Re: Weekly Vocab 7 in Kash (part)

Garrett Jones wrote:
>
> I want Minyeva to be typologically perfect, in the sense that it follows
all
> of the orders of a head first language. i haven't been able to find much
> information on the correlation between head first syntax and head first
> compounding, though. I see that Bahasa indonesia is SVO (and thus head
> first).
I'm not sure that any "typologically correct" language exists.  Even Basque,
which is pretty aggressively SOV and suffixing,  has N-Adj.  Maybe
Japanese??

Indonesian is mostly prefixing, but still has a small number of very
important suffixes and postposed particles like -pun and -lah. And at least
one "adjective" that's always preposed (selamat 'good, prosperous, happy',
as in selamat pagi 'good morning', selamat jalan 'good travelling, bon
voyage')

>There are also the factors of learnability, too... how hard would it
> be for people to get used to head first compounding?
Having both learned and taught Indonesian, I never found it a problem.  It's
about the first, and most important, thing you encounter, and you just get
used to it in very short order.

Reply