Re: polysynthetic languages

On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, at 10:18  PM, Roger Mills wrote:

> 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?
I wondered about this myself; for my Tepa counts which I posted earlier
this week, I counted the labels/morpheme glosses. I have a zero third
person marker which I consistently counted; thus _akasa_ 'they were
building (diff subj)' is glossed

a=  0-    kasa
DS= 3>3'- build

so I counted three morphemes. So the larger question is: what about
zero morphs? I would be inclined to count them if they are genuinely
zero morphs. I'm not sure if my Tepa third person marker is a genuine
zero morph, though.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie