[Lexicog] polysynthetic languages and dictionaries

[Melissa Axelrod]

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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