Re: polysynthetic languages

Isidora Zamora scripsit:

> The polysynthetic names created some grammatical issues
> (which I won't go into here) about how to properly incorporate them into a
> sentence since they were both full sentences and nouns at one and the same
> time.
Since you seem to be working to make your diachronics as realistic as
possible, I need to point out that proper names typically aren't treated
this way.  Whatever grammar they may appear to have is typically
sealed off from the rest of the sentence; inflecting languages may add
external markers of case or gender or number, but will not recycle
underlying ones, or ones that appear to be underlying:  the plural of
"Philips" is "Philipses".

Consider the name "Mary Drinkwater" (it belongs to a real person that
I found by googling).  This is a polysynthetic name, if you like;
"Drinkwater" exhibits object incorporation in its etymology.  (English
no longer favors this kind of object-incorporating compound, but we
still have an inherited stock of them:  "tosspot", "catchpenny",
"carry-all", etc. etc.)  But it is never treated in English as anything
resembling an actual verb followed by its object!  Nor is there any
difficulty in fitting it into real sentences like "Mary Drinkwater
doesn't drink water".

(People named "Drinkwater" or "Trinkwasser" or "Boileau" probably had
an ancestor with type II diabetes, which tends to run in families.)

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
[R]eversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I usually [before
Darwin] defended the tenability of the received doctrines, when I had to do
with the [evolution]ists; and stood up for the possibility of [evolution] among
the orthodox--thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current, but quite
undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness.  --T. H. Huxley

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