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Polysynthesis vs. agglutination | ||
Tags: Agglutinative languages | Morphology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6114 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 1 of 21 21 August 2010 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I notice there is very little discussion on polysynthetic languages on this forum, and to my knowledge hardly anyone these boards actually knows such a language (I believe there is one user who knows Greenlandic). Nevertheless, I would like to pose two questions which not only can I not find any discussion of on any site anywhere, but which might hopefully yield deeper insight into how such languages function.
1. How would you describe and distinguish a purely polysynthetic language on the one hand from a purely agglutinating one on the other, assuming such purity of typology is possible? What separates an agglutinating language from a polysynthetic one? 2. Between polysynthetic and agglutinating languages, which of the two would you deem more alien to a monolingual English speaker's mind? Which requires the greater paradigm shift? I can provide examples of languages which fit both categories, but I can't seem to figure out what exactly it is that distinguishes them from each other, since both appear to be able to build notoriously long words in an utterly counter-intuitive way to a Western, and more specifically, to an English language mind. Agglutinative languages: Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Hungarian Polysynthetic languages: Greenlandic, Navajo, Mohawk, Inuktitut, the various Mayan languages (I believe). Does anyone on these boards have any experience with polysynthetic languages at all? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be greatly intrigued by an elucidation of such mysterious linguistic structures! Edited by ChristopherB on 21 August 2010 at 5:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6237 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 2 of 21 22 August 2010 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Think of it not as a few rigid categories, but a scale from isolating at one end (one morpheme per word) to synthetic at the other (lots of morphemes per word). The synthetic end differs in how complex words are created. Fusional languages have little pattern, normally the ending changes to indicate an arbitrary number of things (normally case and number, and gender in modifiers). Agglutinating languages are also synthetic, but unlike fusional languages, each affix represents one morpheme (so case is always shown with the same affix, same with number, and they are added to each other). Polysynthetic languages are an extreme on the synthetic side, there is an enormous number of morphemes per word, and they tend to feature a large agreement systems. Polysynthetic languages are further sub-divided into what sort of morphemes can be added to a word. The main difference in simple terms is that in polysynthetic languages, what is a word is a very difficult thing to define, that's not the case for agglutinating languages.
I think there's no comparison, polysynthetic languages are harder for English speakers, because agglutination is easy to explain (i.e. speakers from speak-er-s), while polysynthesis is much harder, particularly in languages with large numbers of noun classes. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5809 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 3 of 21 22 August 2010 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't quite follow Declan's explanation (not having gone deep enough into linguistics myself, his description's a bit too technical for me) so here's what I understand the difference to be:
Agglutination is when a word can be changed by the adding of a large number of affixes (prefixes, infixes and suffixes). If English was agglutinative, we would commonly see words like antidisestablishmentarianism (anti-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism). In an aggulinative word there is one "free morpheme", ie a morpheme that is an independent word root; in this case "establish". Polysynthesis, on the other hand, lets you build words around multiple free morphemes (and potentially many "bound morphemes" morphemes like "-ism" (above) which need to follow a free morpheme". Word like "greenhouse", built from two free morphemes exist in most languages, but three is rare. If English allowed polysynthesis, we might see words like reredbrickhousebuilding with 4 free morphemes (red, brick, house, build) and two bound morphemes (re-, -ing). So the distinction can be counted in number of free morphemes. The point of confusion would be a language that allows lots of affixes and no more than two bound morphemes -- it wouldn't really be one or the other.... However, people are now starting to say that it's wrong to talk about polysynthetic and agglutanive languages, but instead to talk about polysynthesis and agglutination as features of a language, because some languages may use agglutination with nouns but not verbs, or vice-versa. Same with polysynthesis. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6237 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 4 of 21 23 August 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Pretty accurate Cainntear but for one aspect. Polysynthetic languages do not have to more than one free morpheme per word, in fact, they are the two major divisions of polysynthetic languages, ones that allow more than one free morpheme and ones that don't. For the latter, the wikipedia article on Inuktitut gives good examples.
The gist of my previous post is this. Polysynthetic and agglutinating language aren't two separate categories, but two branches of a bigger category, namely fusional languages. Basically, a fusional language is one which indicates things through word endings, affixes etc. The opposite is an isolating language which shows absolutely nothing through word ending, but through separate words (e.g. more-than-one dog compared to dogs). My point basically is that you cannot fit all languages perfectly into a category, English for example, is pretty isolating (e.g. needs pronouns for verbs) but not nearly as isolating as Chinese (where tense even isn't indicated on the verb but by using adverbs). So simply put, polysynthetic languages have really long words, and agglutinating languages haves lots of affixes (Cainntear has good examples). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6501 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 21 23 August 2010 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
I don't study any of socalled polysynthetic languages right now, so I'm pretty blank at that end of the scale. However closer to the middle of Declan's scale it is evident that languages can't be put in rigid cathegories. Instead they have endings with several roles AND affixes with one role per affix AND 'free' words that indicate syntactical roles, and it is just a matter of proportions that decides which group they have been assigned to by certains linguists. Take for instance Icelandic, which like the the Nordic languages has a postponed article and a prepositioned free article, both derived from the same free-standing word hinn. It is inflected both as a free word and as a bound ending, and the endings are strictly fusional, i.e. each ending indicates more than one cathegory, and they cannot be split into segments with one role per segment. It is also typical for such endings that they are 'reusable', i.e. the same ending occurs several times in a paradigm. How then can you know the intended meaning? Well, by looking at the context, and this is essentially a mechanism that is used to its fullest by the socalled isolating languages. But Icelandic has one feature which other Nordic languages have lost, namely double endings: an Icelandic noun is inflected, and with one single exception (-um + um -> -unum) these endings are kept even if there is a postponed definite article. The situation ressembles the one in socalled polysynthetic languages, according to the descriptions, but luckily it doesn't encompass the whole language. I probably don't have to mention that Icelandic also uses 'pure' agglutination, mostly - but not exclusively - at the begining of the words in the form of prefixes. Icelandic can also illustrate another possibility, namely that morphological information is given not as a specific ending (inflected or not), but by a welldefined change of a sound. In Icelandic you find not only the vowel changes with 'strong' verbs that are characteristic for all Germanic languages, but also a vowel change a->u i feminine nouns, and this is the last remnant after a long-lost ending. Something similar occurs in the Celtic languages at the other end of the words. Irish has two major ways of changing an initial consonant: lenition (aspiration) which is shown in the writing as a 'h', and eclipsis which is shown by the addiiton an extra consonant in front of the original one (which becomes silent, making the word into one that effectively has a vowel as its first sound). Lenition will for instance transform m into mh, which s pronounce as /v/, and f into fh which is silent. Eclipsis will transform c into gc (pronounced as g) and b into mb (/m/). There are similar changes of vowels in the form of new initial consonants: n- or t- or h-, depending on the situation. And all these changes are used in a variety of situations, so languages that use them are definitely heading for the syntethic end of the spectrum (as opposed to the analytical end, where you find the socalled 'isolating languages'). The problem is that the rules that define their use mostly are tied to free particles, i.e. to a system that definitely points into the analytical direction. Even when there isn't a particle now it may have been there before, such as in the past tense where "do" now mainly is used in front of vowels. But its effect (lenition) is still obvious in verbs that begin with a consonant. All in all it is clear as day that the situation is far too muddy to be used for something as simplistic as a subdivision of languages, - so all linguists with just a shimmer of selfrespect ought to stop this practice. Edited by Iversen on 23 August 2010 at 10:21am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6237 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 6 of 21 24 August 2010 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5005 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 7 of 21 24 August 2010 at 1:54am | IP Logged | ||
I'm studying Japanese right now, and it never seemed alien, or like anything requiring major mental readjustment. It's really quite logical (much more so than Romance languages), and I'm looking forward to trying Turkish eventually. I think everyone should at least dabble in one of the agglutinating languages; it's a good experience and not as strange as you might think. I think I would struggle a lot more with a polysynthetic language, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5246 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 8 of 21 29 August 2010 at 3:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I think polysynthetic languages would be harder since one word sentences are quite unfamiliar to speakers. That doesn't mean that people can't get used to them, though. I've tried studying Inuktitut for a while a long ago, and the only thing that I found during that short trial were the dual number and the sound changes.
Are polysynthetic languages by definition supposed to be complex? If anyone's more familiar with them, what would be a good "gateway" polysynthetic language? Edited by chucknorrisman on 29 August 2010 at 3:42am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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