Re: Diving In...

Yoon Ha Lee jî ne likh diyâ...

> 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.
Turkish is cool — but then all languages are cool, no? :-)

Another difference is phonetic, the degree to which endings are either blurred
together or have more than one meaning in one morpheme — like synthetic
languages’ case endings such as Latin genitive plural linguârum "of (the)
languages/tongues," where you can’t tell which part of –ârum is the
"genitive" part and which is the "plural" part.

Again from Inuktitut, takujaa means "He/she sees him/her," but you can’t really
tell what part of –jaa refers to the subject and what refers to the object
— it’s one morpheme. Or in verbs, (inungmik) takujunga "I see (a person)"
as an independent statement of fact, but (inungmik) takugama "because I see (a
person)" or "I see (a person), so..." where again –junga is first person
singular intransitive indicative and –gama is first person singular
intransitive "becausative" (reason-giving) and it’s again all one morpheme.

> > 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.)
For nouns, yes, only these three kinds of endings as far as I know.

> <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.)
My partner and I often speak Gaelic with each other, and we have an ongoing joke
that I think comes from Monty Python but arose in the context of defining the
two ways to express "as X as Y," e.g. "as big as a house," in Gaelic. The joke
is about being graduates of Simile School. "I’m as happy as someone who’s
really happy," etc.

> [snip]
> 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!  :-)
The Inuktitut verbal system is insane, you have nine endings for the intransitive
(three persons, three numbers) with a couple of extra separate question forms
(the equivalent to the 3rd singular intransitive indicative –juq/tuq that
occurs in statements is –pa/va in questions), plus separate transitive
endings encoding subject and object (three persons, three numbers, except that
the subject and object can’t be the same), plus the whole thing all over
again with the "becausative" endings mentioned, plus again something vaguely
resembling a subjunctive, and two sets of participles depending on whether the
subject of the two phrases is the same or different.

Pisuktlunga nanurmik takulauqtunga. "I-walking, a-polar-bear I-saw." (Same subject)

Pisuktillunga nanuk tikilauqtuq. "I-walking, a-polar-bear arrived." (Different subjects).

Add to that ergative structure, a bunch of different cases, a huge series of
demonstrative pronouns ("this here," "that near by," that over there," "that
out of sight," and others) and the whole polysynthetic thing... Eek!

Be well!

Doug

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