extreme gushing, subtoot (++++++)
@melaininpony eeee cute!!!
@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
@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.
re: more stuff about polysynthetic languages
@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)
@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.
more stuff about polysynthetic languages
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 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
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.
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