[Lexicog] polysynthetic languages and dictionaries

[Kenneth C. Hill]

Thanks for this information. My impression of Athabascan languages not
being incorporating comes from a now long-ago course I took with Harry
Hoijer in which we studied Navajo verb morphology. There were a lot of
prefixes, derivational and inflectional prefixes interdigitated in a
mind-bending sort of way and also aspectual suffixes after the verb root,
but I didn't remember the possibility of incorporating an open set of
lexical nouns into the verb as is possible in Uto-Aztecan languages such
as Nahuatl and Hopi.

Hopi, by the way, as enthusiastically incorporating as it is, is not a
properly polysynthetic language in that there are no subject/object person
markers.

--Ken

--- Melissa Axelrod <axelrod at unm.edu> wrote:
> Some examples of incorporation from Athabaskan:
>
>
> Koyukon (Northern Athabaskan)
>
> 1a.   yeghedeegheenonh
> 's/he touched it'
>
> 1b.   betooghedeegheenonh
> 'water (too#) touched it'
>
> 1c.   hetleeghedaanoyh
> 's/he touches the area (ceiling) with her/his head, (tlee#)'
>
> 1d.   yekkaaghedeegheenonh
> 's/he touched it with her/his foot, (kkaa#)'
>
> 2a.   kk'oyeeltlaah
> 's/he handled her/him roughly, threw her/him around'
>
> 2b.   kk'o'elts'eeyhyeeltlaah
> 'he wind (eltseeyh#) is pushing him/her around'
>
>
>
> Jicarilla Apache (Southern Athabaskan)
>
> 1.   Mitsáshii dádlomeesdzi'ee
>
>       Mi + tsáshii                  dá + dlo + m + ee + s + dzi + 'ee
>
>       3sg + on account of      emph + laughter + 3sgO + TAM + 1sg + be
> full + emph
>
>       'On account of her, I am full of laughter; she made me laugh'
>
>
>
> Kenneth C. Hill wrote:
>
> >Bill Poser seems to regard the Athabascan* verbs as polysynthetic, but
> I
> >believe they don't incorporate nominal roots as in the examples above
> >though their morphology certainly does refer to both subject and object
> >arguments.
> >
> >*I reject both the US spelling 'Athabaskan' and the Canadian
> 'Athapaskan'
> >as silly attempts at a "technical" linguistic spelling of a name
> clearly
> >based on the geographically established spelling '(Lake) Athabasca'.
> >
> >--Ken
> >
> >--- phil cash cash <pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>thanks Bill,
> >>why have a powerful lookup tool when the operations which emulate the
> >>rules of the grammar are non-transparent to the dictionary user? or is
>
> >>this again a wrong impression?  i mean this as a harmless question as
> i
> >>am just curious.  though i am no computational linguist, i would like
> >>to "model" nez perce verb morphology someday as i think i am getting
> >>closer to the core issues relating to the "rules" of composition and
> >>concatenation.  however, in the nez perce scheme of things (i.e
> >>polysynthesis: fusional) the morphology is tends to be more about the
> >>syntax-semantic interface, not to mention the input-output to
> >>phonological being just as complex if not more so.  the classic
> >>polysynthetic mohawk model of noun-incorporation (via Baker) just does
>
> >>not work for nez perce.
> >>
> >>qó'c (later)
> >>phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce)
> >>UofA
> >>
> >>On May 27, 2004, at 2:11 PM, William J Poser wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >[message cut from this response]
> >



	
		
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