Part of
Variations on Polysynthesis: The Eskaleut languagesEdited by Marc-Antoine Mahieu and Nicole Tersis
[Typological Studies in Language 86] 2009
► pp. 51–64
Edited by Marc-Antoine Mahieu and Nicole Tersis
[Typological Studies in Language 86] 2009
► pp. 51–64
Lexical polysynthesis
Should we treat lexical bases and their affixes as a continuum?
Nicole Tersis | Center for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, National Center for Scientific Research, Paris
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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