Re: Polysynthesis (was To Doug Ball... and Thanks Ferko...)

Matt33 writes:
(snip)
> BTW, wouldn't one classify Finnish as polysynthetic as
> it possesses the above characteristics too -- as far
> as I know (with my limited Finnish) ?
I won't because Finnish doesn't have all my criteria.  Finish has 1-3:
-Lots of morphemes in a word
-Words that are whole sentences
-Complex words (the model for structure of words has lots of slots or
positions)

But I would say that it doesn't have either of the final two.
-Complex interaction of morphology and phonology
-The presence of incorporation
(although I admit my knowledge of Finnish is a bit limited, too, and I might
not be right).

I think in my last post I mentioned that agglutinative languages generally
have the first 3 and don't have the last two (having one of the last two
being the most important for polysynthesis classification)--I think that
Finnish would be an example of that point.

--Doug