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Re: just curious.. ;)

From:Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>
Date:Sunday, October 28, 2001, 13:44
Doesn't Finnish only do this with certain stems, though? Such as mies- 'man'
can become miehe- under conditions where the following suffix would cause
prohibited consonant clustering?
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nik Taylor" <fortytwo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 3:24 AM
Subject: Re: just curious.. ;)


> David Peterson wrote: > > My understanding was that the difference between polysynthetic and > > agglutinative was that in agglutinative language you had no real
phonemic
> > variation, whereas in polysynthetic you could...? > > My agglutinating languages have phonetic variation, Finnish, for > instance, has consonant gradation, where the stem has two forms > depending on which suffix is added. Turkish has vowel harmony. > Japanese has varying stems (e.g., kaki-tai "I want to write", but > kaka-nai "I don't write"), altho that's also sometimes analyzed as > simply epenthetic vowels, e.g., -(i)tai = want, -(a)nai = negation. > > Polysynthetic, I believe, is characterized by suffixes being an open > class and allowing incorporation, that is, making another word into a > part of a word. > > -- > "No just cause can be advanced by terror" > ICQ: 18656696 > AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42