u/AndreasDasos

Rare example of US defaultism that mentions other countries but still steps right in it.

This is a variation on a common question so might seem naive, but when we see truly massive fusional morphologies, or ones which change the stem of the verb or noun (say) in complex ways that are massively irregular or involve numerous classes of paradigms, how representative is that of actual usage?

I understand there are usually common patterns and repetitions so it’s not literally the equivalent of that much data, that L1 kids will ‘chunk’ them and not memorise them as tables, but even so.

For example, this table of Inuktitut verb endings:

https://nunavik-ice.com/en/c/inuktitut-en/two-person-verb-endings/#g=2.3

Or Navajo verbs in general - massively complex morphology but on top of that many patterns of changes of stem.

And doubtless many less well known and even more complex examples.

But if we were to open some such table and take the most obscure examples that don’t follow a ‘simple recipe’: the second dual subject, second dual object, some rarer aspect and mood (a caboodle which even native speakers will rarely encounter), and which doesn’t seem to follow from simple rules but be some irregular fusion, and actually asked native speakers of the dialect recorded, would they agree? Or would there not just be variants but multiple ad hoc constructions by speakers on the spot based on general inferred ‘guidelines’? In which case is this just a standardised fiction by scholars to make sure the tables are complete?

Especially true for less standardised languages or those without a literary tradition?

I’ve even encountered even native Hindi speakers do this with their fusional and highly irregular double-digit numbers, some of which have multiple standard variants, and there are under a hundred of those.

My first juice, so sorry it’s a bit messy

(Sorry I don't know how to make memes)