The Acquisition of Polysynthetic Languages

A Machine Translation Toolchain for Polysynthetic Languages

We present a set of free tools for building rule-based machine translation systems for polysynthetic languages. As there are no large corpora for most of the “small” languages, it is often impossible to use statistical methods. There are some free MT tools but very little work has been done on polysynthetic languages. The aim of this project is to provide computational tools for morphological a...

The Argument Status of Nps in Southeast Puebla Nahuatl: Comments on the Polysynthesis Parameter

Baker (1996) defines polysynthetic languages as having both productive noun incorporation and full, obligatory agreement paradigms for subjects and objects. This cluster of properties is triggered by the Polysynthesis Parameter, a macro-parameter, which states that a phrase X is visible for θ-role assignment by a head Y only if it is coindexed with a morpheme in the word containing Y by (i) an ...

PRONOMINAL AFFIXES, THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: THE CASE OF YURAKARÉ By RIK VAN GIJN

Pronominal affixes in polysynthetic languages have an ambiguous status in the sense that they have characteristics normally associated with free pronouns as well as characteristics associated with agreement markers. This situation arises because pronominal affixes represent intermediate stages in a diachronic development from independent pronouns to agreement markers. Because this diachronic ch...

Unaccusative and Unergative Verb Acquisition: Effects of Implicit, Explicit, and Mixed Oral Corrective Feedback

Are there null arguments in Athabascan?

The existence of null arguments in Athabascan languages, and other polysynthetic languages, is a debated topic. We argue that, if the agreement on the verb is the argument, the so-called Pronominal Argument Hypothesis, languages such as Navajo do not have null arguments in the traditional sense. We then outline the diachrony of Athabascan object marking on the verb (by looking at the various co...