Re: polysynthetic languages

Staving Chris Bates:

>Five words of an isolating language with strict word order, and saying
>that only one of them is stressed? If stress is the only difference
>between an isolating and a polysynthetic language then it seems like the
>distinction is over emphasized.
I'm planning Magzhelyagon to be a largely fusional polysynthetic language,
which its rather strange kitchen sink phonology allows. So, for example,
the word for tiger, with the tone pattern for the intransitive subject
singular and the stop to prenasalised stop consonant mutation that
indicates the dubious evidentiality, followed by the word for fast, with
the tone pattern for the present tense, an intensifying trill, a click to
indicate motion towards speaker, and the fricative to lateral fricative
mutation for the certain evidentiality, would express in two words
"Something that may be a tiger is definitely coming towards me very quickly."

Pete

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