Polysynthetic language: Encyclopedia II - Polysynthetic language - Examples

Polysynthetic language - Examples

Examples of polysynthetic languages include Inuktitut, Mohawk, Classical Ainu, Central Siberian Yupik, Cherokee, Sora, Chukchi and numerous other languages of North America and Siberia.

Polysynthetic language - Chukchi

An example from Chukchi, a polysynthetic, incorporating, and agglutinating language:

Təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən has a 5:1 morpheme-to-word ratio with 3 incorporated lexical morphemes (meyŋ 'great', levt 'head', pəγt 'ache').

Polysynthetic language - Classical Ainu

From Classical Ainu, another polysynthetic, incorporating, and agglutinating language:

The word aejajkotujmasiramsujpa has a total of 9 morphemes with 2 lexical morphemes (tujma 'far', ram 'heart') incorporated into the verb.

Polysynthetic language - Western Greenlandic

Languages with a high degree of synthesis but without being incorporating include Central Siberian Yupik and Western Greenlandic.

An example from Western Greenlandic, a polysynthetic and agglutinating (but not incorporating) language (Fortescue 1983:97; cited in Evans and Sasse 2002):

(12:1 ratio)

Polysynthetic language - Northwest Caucasian

The Northwest Caucasian languages are extremely polysynthetic with regard to their verbs; the verb carries agreement for virtually every noun or pronoun argument in the sentence. A small degree of incorporation may also be involved.

An example from Ubykh:

This one word contains 16 explicit morphemes, even without the incorporated nouns typical of many Ubykh verbs.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Examples", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki