Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 July 22

= July 22 =

Does anyone has a list of languages that are both polysynthetic and agluttinative at the same time?
Does anyone has a list of languages that are both polysynthetic and agluttinative at the same time?

Looks like wikipedia has just separated lists for each.177.92.128.176 (talk) 11:51, 22 July 2020 (UTC)


 * So the language would be polysynthetic in some ways and agglutinative in others? I've a hunch that such languages would be commoner than "pure" examples of any of the traditional four kinds. Consider English: inflectionally fusional (but impoverished), what with the 3rd-person singular present indicative "s"; derivationally agglutinative ("operationalizability", etc). -- Hoary (talk) 12:35, 22 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Hoary -- in the usage of some linguistic scholars, "agglutinative" refers to a way of adding morphemes in a row to the end of a word, where each morpheme has a relatively simple meaning and the morphemes tend to remain distinct. By contrast, in Greek and Latin, morphemes can have complex meanings, and can kind of merge together with adjacent morphemes in a difficult to disentangle way.  So in that respect a language could be both polysynthetic (in how much it can include in a word) and agglutinative (in its method of stringing morphemes together).  Edward Sapir in his 1921 book Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech has a table in which Nootka and Yana are listed as Polysynthetic in their degree of synthesis but as "Agglutinative (symbolic tinge)" as far as their predominant technique for combining morphemes... AnonMoos (talk) 12:58, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Johanna Mattissen writes: "Degree of fusion is independent of multiple morpheme synthesis, therefore polysynthetic languages may display agglutinating and/or fusional morphology." ("A structural typology of polysynthesis", Word 55(2), 2004). Unfortunately, I haven't seen any list that classifies polysynthetic languages into agglutinative and fusional ones. And some languages do not neatly fit into either catergory, e.g. Takelma is agglutinative with respect to affixes with "concrete" meaning (the typical domain of polysynthesis), but has highly fusional inflectional affixes for person, tense, mood etc. –Austronesier (talk) 13:13, 22 July 2020 (UTC)


 * On both Wikipedia lists: •Algonquian; •Aymaran; •Eskimo–Aleut; •Munda; •Northwest Caucasian; •Quechuan; •Salishan; •Siouan. --Lambiam 14:19, 22 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Could someone post a link to these two lists? -- SGBailey (talk) 13:58, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Agglutinative language and Polysynthetic language. There are also Category:Agglutinative languages and Category:Polysynthetic languages, which probably have still other languages in common. --Lambiam 14:59, 29 July 2020 (UTC)