Re: Sentences (was Re: Polysynthesis & Oligosynthesis)

On Sun, Aug 25, 2002 at 11:11:35AM -0400, Christopher Wright wrote:
> >Is the reply "a whole sentence [expressed] with just a verb"? If so,
> >why? If not, why not? What's a sentence?
>
> I defined it as "a coherent sequence of words (at least one) whose core
> argument is a verb". Now, I'm not sure. What about languages without a
> copula? Are their phrases that would include a copula not sentences? What
> about languages with a copula? Are their sentences that include copulae
> no longer sentences because their equivalents in other languages are not?
[snip]

Requiring verbs in a sentence is very English. Many languages don't
require verbs to form a grammatically correct sentence. The various
Chinese languages are like that, so is Malay, which, although not
zero-copula, tends to drop the copula from time to time.

Now as far as *conlangs* go... the Ebisedian "sentence" is a rather odd
beast. It can be (1) the traditional sentence with a verb as a core
argument, or it can be (2) a sequence of nouns in various case inflections
describing a static state of things, or it can (3) consist of a single
locative noun-phrase. For (2) to make sense, the combination of noun cases
must be meaningful; in (3), it is a so-called "nominator" sentence, which
acts like a title or topic.

The only common thing between the three is that they must form a coherent
thought. If isolated from semantics, an Ebisedian sentence can be just an
arbitrary collection of random words and still be "grammatically correct",
although completely meaningless.

From this, I propose that a "sentence" in the most general sense should be
described as a grammatically-correct sequence of words which acts as a
unit to convey a coherent thought. (Or something along those lines.) But
different languages have different criteria for deciding what constitutes
a phrase, a clause, or a sentence, or even a compound sentence (such as
joining sentences with semicolons, etc.). I don't think there's any
universal rule that can address such criteria, other than what I
proposed---that a sentence must convey a coherent unit of thought.


T

--
Winners never quit, quitters never win. But those who never quit AND never
win are idiots.