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Re: Telona grammar, part 1

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Monday, February 4, 2002, 8:07
Kala Tunu wrote:
>reading attentively Jonathan's long Telona grammar. AllNoun, AllVerb and >NoVerbNoNoun conlanging is a genre of its own ;-) the last time the list >simmered about it the mess was fun! :-) i had a try for a few months, then >eventually read a book explaining entity, behaviour, predicate and >argument--it >was about time--and never got back there. to me AllNoun isn't all noun, >it's >AllNoTag! :-) > >btw, i recently read an old article written in 1998 by a neurologue whose >name >is Damasio reporting tomographic surveys showing that entities and >behaviours >are not even processed in the same brain areas. a same word like "man" may >refer >to one or more entities (human being, male person) as well as to one or >more >behaviours (to man a ship, to be manly) but all these concepts are clearly >a >priori either entities or behaviours stocked or processed in two different >parts >of the brain albeit under the same word "man". the fact that you don't tag >words >as entities ("nouns") or behaviours ("verbs") cannot change the fact that >they >make different areas of your brain glow on tomographic images. btw verbs, >pronouns, conjunctions and syntax are apparently processed in a same area. >this >article examplified all this with very impressive witnesses of aphasic >people >who could not use verbs anymore or nouns or only certain categories of >nouns >like instruments, body parts, etc. then i guess that an entity may be >turned >into a predicate (with my favourite "copulae") and a behaviour may be >turned >into an argument (with a "nominalizer" or you name it)--however copulae and >nominalizers are zero tag as in "to dream" vs. "a dream".
We-ell, this'd seem to confirm my old suspicion that the difference between "objects" and "actions", or to speak linguistian, "nouns" and "verbs", is hardwired into the human brain.
>could you imagine the conlang invented by some aphasic conlanger? >AllNounists >may pick good ideas there.
I guess that a truly "AllNoun" (or rather "NoNounVsVerbDistinction") language would have to be spoken by aliens with a decidedly non-human mental make-up. A conlang by an aphatic would, by defintion, not be a functioning human language.
>or did they? or am i offtopic again? why can't i >refrain from writing loooooooooong posts? that's why i try not posting at >all >anymore.
You call this a long post? We-ell, while a main point of the Theory of Relativity is that some things aren't relative*, post length is! * Einstein actually considered calling it "Invariance Theory" instead. Had he done so, the popular science of today, I figure, would look a bit different, not to mention the SF genre! "Remember, cap'n, everything is invariant!" Andreas _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.