[Lexicog] finding new words in polysynthetic languages

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Koontz John E" <john.koontz at colorado.edu>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 2:15 AM
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] finding new words in polysynthetic languages


> On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Wayne Leman wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Siouan languages are essentially completely devoid of morphemes of this
> class.  Or, maybe I can say that Siouan class changing morphemes are all
> of the form zero.  I need to qualify this assertion.  There are probably
> some minor exceptions I'm not thinking of, and I don't know all of the
> family equally well.  People who know Mississippi Valley Siouan tend to
> see Crow-Hidatsa as a fairly alien experience.  I don't think the
> specialists in Crow and Hidatsa have the same handicap.
>
> > 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.
>
> I think of these latter as derivational morphemes or derivational
> processes (incorporand+verb => verb), but, yes, these are the kind things
> that Siouan languags have in concrete (non-zero) form.  As I understood
> it, what Dorsey proposing to look for was stems consisting of plausible
> roots or plausible roots preceded by one of the instrumentals, with or
> without dative, reflexive possessive, or reflexive/reciprocal applied.
>
> It has been a while since I looked at this Dorsey ms.  As I recall he
> called it a "syllabary" and it was basically some lists of pieces that I
> recognized.  A sort of proto-generative morphosyntax of OP.
>
> This is very possible, because Siouan morpheme sequences tend to be fairly
> separable into (C)CV or (C)CVC(V) elements.  Everything is done with
> prefixes, and not very many of them, if you don't count incorporated
> nouns.  Some prefixes are just C or V.  We're all still exclaiming over
> the daring inclusive pronominal prefix <nasal u>(k).  Complexities arise
> mainly from occasional dark deeds done when a C prefix comes up against a
> following CV-initial sequence, or from the active locus of inflection
> remaining with one of the "inner" morphemes when a looser kind of
> prefixing occurs.  Sometimes, for variety, an initial V of a following
> element behaves stubbornly as if it were really the last vowel of a
> preceding element.
>
> JEK
>
>
>
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