Re: polysynthetic languages

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Yes, but that's not the point.  "Tomato" is pretty free in how you can
> use it.  In certain situations, it requires nothing before it.
> "Tomatoes are red" for example.  It also requires nothing after it.
> It's a FREE MORPHEME, and the only restrictions are syntactic
> restrictions, for example "it + noun" isn't legal in most dialects.  -ed
> or -er on the other hand are BOUND morphemes.  They MUST follow a verb
> or an adjective, respectively.  You can NEVER use them by themselves.
>
> Another good example: In English, ability is indicated by a free
> morpheme "can".  Thus, you can say things like "I can't" or "Go there if
> you can".  On the other hand, in Japanese, it's indicated by an
> inflection, thus, you would have to say "I can't [verb]" and "Go there
> if you can go".  For example:
> English:
> "Did you go to the party?"
> "I couldn't"
> Japanese:
> Paatii ni itta no? (lit. Party to go-past question)
> Ikenakatta (lit. Go-able-neg-past, i.e., "I couldn't go")
> Since -e, "able", is an inflection, it MUST be attached to a verb.
>
> English:
> "Go there if you can"
> Japanese:
> Ikereba, soko ni itte (lit. go-able-if there to go)
> I'm not sure if that's exactly correct, but I do know that you'd have to
> use a form of the verb _iku_ "go", in both clauses.
Exactly. E-(indicates incapability)can't occur by itself. It must be
attached to a verb. The same is true of -a and -ni and other affixes.