Re: can a language be inflecting polysynthetic?
| From: | Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, October 5, 2008, 21:42 |
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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/