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

From:Doug Ball <db001i@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 17, 2001, 20:16
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