Information about Polysynthetic Language
synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes.
Many, if not most, languages regarded as polysynthetic include agreement with object arguments as well as subject arguments in verbs. Incorporation (primarily noun incorporation) has been an issue that has historically been confused with polysynthesis and also used as a criterion for its definition. Incorporation refers to the phenomenon where lexical morphemes (or lexemes) are combined together to form a single word. Not all polysynthetic languages are incorporating, and not all incorporating languages are polysynthetic.
A contrast was made by some linguists between oligosynthetic and polysynthetic languages, where the former term was applied to languages with relatively few morphemes. The distinction is not widely used today.
Mark C. Baker has tried to define polysynthesis as a syntactic macroparameter within Noam Chomsky's "principles and parameters" programme. He defines polysynthetic languages as languages that conform to the syntactic rule that he calls the "polysynthesis parameter" and which as a result show a special set of morphological and syntactic properties. The polysynthesis parameter states that all phrasal heads must be marked with either agreement morphemes of their direct argument or else incorporate these arguments in that head. This definition of polysynthesis leaves out some languages that are commonly stated as examples of polysynthetic languages (such as Inuktitut), but can be seen to be the reason of certain common structural properties in others such as Mohawk and Nahuatl. Baker's definition, probably because of its heavy dependence on Chomskian theory, has not been accepted as a general definition of polysynthesis.
The terms synthetic and polysynthetic were first used in the modern sense by Edward Sapir in the 1920s.
Təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən has a 5:1 morpheme-to-word ratio with 3 incorporated lexical morphemes (meyŋ 'great', levt 'head', pəγt 'ache').
The word aejajkotujmasiramsujpa has a total of 9 morphemes with 2 lexical morphemes (tujma 'far', ram 'heart') incorporated into the verb.
An example from Western Greenlandic, a polysynthetic and agglutinating language (Fortescue 1983:97; cited in Evans and Sasse 2002):
(12:1 ratio)
Siberia
Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment that combines features of ergative and accusative languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
Definition
The degree of synthesis refers to the morpheme-to-word ratio. Languages with more than one morpheme per word are synthetic. Polysynthetic languages lie at the extreme end of the synthesis continuum with a very high number of morphemes per word (at the other extreme are isolating or analytic languages with only one morpheme per word). These highly synthetic languages often have very long words that correspond to complete sentences in less synthetic languages.Many, if not most, languages regarded as polysynthetic include agreement with object arguments as well as subject arguments in verbs. Incorporation (primarily noun incorporation) has been an issue that has historically been confused with polysynthesis and also used as a criterion for its definition. Incorporation refers to the phenomenon where lexical morphemes (or lexemes) are combined together to form a single word. Not all polysynthetic languages are incorporating, and not all incorporating languages are polysynthetic.
A contrast was made by some linguists between oligosynthetic and polysynthetic languages, where the former term was applied to languages with relatively few morphemes. The distinction is not widely used today.
Mark C. Baker has tried to define polysynthesis as a syntactic macroparameter within Noam Chomsky's "principles and parameters" programme. He defines polysynthetic languages as languages that conform to the syntactic rule that he calls the "polysynthesis parameter" and which as a result show a special set of morphological and syntactic properties. The polysynthesis parameter states that all phrasal heads must be marked with either agreement morphemes of their direct argument or else incorporate these arguments in that head. This definition of polysynthesis leaves out some languages that are commonly stated as examples of polysynthetic languages (such as Inuktitut), but can be seen to be the reason of certain common structural properties in others such as Mohawk and Nahuatl. Baker's definition, probably because of its heavy dependence on Chomskian theory, has not been accepted as a general definition of polysynthesis.
Origin of term
The term "polysynthesis" was probably first used in a linguistic sense by Peter Stephen DuPonceau (a.k.a. Pierre Étienne Duponceau) in 1819 as a term to describe American languages:- Three principal results have forcibly struck my mind... They are the following:
- # That the American languages in general are rich in grammatical forms, and that in their complicated construction, the greatest order, method and regularity prevail
- # That these complicated forms, which I call polysynthesis, appear to exist in all those languages, from Greenland to Cape Horn.
- # That these forms appear to differ essentially from those of the ancient and modern languages of the old hemisphere. (Duponceau 1819:xxii-xxiii)
- The manner in which words are compounded in that particular mode of speech, the great number and variety of ideas which it has the power of expressing in one single word; particularly by means of the verbs; all these stamp its character for abundance, strength, and comprehensiveness of expression, in such a manner, that those accidents must be considered as included in the general descriptive term polysynthetic. (Duponceau 1819:xxvii)
- I have explained elsewhere what I mean by a polysynthetic or syntactic construction of language.... It is that in which the greatest number of ideas are comprised in the least number of words. This is done principally in two ways. 1. By a mode of compounding locutions which is not confined to joining two words together, as in the Greek, or varying the inflection or termination of a radical word as in the most European languages, but by interweaving together the most significant sounds or syllables of each simple word, so as to form a compound that will awaken in the mind at once all the ideas singly expressed by the words from which they are taken. 2. By an analogous combination of various parts of speech, particularly by means of the verb, so that its various forms and inflections will express not only the principal action, but the greatest possible number of the moral ideas and physical objects connected with it, and will combine itself to the greatest extent with those conceptions which are the subject of other parts of speech, and in other languages require to be expressed by separate and distinct words.... Their most remarkable external appearance is that of long polysyllabic words, which being compounded in the manner I have stated, express much at once.(Duponceau 1819:xxx-xxxi)
The terms synthetic and polysynthetic were first used in the modern sense by Edward Sapir in the 1920s.
Examples
Examples of polysynthetic languages include Inuktitut, Mohawk, Classical Ainu, Central Siberian Yupik, Cherokee, Sora, Chukchi and numerous other languages of the Americas, Siberia, Caucasus and northern Australia.Chukchi
An example from Chukchi, a polysynthetic, incorporating, and agglutinating language:- Təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən.
- t-ə-meyŋ-ə-levt-pəγt-ə-rkən
- 'I have a fierce headache.' (Skorik 1961: 102)
Təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən has a 5:1 morpheme-to-word ratio with 3 incorporated lexical morphemes (meyŋ 'great', levt 'head', pəγt 'ache').
Classical Ainu
From Classical Ainu, another polysynthetic, incorporating, and agglutinating language:| Usaopuspe aejajkotujmasiramsujpa. | |
| usa-opuspe | a-e-jaj-ko-tujma-si-ram-suj-pa |
| various-rumors | 1-APL-REFL-far-REFL-heart-sway-ITER |
| 'I keep swaying my heart afar and toward myself over various rumors.' (i.e., I wonder about various rumors.) | |
| (Shibatani 1990: 72) | |
Western Greenlandic
Languages with a high degree of synthesis but without canonically productive noun incorporation include Central Siberian Yupik and Western Greenlandic.An example from Western Greenlandic, a polysynthetic and agglutinating language (Fortescue 1983:97; cited in Evans and Sasse 2002):
- Aliikusersuillammassuaanerartassagaluarpaalli.
- aliiku-sersu-i-llammas-sua-a-nerar-ta-ssa-galuar-paal-li
- 'However, they will say that he is a great entertainer, but ...'
(12:1 ratio)
Distribution of polysynthetic languages
Polysynthetic languages have arisen in many places around the world. The list below gives some families that are stereotypically polysynthetic, although some members of the families may be less so than others.Siberia
- Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages
- Ket ("probable")
- Nivkh (possible)
- Algonquian languages
- Caddoan languages
- Eskimo-Aleut languages
- Iroquoian languages
- Nadene languages
- Salishan languages
- Siouan languages ("mildly" polysynthetic)
- Wakashan languages
- Yana
- Quechumaran languages,
- Tupi-Guaraní languages
- Many Amazonian languages
- Mapudungun
- Northwest ("doubtful")
- many Papuan languages (e.g. Awtuw, Yimas)
- northern Australian languages (e.g. Bininj Gun-wok, Gunwinyguan, Ngalakgan, Rembarrnga, Tiwi
Theoretical issues
Not all languages can be easily classified as being completely polysynthetic. Morpheme and word boundaries are not always clear cut, and languages may be highly synthetic in one area but less synthetic in other areas (compare verbs and nouns in Southern Athabaskan languages).Bibliography
- Baker, Mark. (1988). Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing.
- Baker, Mark. (1996). The polysynthesis parameter.
- Boas, Franz. (1911). Handbook of American Indian languages (Part 1).
- Brighton, D. G. (n.d. [before 1893]). Polysynthesis and incorporation as characteristics of American languages.
- Comrie, Bernard. (1989). Language universals and linguistic typology (2nd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Duponceau, Peter S. (1819). Report of the corresponding secretary to the committee, of his progress in the investigation committed to him of the general character and forms of the languages of the American Indians: Read, 12th Jan. 1819. In Transactions of the Historical & Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, for promoting useful knowledge (Vol. 1, pp. xvii-xlvi).
- Evans, Nicholas; & Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. (2002). Problems of polysynthesis. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. ISBN 3-05-003732-6.
- Fortescue, Michael. (1983). A comparative manual of affixes for the Inuit dialects of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska. Meddelelser om Grømland, Man & society (No. 4). Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag.
- Fortescue, Michael. (1994). Morphology, polysynthetic. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics.
- Hewitt, John N. B. (1893). Polysynthesis in the languages of the American Indians. American Anthropologist, 6, 381-407.
- von Humboldt, Wilhelm. (1836). Über die Verschiedenheit des menschichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts. Berlin: Königliche Akadamie der Wissenschaften.
- Jacobson, Steven A. (1977). A grammatical sketch of Siberian Yupik Eskimo (pp. 2-3). Fairbanks: Alaska Native Languages Center, University of Alaska.
- Jelinek, Eloise. (1984). Empty categories, case, and configurationality. Natural language and linguistics theory, 2, 39-76.
- de Reuse, Willem J. Central Siberian Yupik as a polysynthetic language.
- Sapir, Edward. (1911). Problem of noun incorporation in American Indian languages. American Anthropologist, 13, 250-282.
- Osborne, C.R., 1974. The Tiwi language. Canberra: AIAS
- Sapir, Edward. (1921). Language: An introduction to the study of speech (Chap. 6). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
- Schleicher, August. (1848). Zur vergleichenden Sprachengeschichte.
- Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Shopen, Timothy. (1985). Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon (Vol. 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Skorik, P. Ja. (1961). Grammatika čukotskogo jazyka: Fonetika i morfologija imennyx častej reči (Vol. 1, p. 102). Leningrad: Nauka.
- Whitney, William D. (1875). The life and growth of language.
Linguistic Typology is an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of linguistic typology, founded in 1997. It is published by Mouton de Gruyter on behalf of the Association for Linguistic Typology. Its editor-in-chief is Prof. Frans Plank (University of Konstanz).
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Morphological typology is a way of classifying the languages of the world (see linguistic typology) that groups languages according to their common morphological structures.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers.
Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
..... Click the link for more information.
Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.
..... Click the link for more information.
A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as fusional, agglutinative, etc.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to "squish together" many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
An oligosynthetic language (from the Greek ὀλίγος, meaning "few" or "little") is any language using very few morphemes, perhaps only a few hundred, which combine synthetically to form statements.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A nominative-accusative language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of transitive verbs distinguishing them from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.
..... Click the link for more information.
Ergative vs.
..... Click the link for more information.
Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment that combines features of ergative and accusative languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
An active-stative language, or active language for short, is one in which the sole argument of an intransitive verb is sometimes marked in the same way as the agent of a transitive verb (that is, like a subject in English), and sometimes in the same way as the direct object
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A tripartite language, also called an ergative-accusative language, is one that treats the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb each in different ways.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A direct-inverse language is a language where clauses with transitive verbs can be expressed either using a direct or an inverse construction. The direct construction is used when the subject of the transitive clause outranks the object in saliency or animacy but the
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve", in a given language. This usually means the following:
..... Click the link for more information.
- If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot.
..... Click the link for more information.
theta role or θ-role is the formal device for representing syntactic argument structure (the number and type of noun phrases) required syntactically by a particular verb. For example, the verb put requires three arguments (i.e., it is ditransitive).
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistic typology, word order is the order in which words appear in sentences. In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistics, a VO language is a language in which the verb typically comes before the object (thus including SVO, VOS and VSO languages). It was W.P. Lehmann who first proposed to reduce the six possible permutations of word order to just two main ones, VO and OV, in
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO), is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Verb Subject Object (VSO) is a term in linguistic typology. It represents one type of languages when classifying languages according to the sequence of these constituents in neutral expressions: Ate Sam oranges.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistic typology, Verb Object Subject or Verb Object Agent - commonly used in its abbreviated form VOS or VOA - represents the language-classification type in which the following sequence of the three constituents, in neutral expressions, is
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistics, an OV language is a language in which the object comes before the verb. They are primarily left-branching, or head-final, i.e. heads are often found at the end of their phrases, with a resulting tendency to have the adjectives before nouns, to place
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Object Subject Verb (OSV) or Object Agent Verb (OAV) is one of the permutations of expression used in Linguistic typology. OSV or OAV denotes the sequence "Object Subject Verb" in neutral expressions: Oranges Sam ate.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Object Verb Subject (OVS) or Object Verb Agent (OVA) is one of the permutations of expression used in linguistic typology. OVS denotes the sequence 'Object Verb Subject' in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Time Manner Place (TMP) describes one possible ordering of adpositional phrases in sentences.
Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
- Example: ... yesterday, by car, to the store.
Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
Place Manner Time is a term used in linguistic typology to state the general order of adpositional phrases in a language's sentences: "to the store by car yesterday". It would seem that it is common among SVO languages. English, French, and Spanish belong to this category.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications (such as fusional, agglutinative, etc.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound), and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes (the
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound), and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes (the
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus
