Re: polysynthetic languages

Eddy Ohlms wrote:

>Chris Bates wrote:
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>>Often, I would say that this degree of synthesis actually enforces
>>pretty strict order of morphemes... when a sentence can be one long
>>word, word order isn't really that relevant is it? All I mean is... I
>>wouldn't characterise polysynthetic languages by the ability to have
>>"free word order", since the order of the building blocks of sentences
>>often seems as strict as the strictest isolating language. I'm sure that
>>in your lang for instance I couldn't write
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>>k'ûla-'ikê-ma-la-Xe
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>The would be like saying "It eddart across the room."
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>>and still mean that I want to build a house, even if it makes sense. I
>>thought what Christophe said about french being polysynthetic was quite
>>interesting actually... and it made my wonder again like I have before,
>>what apart from the position of stress is the difference between a very
>>isolating and a very agglutinative or polysynthetic language? I mean,
>>what's to stop me analysing your example above by:
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>>Xe k'ûla 'ikê la ma.
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>Because they are verb inflections. You wouldn't say "I am smart er than you" or "It
>explode ed."
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But what I am saying is, if their form is always the same, why is it any
more correct to analyse them as verb inflections than as separate words?
I could consider la and ma as pronouns which doesn't necessarily
preclude having the subject and object included in the sentence, like below

a Juan le gusta el cine

spanish grammars analyse le as a separate pronoun and not an inflection
but "a Juan" and "le" in this sentence refer to exactly the same thing
so why include both? If you try skipping the le though its wrong. I'm
just pointing out that the fact an argument is mentioned explicitly is
no reason that a language can't require a pronoun as well. There are
languages with separate tense /aspect markers as well that I believe in
some languages have to occur in certain positions in the sentence... so
as far as I can see if the morphemes don't fuse or merge in any way or
influence each other then still the only thing stopping me analysing
them as separate words is stress.

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>>Five words of an isolating language with strict word order, and saying
>>that only one of them is stressed? If stress is the only difference
>>between an isolating and a polysynthetic language then it seems like the
>>distinction is over emphasized.
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>If if were isolating, the noun verb agreement suffixes(-la & -ma) wouldon't be
>needed.
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