[Lexicog] polysynthetic languages and dictionaries

[Melissa Axelrod]

The Northern Athabaskan languages have a very
productive system of noun incorporation, but the
Southern ones, like Navajo, do not. I've found some
remnant incorporation forms in Jicarilla Apache,
but it's not a productive strategy. Baker would
say that Northern Athabaskan languages are not
polysynthetic because, although they have noun
incorporation, they do not have obligatory
agreement prefixes for subject and object. He
would say that the Southern Athabaskan languages
are not polysyhnthetic because, although they
have obligatory agreement prefixes, they don't
have noun incorporation. If you think of polysynthesis
as being a matter of high synthesis and high fusion,
however, I think all Athabaskan languages qualify
as polysynthetic.
  Melissa


Kenneth C. Hill wrote:

>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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