Re: polysynthetic languages

Dirk Elzinga wrote:
> To discover the degree of synthesis present in a language, take a
> > sample text of sufficient size. For each word of the text, count the
> > number of morphemes. (The term 'morpheme' is defined by Greenberg as
> > the minimum meaningful sequence of phonemes in a language.) The
> > synthetic index will be the average number of morphemes per word. The
> > higher the number, the more synthetic the language. > >(snip)
> > Eskimo, which is usually held to be polysynthetic, has the highest
> > synthesis index. Vietnamese, which is usally held to isolating, has the
> > lowest. Greenberg proposes ranges which roughly coincide with
> > impressionistic categorizations of languages:
> >
> > analytic: 1.00-1.99
> > synthetic: 2.00-2.99
> > polysynthetic: 3.00+
>
Hmm, Kash shows an average of 1.85 on the basis of 4 texts-- 3 longish, 1
short.  I suspect I mis-counted, as frankly I thought it would be a bit
higher.
One possible mis-count :  the anim.pl. -Vla was counted as 1 morpheme-- it
should be at least 2, to include _nominative case_, and what about
_animate_? Should that be counted? (Inanimates have a different plural
ending)

That brings up the question, what do you do with nouns that aren't marked
for case in the nom. sing.?   Is e.g. _tungar_ 'tribe [anim. nom. sing.]'
one morpheme or four?

The remaining forms are:
gen.sing.  tungar-i, dat.sing. tungar-e, acc.sing. tungar-(a)n
nom.pl tungar-ila, gen pl. tungar-il-i, dat. pl. tungar-il-e,
acc.pl. tungar-ila-n

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