[Lexicog] finding new words in polysynthetic languages

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne Leman" <wayne_leman at sil.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 12:35 PM
Subject: [Lexicog] finding new words in polysynthetic languages


> > On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, John Roberts wrote:
> > > As well collecting words from texts and exploring semantic domains,
when
> I
> > > was working with the Amele people (PNG) in the 1970s I used a "word
> > > generator" to produce possible words in the language.
> >
>
> John Koontz responded:
>
> > The Rev. James O. Dorsey (d. c. 1896, as I recall correctly), who worked
> > with the Siouan languages for the Bureau of American Ethnology, has a
> > manuscript summarizing an approach like this for Omaha-Ponca, combining
> > canonical analysis of roots with an analysis of the morphosyntax of
> > derivation.
>
> John, do you happen to know if Dorsey included lexically rich verb
morphemes
> in his study? I think of derivational morphemes as those which are not
> lexically "rich", but, rather, typically change the class of a word, such
as
> English "wide" > "widely" with the derivational (adverbial) suffix -ly.
> Cheyenne has derivational affixes which can nominalize, denominalize, make
> impersonal verbs, create a kind of adverb, etc. These are morphologically
> productive affixes ("processes") and, I suppose, deserve a place as "word"
> entries in a lexicon. The kind of new words I was especially excited about
> in this topic thread are not, as I understand them, derivational. They do
> not change word class. They take two lexically rich morphemes and create a
> new word from their combination. I assume we're on the same wavelength
about
> what derivation is, but wanted to check.
>
> Hahoo,
> Wayne
> -----
> Wayne Leman
> Cheyenne language website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language
>
> >  I think there is some evidence he actually used this in
> > accumulating his Omaha-Ponca slip file, which is unpublished and
estimated
> > to contain c. 20K slips.
>
>
>
>
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