@Felthry @BatElite

So "lighthouse" is a compound word, but you don't neccessarily know what it is from just "light" and "house" — someone unfamiliar with the real world object might think it's a house made of very light materials.

"impossible" is a synthetic word, because you're attaching the grammtical affix "im-" to "possible". As long as you know the affix and the word, you understand what it means.

@lizardsquid @Felthry In that case wasn't what I was thinking of for Dutch/German synthetic instead of compound?

"Kunsttentoonstelling" is easily understood as a "tentoonstelling" (exhibition) pertaining to "kunst" (art).

Similarly "fietsbandventieldopjesfabriek" (bicycle tire* valve cap factory) technically is synthetic, even if the word refers to some overly specific nonsense.

*"band" should technically be "wiel" if you're pedantic, but AFAIK most people use tire/(the rubber bits) instead.

@BatElite @Felthry a quick rule of thumb is that synthetic words only have ONE root word (and a number of grammatical affixes.)

so in "impossible", "possible" is the root word, and "im-" is the affix.

but in strawberry is straw the root word and berry the affix? or is berry the root word?

in automobile is mobile the root word? or auto?

in Kunsttentoonstelling is tentoonstelling the root word and kunst the affix? or is kunst the root word?

you can't say, because it's not synthetic.

@BatElite @Felthry it's not about how easy it is to figure out:

automotor (or car engine in English) is easy to work out what it means (because compounding still follows grammatical rules!)
lighthouse is fairly obvious.

it's about whether the components of the word is lexical or grammatical.

@BatElite @Felthry Important aside: I said "synthetic words only have one root word", and that's true of every Indo-european language. But Polysynthetic languages are special — they allow for multiple root words in a single synthetic word.

Distinguishing between compounds and synthetic words in polysynthetic languages is a more difficult task, but since English and Dutch and German aren't polysynthetic, I won't go into detail on that.

@lizardsquid @BatElite we have learned a lot about polysynthetic languages today!

@Felthry @BatElite

I think an important realisation for me was "polysynthetic languages are not the same as highly synthetic languages"

Turkish is highly synthetic, which means you can get words with lots of synthesis. For example, Avrupalılaştıramadık means "one that is unable to be Europeanised".

But it only has ONE root word, and every word in Turkish will only ever have one root word!

@lizardsquid @Felthry I suspect that you have just lost me now.

@BatElite @Felthry that's why I put it under a CW — explaining grammatical processes in languages you don't know is a bit difficult. It's ok if you don't get it!

@lizardsquid @Felthry I don't know what polysynthetic words are meant to look like.

@BatElite @lizardsquid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut#Grammar This has one example (I believe the language in question is polysynthetic and not just highly agglutinative but I'm not 100% certain about that)

@Felthry @BatElite yes, that's a decent example (and Inuktitut is polysynthetic)

@Felthry @BatElite I was going to quote the greenlandic word illu-lior-poq

illu is a root meaning house
lior is another root, meaning build
poq is a grammatical affix meaning "she does"

so illuliorpoq is "she builds a house".

(as I mentioned: it's harder to tell the difference between compounding and polysynthesis, and it requires a linguistic analysis that I couldn't possibly fit in a toot — so you'll have to trust that this isn't compounding)

@lizardsquid @Felthry ???
But my point is that Kunsttentoonstelling follows "As long as you know the affix and the word, you understand what it means.". Both "kunst" and "tentoonstelling" have self-contained meaning, independent of one another.

I'd say tentoonstelling is the root in this case, since it contributes more to the actual meaning. You can replace kunst with anything and end up with roughly the same concept, but replace tentoonstelling and you have something entirely different.

@lizardsquid @Felthry With lighthouse the issue is that it refers to something other than {anything classified as a house} that has a light in it.

@BatElite @Felthry so an important thing I forgot to mention: affixes cannot stand on their own as words.

In english, I can't say "im" and have you understand what I mean, I can't say "ness" and have you understand – both of those MUST be attached to a word in order for them to have any meaning.

But I can say "light" or "house", or "straw" or "berry".

With Kunsttentoonstelling, you can say "kunst" on its own, and you can say "tentoonstelling" on its own and have it be understood.

@lizardsquid @Felthry I get your point, but I *can* understand the transformative properties that "im" and "ness" have on a word on their own.

(How do you define "ness" anyway? "having the quality of"?)

@BatElite @lizardsquid That inability to define "ness" seems to be exactly what Avery is talking about, or at least close to it

@Felthry @lizardsquid But "Im" is simply a negation.

@BatElite @Felthry sure, but it's not a word.

I can't use it in a sentence, unless it's already attached to a different word

@BatElite @Felthry you know what "im" means, because you know english – when you're (somewhat) fluent in a language, you understand the affixes and how they change the meaning of the words they're attached to.

But they're still not words! they can't be used in a sentence!

@lizardsquid @Felthry Mmhm

I suspect that can be subject to change though (and I wouldn't be surprised if there's examples of similar things occuring). Suppose that standalone im becomes a common English synonym for "not", does "impossible" become a compound word rather than a synthetic one?

@BatElite @Felthry oh yeah, so things go in both directions.

grammatical affixes can slowly turn into grammatical words, and grammatical words can turn into grammtical affixes.

We can also end up with words that were originally synthetic (so there's a root word and an affix), but because the affix has fallen out of use, it's now just a compound word.

@lizardsquid @BatElite there are a number of cases where that's happened in english, aren't there? well, I can think of cases of the other way around anyway, words like disgruntled (originally dis+gruntle+ed) but the root word gruntle has fallen out of use so now disgruntled is its own word

@lizardsquid @BatElite affixes turning into words and vice versa is a fascinating phenomenon and I'd love to see some further material on it, especially examples, if you have any links

@Felthry @BatElite (as for the links about affixes turning into words, I don't have anything on-hand that you couldn't find just by googling, sorry!)

@BatElite @Felthry for your "impossible" question — it depends on what happens.

It can become two words "im possible", but it won't become a compound.

A more likely scenario is that "im" could become what's known as a clitic.

I intentionally avoided mentioning clitics because they make this whole thing more complicated: in some ways they act like words, but in other ways they act like affixes.

I think the wikipedia articlemight be able to explain it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitic

@lizardsquid @Felthry I need to sleep at some point though.

@lizardsquid 💜 @Felthry

@lizardsquid @Felthry (I thought it would have appended that, don't interpret the order in any significance.)

@BatElite @lizardsquid Avery and I double-teaming the 💜 !

@Felthry @lizardsquid Were this with someone other than you I'd make the "CW-as-lewd" joke.

@BatElite @lizardsquid go sleep, and have a nice night!

@Felthry @BatElite enjoy your snooze!!!!!!

@Felthry @BatElite from a psychological point of view: compound words are mentally processed as one unit of meaning:

you either know what a cat is, or you don't.
you either know what an automobile is, or you don't.
you either know what a strawberry is, or you don't.

But synthetic words are mentally processed as a single word with *multiple* units of meaning.
"inconveivable" consists of three units of meaning: in-, conceive, -able
"unwholesomeness" is: un-, wholesome, -ness