Talk:Polysynthetic language

message: Telpuilgoc has no hits on Google. If an example of an artificial language is required there are much better ones. DJ Clayworth 21:46, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Telpuilgoc

message: : Polysynthetic does not necessarily entail incorporation.  English has a limited amount of incorporation (in noun compounding), but it is not really polysynthetic.  Polysynthetic simply refers to the word to morpheme ratio or the degree of synthesis, i.e. polysynthetic means a large amount of morphemes per word.  A nice summary is in Comrie (1989).
Ish ishwar 06:41, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Reply to Gritchka:

message: The section on distribution of polysynthetic languages references Finno-Ugric languages. The term polysynthetic might be not very precise and some languages are more synthetic than others, but from what I have seen of grammars of these languages so far, I would not call them polysynthetic. The term should be reserved for teh extrem casses of morphologically very complex languages. Why where these languages included here. If there is not evidence (source explaining this), this reference should be removed from the section.
Nannus 20:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: These languages were included here precisely because the definition of "polysynthetic" is pretty vague. Anyway, while I don't know Finnish, the Finnish sentence juoksentelisinkohan from the Finnish language page, translated as I wonder if I should run around aimlessly, could qualify as polysynthesis. The question is, ultimately, how synthetic does a language have to be to qualify as polysynthetic? The way I see it, there are simply too many possibilities: average morpheme:word ratio, possible morpheme:word ratio, minimum morpheme:word ratio, or any or all of those in combination with some sort of restriction on the word-classes that "count" as polysynthetic, which would discount those famous German compound nouns and keep German a fundamentally fusional language. In order to accurately use the word "polysynthetic", I contend that it's necessary to define exactly what one means by it. Thefamouseccles 13:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article says that polysynthetic languages usually include agreement with object arguments as well as subject arguments in verbs. However in Finnish verbs agree only with their subject, not object. Also that juoksentelisinkohan is a somewhat extreme example and was translated in a rather verbose manner. It would seem to me (I'm a native speaker) that Finnish is not a polysynthetic language in the sense that word is used in this article. However, I'm not a linguist, so don't take my word for it. Ossi 16:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are correct. Finnish is not considered polysynthetic by linguists working with polysynthesis.Maunus 21:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Distribution of polysynthetic languages

message: Can quechua be called a polysynthetic language? It is not mentioned in the Quechua article, nor in Mark Rosenfelder's overview of the language .  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.21.82.137 (talk) 13:31, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It depends on how polysynthesis is defined. As the article stands with a definition of polysynthesis as simply "highly synthetic language", it is merely a count of average number of morphemes per word - a pretty pre-theoretical definition grantedly. Quechua, Guaraní and salish however are definitely highly synthetic. However the article needs to be amended to include a wider discussion of proposed traits of polysynthetic languages, e.g. some believe Noun Incorporation is a requisite for a language being truly polysynthetic - that definition might disclude quechua, just like it isn't polysynthetic under bakers definition. Another definition says that it is any language that inflects verbs for more than one of its direct grammatical arguments - that would make quechua polysynthetic again.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 13:59, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quechua 

message: How can this languaged be both dismissed as a polysynthetic language in the definition of this article and later ginven as an example of afixal polysynthetic languages? 189.18.128.108 (talk) 22:47, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the linguist Mark Baker doesn't consider it strictly Polysynthetic (in his book The Polysynthesis Parameter), and in the first paragraph you refer to, this article is citing his views. Inuktitut is given later as an example based either on some uncited source, or on the general agreement that Eskimoan languages are very synthetic. But I agree that it's kind of confusing as it stands, and that the discussion of Baker's views needs to be clearer --Miskwito (talk) 23:03, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inuktitut 

message: Why isn't turkish a polysynthetic language? 201.95.183.14 (talk) 22:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the reason that it is not considered polysynthetic is because it is dependent marking and lacks incorporation and the ability to form "senteence words".·Maunus·ƛ· 12:36, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turkish 

message: In Spanish there are instances where the object and the subject are included in one word as morphemes, like "expliquemelo" which means "explain it to me" (an accent sign should be on the "i", I couldn't type it on my computer). Can it be considered polysynthetic or not?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.192.225.195 (talk) 13:19, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spanish? 

message: One of the examples says 
An example from Chukchi, a polysynthetic, incorporating, and agglutinating language:
but trying to link to incorporating language takes me to a redirect back to this page - is the term redundant or does it need a section ? EdwardLane (talk) 09:58, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is an incorporating language 

message: The lead to this article is terrible.  It doesn't give a definition of a polysynthetic language, it does a better job at defining synthetic languages in general.  It also goes on to describe analtyic/isolating languages, but no definition is given for polysynthetic.  Ryan Vesey Review me! 16:40, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Well there isn't really any single definition but a number of traits that are considered to make a language more or less polysynthetic. I've rewritten the lead to add more information and description of what it is and isn't. Still needs work though.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:47, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the improvement.  I was studying for a linguistics exam and all I knew was that polysynthetic languages involved noun incorporation.  The lead didn't even mention it so I was surprised.  Ryan Vesey Review me! 22:16, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead 

message: Coptic is able to attach morphemes to each other to make one 'word' that expresses a complete sentence:
tinatresmeritk 'I will cause her to love you'. Is this a polysynthetic aspect of an otherwise non-polysynthetic language ? (Pamour (talk) 14:28, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coptic 

message: Russian is not a polysynthetic language, and the article on Russian grammar does not say that it is. All indoeuropean languages can form long nominal compounds - this is not polysynthesis. I have removed the addition of Russian three times but the IP editor keeps reinserting it without responding to my editsummaries.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:07, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Russian

message: I didn't know how to respond to your message as soon as I saw it, I removed my entry .  As far as editing it three times I thought something was wrong with my editor.  Lastly, Russian can create words that consist of two or three multiple words that can stand alone. Here is an example: http://slovari.yandex.ru/%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5/
Doesn't it fall in a definition of a polysynthetic language? 
it consists of two separate words: 'человеко' (человек) and образный (образ), that can be used separately.  Here are more examples: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Russian_compound_words
::No, German, Danish, Swedish, Hindi can all form very long nominal compounds. That does not fall under the definition of polysynthesis - it is not about the length of the words but about the amount of grammatical information that is encoded in a single word.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:20, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: RE: Russian

message: Looking at my textbook "The Languages of Japan" (Masayoshi Shibataini, 1990), the bottom of page 76 shows the Ainu verbal template, which would make it a affixal, templatic polysynthetic language, like Mohawk.  There are seven slots, the first slot containing the subject and object sub-slots, the second slot contains the Applicative I affixes, followed by the fourth slot which contains the reflexive and reciprocal sub-slots, then followed by the Applicative II slot, followed by the Verb slot, then the Plurality, Causative, and Iterative slots.  So why is Ainu classified as compositionally polysynthetic?  Shibatani's material indicates otherwise.  
Nickcamporillo (talk) 00:25, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Ainu is a compositionally polysynthetic language?

message: The article as it stands is not accurate. Mattissen's article "A Structural Typology of Polysynthesis" (Word 55:2 (2004), 189-216) makes it explicit that the affixal/compositional and the templatic/scope-ordered parameters are two independent and cross-cutting ones. In other words, you have templatic and scope-ordered affixal languages and templatic and scope-ordered compositional ones. I am therefore baffled by the reference to Mattissen's 2003 article on Nivkh, where she is cited as stating the opposite (namely that affixal languages do not have noun incorporation or verb serialization). On p. 210 of her 2004 article, providing a matrix table of different languages corresponding to the different possibilities mentioned here, she explicitly cites Nivkh as an example of a language that is templatic and has noun incorporation and verb serialization! So too, according to her, do Lakhota, Ket, and Wichita, among others. So the section on Mattissen either cannot be correct, or she drastically changed her mind in between the two articles, just one year apart. Either way it should probably be rewritten, unless someone objects.
McCaine (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mattissen typology discussion 

message: For example, He had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer, in English if words were written together,
he-didnt-say-would-yet-again-deer-hunt — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yoandri Dominguez Garcia  (talk • contribs) , hello! the reasoning here is that english has what can understood as serial verb constructions by lacking a marked infinitive marker in most common constructions, the rest is grammaticalisation, & prosody. would > d, again > gain, not > nt, & -nt can be seen as suffix not clitic after thoro linguistic analysis, but i dont remember the linguist name now.
*Writing words together is not polysynthesis under any definition of the word.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:02, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: No, there are no pauses between words in natural speech. There are of course contractions, but they are not necessarily related to grammaticalization. The beginning of synthesis does not occur untill what used to be freestanding words become bound morphemes, and polysynthesis does not occur untill things such as pronouns and adverbs become bound morphemes. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:56, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Just bring some sources to the table about now, otherwise your musings are irrelevant. It is a matter of definition whether clitic stacking can be considered a form of polysynthesis. And no, most linguists do not consider English object pronouns to be clitics.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:19, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polysynthesis is properly a hermeneutic tool