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Re: polysynthetic languages

From:Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
Date:Saturday, September 20, 2003, 2:15
Robert B Wilson wrote:
> actually, english does have restrictions on order... most people i > know would consider "never i will go" and "i will go never" to be > incorrect. it seems the only two "correct" orders are "i will never > go" and "never will i go"... so does that make english polysynthetic?
Well, I worded that poorly. What I meant was that in English, there is a fixed order, but it allows an open class of stressed words in the middle of the verbal complex. I.e., the basic order (in declarative statements) is subject (auxiliary) (not) (other auxiliaries) (adverb) verb. In an agglutinating, non-polysynthetic language you could not have that open category of "adverb" right before the verb. There might be a closed class of adverb-like prefixes that could go there, but it would be a closed category. Of course, that alone wouldn't make it agglutinating. Spanish, for example, IIRC, doesn't allow forms like *Lo he nunca visto for "I have never seen it", but requires Nunca lo he visto. Altho, I believe that _he_ is stressed, and therefore it wouldn't be proper to consider it a prefix. However, it could presumably be a precursor to a future form which *does* treat it as a prefix. In a polysynthetic language, you could have an open category of adverbs there, but they would be pronounced as part of the word.
> > Also, many agglutinating/polysynthetic languages have allomorphic > > variations such as vowel harmony or assimilation. > > hmm... sort of like "will not" and "won't" in english?
Indeed, that is a form of agglutination in English, pronoun + auxiliary -> pronoun-auxiliary compound (even "I will", at least in my idiolect, could be considerd one word, since there's only a single stress, on "I") -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42