#tiwi

smoke and flame

“Climbers drop through smoke and flame as purification for a funeral ritual.”

March 1956

Morphology

You can read more about morphology here.

Morphological typology classifies languages based on how they form words by combining morphemes. There are three types of morphology: analytic, synthetic, and polysynthetic.

Analytic Languages

In analytic languages, each morpheme is an independent word and words tend to be uninflected. Grammatical categories are indicated by word order or by adding in additional words. Therefore, context and syntax are more important than morphology.

Examples of analytic languages include some major East Asian languages, such as Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in China, as well as Haitian Creole, an Indo-European language spoken in Haiti. Here is an example of a sentence in the Haitian Creole:

Mari te renmen flè yo.

Marie past like flower plural

“Marie liked the flowers.”

Some languages that are not considered analytic, such as Afrikaans and English (both of which are Indo-European languages) share certain traits with them.

Isolating Languages

Unlike analytic ones, which have little or no inflection, isolating languages have no inflectional morphology. Their morpheme-to-word ratio is close to one, meaning each word almost always contains a single morpheme. Examples of isolating languages include Igbo, an Atlantic-Congo language spoken in Nigeria, and Vietnamese, an Austroasiatic language spoken in Vietnam.

Synthetic Languages

In synthetic languages, a root combines with several morphemes to form a word. These morphemes may or may not be distinguishable from the root, and they may be fused with it or with each other. Word order is less important than in analytic languages, and there tends to be a high degree of agreement between different parts of the sentence.

Most Indo-European languages are synthetic. Two kinds of synthetic languages can be distinguished according to whether morphemes are clearly differentiable: agglutinative and fusional.

Agglutinative Languages

In agglutinative languages, morpheme boundaries are clearly identifiable, and each morpheme represents only one meaning. Sometimes a word can represent a complete sentence.

Hungarian, a Uralic language spoken in Hungary, and Korean, a Koreanic language spoken in North and South Korea, are examples of agglutinative languages.

The following is an extremely long Hungarian word:

legeslegmegszentségteleníttethetetlenebbjeitekként

leges-leg-meg-szent-ség-telen-ít-tet-het-etlen-ebb-je-i-tek-ként

“like those of you that are the very least possible to get desecrated”

Such lengthy words are not used in practice and are difficult to understand even for native speakers.

Fusional Languages

In fusional languages, morpheme boundaries cannot be clearly identified because bits of meaning are fused together into single words or affixes. Morphemes may also be expressed through tone and vowel gradation, also known as ablaut.

Examples of fusional languages include Ona, a Choan language formerly spoken in Argentina and Chile, and Tigrinya, an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The former codes for evidentiality and gender in a single suffix:

Ya ktįmi xįnn nįy ya.

Ya k-tįmi x-įnn nį-y ya.

1st person relativizer-land go-certainty.masculine present-masc. 1P.

“I go to my land.”

Polysynthetic Languages

In polysynthetic languages, a word is a complete sentence and morphemes can change the meaning of the root. These languages have a very high morpheme-to-word ratio. They can also be agglutinative or fusional.

Most indigenous languages of the Americas are polysynthetic, including Inuktitut, an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Canada, and Tiwi, an Australian language isolate.

For example, here is a Tiwi word-sentence:

Pitiwuliyondjirrurlimpirrani.

Pi-ti-wuliyondji-rrurlimpirr-ani.

3Pplural-3singular.feminine-dead.wallaby-carry.on.shoulders-past.habitual

“They would carry the dead wallaby on their shoulders.”

Parameters of Variation

There are two other types of morphological variation:

Prefix/suffix differences: Many prefixes do not change the part of speech of the word to which they are attached (“do” and “undo” are both verbs), while most suffixes do change the part of speech (“do” is a verb and “doer” is a noun). The latter are more frequent.

The Anthropological Masterlist is HERE.

The Aboriginal Australian people are the indigenous peoples of Australia and the Torres Strait Islands. 

ADNYAMANTHA ─ “The Adnyamathanha people are an Aboriginal Australian people. They are native to the northern Flinders Ranges.” ─ Plants in Adnyamantha Culture

ARRERNTE ─ “The Arrernte, or Aranda, people are an Aboriginal Australian people. They are native to the Arrernte land in central Australia.” ─ Arrernte Information ─ Arrernte Language

BUNDJALUNG ─ “The Bundjalung, or Bunjalung, people are an Aboriginal Australian people. They are native to the northern coast of New South Wales.” ─ Bundjalung Migration

KAMILAROI ─ “The Kamilaroi, or Gamilaraay, are an Aboriginal Australian people. They are native to New South Wales and Queensland.” ─ Kamilaroi Culture ─ Kamilaroi Language & Traditions ─ Kamilaroi Astrology

NGARRINDJERI ─ “The Ngarrindjeri people are an Aboriginal Australian people. They are native to the lower Murray River in southern Australia.” ─ Ngarrindjeri Information ─ Ngarrindjeri Culture

NOONGAR ─ “The Noongar, or Nyunga, people are an Aboriginal Australian people. They are native to southwest Western Australia.” ─ Noongar Culture ─ Noongar Language ─ Western Australian Language

TIWI ─ “The Tiwi, or Tunuvivi, people are an Aboriginal Australian people. They are native to the Bathurst and Melville islands.” ─ Tiwi Information ─ Tiwi Language ─ Tiwi Music

Ten of Swords. Art by Taylor Hultquist-Todd, from Myths & Legends: An Illustrated Tarot.