Lizardsquid, maker of noises @lizardsquid@computerfairi.es

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

@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!

@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 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!

@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.

@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!

@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.

@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 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.

@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

@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.

@Felthry @BatElite the short version is that the meaning of compound words is not neccessarily derivable from its components without real-world knowledge, whereas synthetic words convey their more complicated information with grammatical systems.

(example in next toot...)

@Felthry @BatElite that's not quite the same process:

German and Dutch (and so on) glue words together to form compound words

Polysynthetic languages are glueing units-of-meaning together to synthesise a new word

The distinction is subtle, but important

@Felthry @BatElite as in most words, or longest words?

or longest time for an average utterance?

(to be clear about the last one: Navajo has a much higher density of information per sound than English does, so in navajo the word "najiné" means "they are playing", but since Navajo is spoken at a slower pace, navajo sentences and english sentences take around the same amount of time to say)

@Felthry @BatElite (I realise my original post was full of ambiguity, sorry)

@Felthry @BatElite it isn't, no!

but compared to most indo-european langauges, it has a slightly lower word count on average

@Felthry @BatElite sentences in Basque generally have slightly less words in them than most Indo-European languages

@chao hi sweeterie!!!!!!!