English Words


Verbal juggernauts (polysynthetic languages)



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Francis Katamba English Words

3.6.4
Verbal juggernauts (polysynthetic languages)
Finally, there are the so-called polysynthetic languages (or incorporating languages) which have very
complex words that are built not only by combining morphemes, but also by implanting words within
words. Eskimo is a very good example of a polysynthetic language. For instance, in this language the
transitive verb incorporates within it the direct object noun. Consequently, words can be very big:
[3.20]
a.
kissartumik kavvisurput
‘They drank hot coffee’
kissartu-mik
kavvi-sur-put
hot instr.
coffee drink 3p-indic.
b.
nutaamik piilisiurpunga
‘I am looking for a new car’
nutaa-mik
piili-siur-punga
new-instr.
car look for ls-indic.
c.
Atuagalliutituqaanngitsunik atuagassa aliqinartaqaaq
‘There was really nothing to read apart from old copies of Atuagalliutit’
Atuagalliuti -tuqa -a -nngit -su -nik
Atuagalliutit -old be not intr.-part. instr.-pl.
atua-ga-ssa
read -pass.-part. 
aliqi-nar-ta-qa-aq
lack (-future) be-such-as-to habit.very 3s-indic
Notes:
instr.=instrumental case; indic.=indicative mood, 1s=1st person singular; 3p=3rd person; pl.= plural;
habit.=habitual; pass.=passive; part.= participial mood; intr.=intransitive.
(from Fortescue 1984:83)
The last Eskimo sentence, which has just three word-forms, is translated in English as ‘There was really
nothing to read apart from old copies of Atuagalliutit’. For the sake of clarity each word is re-written as a
grammatical word on a line of its own, complete with a gloss, to show the complexity.
3.6.5
No thoroughbreds
There are no morphological thoroughbreds. There is no pure isolating, agglutinating, inflecting or
polysynthetic language. All languages are to varying degrees mixtures. If we classify a language as
belonging to this or that type, all we are claiming is that it shows a strong tendency to have words formed in
a certain way.
Although we classified Swahili as agglutinating, for instance, there is not always a one-to-one matching
of morphemes with morphs. In our Swahili data, there are a number of portmanteau morphs. Thus, morph
tu-
simultaneously represents second person, subject and plural in tu-li-wa-lim-ish-a ‘we made them
cultivate’. The same form -tu- is again found in a-li-tu-pik-i-a ‘s/he cooked for us’. Once more it is a
portmanteau. But in this case it realises different morphemes, namely second person, plural and (indirect)
ENGLISH WORDS 33


object. Similarly, wa is a portmanteau morph. It can represent either the first person, plural subject (as in wa-
ta-pik-a
‘they will cook’) or the first person plural, object (as in a-li-wa-lim-ish-a ‘s/he made them
cultivate’).
We could make the same point about the other examples. For instance, although Eskimo is polysynthetic,
it does have words that are formed by simple agglutination e.g., kissartu-mik ‘hot instr.’.
The best we can do with labels like isolating and inflecting is to capture the dominant word-formation
trends in a language. You may be wondering what we mean by dominant in this context. How
agglutinating, isolating, etc. must a language be for it to be classified in a particular way? Linguists have
attempted to answer this question by establishing an ISOLATING INDEX which is worked out by
calculating the ratio of morphemes to grammatical words in running texts of several thousand words. A
prototypical isolating language would always have one morpheme per grammatical word. The closer to this
particular idealised language type a given language is, the more isolating it is said to be. At the other extreme
we find the polysynthetic languages which approximate an average of four morphemes per grammatical
word. Eskimo, with a ratio of 3.72 morphemes per word comes close to this. Sanskrit with a ratio of 2.59 is
inflecting. The main difference between inflecting and agglutinating languages is not so much in the ratio of
morphemes to grammatical words but in the one-to-one mapping of morphemes on morphs in agglutinating
languages as opposed to the one-tomany mapping in inflecting languages.
Let us end the chapter by determining the morphological type to which English belongs. The first thing to
note is that English is not a perfect example of any one morphological type. English words can exemplify
any of the four types we have described:
[3.21]
a.
The baby can walk now.
b.
Unfortunately customers wanted pre-packed cigars.
c.
We went.
d.
Potato-picking is back-breaking work.
The baby can walk now
exemplifies isolating morphology. With the exception of the portmanteau morph
can,
which realises the morphemes meaning ‘able’, present tense, each word in this sentence contains only
one morpheme.
Contrast that with [3.21b] which illustrates agglutination. Here each word can be neatly divided
morphemes that are arranged in a row one after the other. Un-fortun-ate-ly custom-er-s want-ed pre-packed
cigar-s
. There are just over 2.5 morphemes per word on average in this sentence.
Likewise in We went, the ratio of morphemes to grammatical words is high. We is subject, first person
and plural and went realises the lexeme ‘go’ and past tense. Again the average number of morphemes per
word exceeds two. But in this case the morphemes are simultaneously realised by portmanteau morphs.
This sentence exhibits an inflecting tendency.
An even better example of a portmanteau morph is the verb is which represents the morphemes third
person, singular, present tense and the lexeme be. It is impossible to divide up the word-form be and align
these different morphemes with chunks of this verb.
In the [3.21d], the key words are potato-picking and back-breaking which show English behaving like a
polysynthetic language by incorporating the object of the verb into the verb itself: picking 
VERB
potatoes
NOUN (OBJ)
potato-picking
NOUN
breaking 
VERB
backs 
NOUN (OBJ)
backbreaking 
(ADJECTIVE)
. (Subsequently
the verb is turned into a noun or adjective.)
34 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A MORPHEMIC KIND


English has a bit of everything. However, when large samples of text are examined, it becomes clear that
it is basically an isolating language. It has a ratio of 1.68 morphemes per word. Although the lexicon
contains innumerable complex words, most words usually found in texts are simple.

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