, at least towards the end of the word. In Turkish, for > example, I can say evsizliklerinden “from their homelessness.” This > breaks down as: > > • Ev— “house” > • -siz-— “without” > • -lik-— “-ness,” “-hood” (makes abstract nouns or sometimes nouns of > place) >
That made sense to me. I confess I'd never been too clear on the distinction. I did try to teach myself some written Turkish a couple years back (which amused my prof--I was taking German at the time) but never had enough time for it.
> The order for endings is always the following in Turkish: > [plural]-[possessive]-[case]. They don’t all occur in every word, of > course, but when they do, they always occur in that order and there can > only be one of each. >
So there are only these three kinds of endings? (Though I guess the salient point is that there's a finite ordered number with only one-of-each-kind.)
> In the polysynthetic language I have some familiarity with — the Iqaluit > dialect of Inuktitut (the so-called “Eskimo” language, “Eskimo” is > pejorative), the common image used in teaching materials is of a train: > you have an engine (the root) and a caboose (the grammatical ending), but > between those two morphemes you can infix a theoretically infinite number > of “post-bases” or train-cars in any order that has meaning. >
<laugh> I like that image. It was immediately clear what you meant! (Sorry, as a student-teacher I am on the lookout for good metaphors of any kind.) [snip]
> Not sure if this will help or hinder — hopefully it will be slightly > helpful to someone somewhere.
I am not at all familiar with the language, but I'm now intrigued in learning more--and your examples were fascinating and (again) easy to follow. You've helped me at least! :-) Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com] http://pegasus.cityofveils.com Extra credit: Define the universe and give 3 examples.

Replies

Almaran Dungeonmaster <dungeonmaster@...>
Doug Barr <dbarr@...>
Dan Jones <dan@...>