Discussion Details
| Title: | Morphemes in Polysynthetic Languages |
| Submitter: | Kela Ruuskanen |
| Description: | In a polysynthetic language, can a morpheme have a meaning in and of itself
without being used in an utterance? Can you please provide an example of such a morpheme, and the name of the language? I have been told that such a morpheme does not exist, that an 'utterance' in a polysynthetic language must consist of a complete sentence. Is this the case? This leads to a further question: how can you have morpheme to morpheme translating dictionaries for a polysynthetic language, if no morpheme has meaning alone? Are translating 'glosses' of phrases the only reference possible for translators? Thanks very much for your input. Kela |
| Date Posted: | 26-Oct-2010 |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
Morphology
Typology |
| LL Issue: | 21.4248 |
| Posted: | 26-Oct-2010 |
