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Re: can a language be inflecting polysynthetic?

From:Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date:Sunday, October 5, 2008, 21:42
On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 12:27 PM, Jack Hall
<jha0808@...> wrote:
> Hi! > Can a language be inflecting polysynthetic?
As other posters have pointed out, yes, most if not all polysynthetic languages are in fact inflecting. The more interesting question for a conlanger, I think, is can you make a language that's polysynthetic but not inflectional? I think so, by one definition. Suppose you have a language with lots of compounding and derivation but no inflection, so much that the average number of morphemes per word is, say, four. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/