Re: polysynthetic languages

At 08:25 AM 9/24/03 -0400, you wrote:
>Isidora Zamora scripsit:
>
> > The polysynthetic names created some grammatical issues
> > (which I won't go into here) about how to properly incorporate them into a
> > sentence since they were both full sentences and nouns at one and the same
> > time.
>
>Since you seem to be working to make your diachronics as realistic as
>possible, I need to point out that proper names typically aren't treated
>this way.  Whatever grammar they may appear to have is typically
>sealed off from the rest of the sentence; inflecting languages may add
>external markers of case or gender or number, but will not recycle
>underlying ones, or ones that appear to be underlying:  the plural of
>"Philips" is "Philipses".
Thanks for the tip.  I may have to reconsider how the names are treated,
then.  (Although I don't really want to, because I came up with several
cool things to do with polysynthetic names.)

Isidora