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Polysynthesis vs. agglutination | ||
Tags: Agglutinative languages | Morphology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5117 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian | Message 9 of 21 29 August 2010 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In Norwegian you can make polysynthetic (and aglutinating) nouns if you whish:
mursteinshusgjennoppbyggingsbedriftsoversiktsnyutsendelsen = the new sending out of the survey of companies for rebuilding of redbrick houses However, this example is probably a little too heavy to be found in real usage of the language. Edited by Aquila123 on 29 August 2010 at 1:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 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 10 of 21 29 August 2010 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Actually this is closer to agglutination than to polysynthetism, because the elements are recognisable (with just the connecting 's' as a minor adaptation).
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| Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5117 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian | Message 11 of 21 29 August 2010 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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According to my view it is both. Agglutination and polysyntetism are two different properties that can exist together.
I even will put it so strong as this: Polysynthetism is nearly impossible without a high deggree of agglutination. In a polysynthetic language, a verb for example can have thousands of flectional forms. This is only possible by putting together elements that are recognizable. If not the language would be impossible to learn. However, my example was not a very realistic one. This more modest example, however, is very realistic: nullskatteyterne = the zero tax payers and even this nullskatteyterjakta = the hunting for zero tax payers Edited by Aquila123 on 29 August 2010 at 10:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6250 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 12 of 21 30 August 2010 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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| Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5117 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian | Message 13 of 21 30 August 2010 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Polysynthesis is the same as creating words containing very much information. If a language have a very high average information content in each word, it is polysynthetic. Agglutination is a main techique for making such words.
Norwegian is not polysynthetic because the avarage information content of the words is not high enough, but it is still possible to make very heavy words for special purposes. Edited by Aquila123 on 30 August 2010 at 11:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Maypal Pentaglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4872 days ago 32 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Russian*, Icelandic, English, Danish, Faroese Studies: Greenlandic, Scottish Gaelic | Message 14 of 21 27 September 2011 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Fully agree. Polysynthetic is a synonym for 'incorporative', which means that an independent word ("free morpheme" in Declan1991's words) can be incorporated into another word. However, this is not possible in languages like Greenlandic. Yes, there are several hundreds of suffixes, many of which correspond to "regular words" in our "European" languages. Moreover, roots can add a big number of suffixes, turning thus into really long complexes, which are translated by whole sentences. But still, this is all done with SUFFIXES, not separate words. There's very few suffixes in Greenlandic that have an independent cognate, like -taaq vs. nutaaq 'new', -toqaq vs. pisoqaq 'old', -sivoq vs. pisivoq 'to buy' (pi- is actually a dummy root, which is used for the independent use of a suffix), but these are not so many and you can't turn a usual word into a suffix in the same easy way. So I would say that Greenlandic (and possibly the other Inuit languages) is rather an agglutinating language (where affixes can have grammatical as well as lexical meanings), than polysynthetic. Another matter is f.ex. Chukchi, which is an archetypal incorporating/polysynthetic language. Compare these 2 phrases: Tumgyt enantyvatg'at kuprete. =Tumg-yt ena-ntyvat-g'at kupre-te. Friend-pl. 1/2trans-place-past.3pl net-instrum 'The friends placed a net' (1/2trans means that a transitive verb is used without a definite object, here it can be translated as 'placed something (no matter what)'. Has there to be an object, it has an indefinite meaning and takes Instrumentalis: 'placed A net'. When transitivity is 100%, it operates with a definite object: 'placed THE net'.) Tumgyt koprantyvatg'at. =Tumg-yt kopra-ntyvat-g'at. Friend-pl. net-place-past.3pl. 'The friends placed a net', lit. 'The friends net-placed' (kopra is an umlauted variant of kupre 'net') In Greenlandic it translates as follows: Ikinngutit qassuserput. =Ikinngut-it qassus-er-put. Friend-pl. net-provide?-3pl. 'The friends placed a net', lit. 'The friends netted' qassut-it - net (pl.) The part -er- is a verbalisator, like in filmi 'film' - filmerpoq 'is watching a film'. (t > s before or after the old front vowel i1.) Alternatively, we could split the word as qassu-ser-poq, where -ser-, not listed as a regular suffix in Greenlandic dictionaries, could by analogy with its other cognates be translated as 'to provide'. Whatever translation we choose, there's no independent word *erpoq or * serpoq in Greenlandic, neither do their pi-versions exist. On the contrary, all these parts can exist as separate words ("dictionary entries") in Chukchi.
Here I think that Aquila123 is not so far from truth. The elements of that long word can exist independently (some of them even take the genitive ending 's'!), they are not regular affixes (except the prefixes ut-,opp-, over-, which are here just parts of composite words), so I can't see why call it agglutination. Edited by Maypal on 27 September 2011 at 11:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 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 15 of 21 27 September 2011 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If 'independent' affixes are typical for polysynthetical languages then there are polysynthetic tendencies in lots of quite wellknown languages. For instance most of the verbal prefixes in syntehtic languages like German, Russian and Greek can also exist as independent prepositions, the postclitic definite articles of the Nordic languages are really just worn-down forms of "hinn" (this can still be seen in Icelandic), the normally independent personal pronouns in Portuguese can push themselves in between the root and the ending in futures and conditionals, and Polish "by" can both be an infix marking a subjunctive form and an independent adverb.
For me the main difference between agglutinating and polysynthetic word constructions is the degree of assimilation: agglutination means that the elements in a chain more or less are recognizable, while they coalesce in a polysynthetic language - almost like the endings in 'ordinary' synthetic languages. Cfr for instance the postclitic article "-en" in Danish, which also occurs as a pronoun "hinn" - unless you know you language history and/or Icelandic this isn't obvious anymore! If I have understood things right a polysynthetic language is a language where the words look like long chains of metamorphosed endings with very little root in between. Edited by Iversen on 28 September 2011 at 11:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5658 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 21 28 September 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Question: Are all languages of the Altaic language group agglutinative? If so, then there are many more agglutinative languages than Christopher mentiones above. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful |
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