Video 18.2: Polysynthesis

Andrew Carnie presents Syntax: A Generative Introduction 4E (2021). Wiley Blackwell.

Video 18.2: Polysynthesis

This video explores the phenomenon of Polysynthesis where the work of what is done by Syntax in the languages we've been looking at up to now is actually done by the morphology. Whole sentences are bundled into single words. The video explains two hypotheses about this: The Syntax Free Hypothesis and the Radical Pro-drop hypothesis. Carnie also mentions a third approach not discussed in the textbook: The distributed morphology or "Syntax all the way down" approach.