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Re: polysynthetic languages

From:Eddy Ohlms <ohlms@...>
Date:Sunday, September 21, 2003, 23:08
Isidora Zamora wrote:

> This is a nom/acc system. There will be both subject and object markers > for the verb. (But I haven't given morphological forms to them yet as I > need more than 30 of these markers, all told, due to having 4 grammatical > numbers and 4 logical genders in the language.
More like 60, 30 for the subject, 30 for the object.
> No grammatical gender or classes, only logical gender, but there are four > of them, with the majority of nouns being inanimate.
What noun classes do you have? I have immaterial, animate, and inanimate.
> > > I have four grammatical numbers to deal with. (It's not like I'm making > this easy on myself or anything.)
That's a lot.
> To have free word order, don't you also need case markings on the nouns?
Nope. That's the beauty of polylangs. The noun doesn't have to be marked for nominative or accusitive anymore. The verb is marked for the case of the noun. If you don't understand, I'll show you some good examples to explain it.
> I'll have to study noun-verb incorporation to see how and why it works.
You'll find that info on it is hard to find. If you find any good sources, tell me about them.

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Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>