Lexical polysynthesis Lexical polysynthesis: Should we treat lexical bases and their affixes as a continuum ?

International audience Polysynthesis in Inuit appears at both lexical and sentence levels. The analysis of a sampling of 3000 lexical entries and 300 affixes collected in Eastern Greenland (Tunumiisut) shows how polysynthesis works in lexical morphology and how phonetic wastage helps to obscure the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Tersis, Nicole
Other Authors: Structure et Dynamique des Langues (SeDyL), Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco)-Institut de recherche pour le développement IRD : UR135-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), M.-A.Mahieu et N.Tersis
Format: Other/Unknown Material
Language:English
Published: HAL CCSD 2006
Subjects:
inuit
lexical polysynthesis
incorporating affixes
grammaticalization
lang
litt
Greenland
Online Access:https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00724037/file/polysynthes.pdf
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00724037
Description
Summary:International audience Polysynthesis in Inuit appears at both lexical and sentence levels. The analysis of a sampling of 3000 lexical entries and 300 affixes collected in Eastern Greenland (Tunumiisut) shows how polysynthesis works in lexical morphology and how phonetic wastage helps to obscure the motivation for some lexical forms and favors the development of homophones. Furthermore, the analysis of the full set of affixes reveals a number of formal and semantic similarities which relate affixes having different functions. This suggests a continuum over incorporating affixes, TAM verb affixes, and verb inflection, attested in a number of items. While the lexical origin of some incorporating affixes has already been suggested, the hypothesis of a larger lexical, derivational, and inflectional continuum may provide clues for discovering grammaticalization processes operating within the stock of affixes.

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