Polysynthesis

Polysynthetic languages are languages that make words out of many parts of a word, called morphemes. Polysynthetic languages can often express entire sentences with only one word.

Verbs in polysynthetic languages often agree with both their subject and object(s). This is called polypersonal agreement. Polysynthetic languages also often have head-marking which means that the grammatical marks on the words in a phrase tend to be put on the phrase's head. For example, in the noun phrase the quick brown fox, fox is the head, and the quick brown are its modifiers. Polysynthetic languages also often have noun incorporation. This means that a verb and its direct object, the receiver of the verb, can be combined into one word.

Category:Linguistics