Re: Diving In...

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.

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