Re: Diachronic instability of oligosynthesis

staving David J Peterson:
>Pete wrote:
><<
>I had a thought the other day. Let us suppose that we have an
>oligosynthetic language, i.e. few roots, but lots and lots of
>derivational affixes. Over time, it seems likely that sound changes
>might cause the derivational affixes to fuse with the roots in
>unpredictable ways, thus effectively turning lots of root+affix
>combinations into new roots, while simultaneously causing the
>derivational affixes to lose their productivity. Ultimately, an
>oligosynthetic language would be highly likely to evolve into a non-
>oligosynthetic one. Could this be the reason why there are no
>undisputed cases of oligosynthesis in the wild?
> >>
>
>While there probably isn't a language where this is the *only* thing
>that happened, this has happened before.  And, in fact, this is what I
>did with one of my languages, from a non-historical point of view.
>The language likes two basic word shapes:
>
>-monosyllabic, heavy syllable = word
>
>-trisyllabic, at most one heavy syllable = word
>
>Words it doesn't like are CVCV.  So I have this list of -CV suffixes
>that I use to build these words up to make trisyllabic words.  Some
>are only used a couple times; some many times.  None of them are
>in any way productive, and sometimes they get swallowed up by
>phonology.
>
>Anyway, to see an entire language designed on this principle would
>really be fascinating.  You up to it, Pete?  ~:D
I've had some ideas for an oligosynthetic language hanging about for a
while, so I may have a go at it. It's a big project, though, so I'm
thinking of doing it as a collaboration.

Pete

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