930: What Makes a Word (pt. 3/3) Jun 26, 2017

This is the third and final post on what makes a word a word for now,  though you should make sure to look at the posts from yesterday and the day before. It was stated then how words are distinct from other morphemes, such as affixes, because they can be moved around somewhat freely in a clause. It is for that reason that long words in certain other languages, especially in polysynthetic ones, are not simply a collection of little words said together. In Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) the meaning of a word is built into it in such a way that it can be its own whole clause theoretically. For example, 'tikilluarit' means 'welcome' and 'tikilluaritsi' means 'you are welcome' or 'tikilluaqquavusi' means 'you have just been welcomed'. It should be noted that some affixes are subtractive and will reduce parts of the stem or other affixes. In the case of 'tikilluaritsi', the ending that indicated second-person cannot be moved around to different places in the clause and is a suffix, not a word, even though in English 'you' is a word.