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Re: polysynthetic languages

From:Eddy Ohlms <ohlms@...>
Date:Saturday, September 20, 2003, 3:36
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.