Re: CHAT: affricates/grammar help/intransitivity/free word order

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 02:56:56 -0500, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:

>are there languages using others affricates than [t_-S], [d_-Z], [ts], or
>[dz]?
>
>I've never heard about other than these (and i'm not sure than [ts] and
>[dz] are usually considered like affricates)
>
>there could have [kx], [gG], [qX], [G\R], [pp\], [bB], or the labio-dental
>versions of the 2 lasts, that are easily differenciable
>
>and there is [t_+T] (like t and the voiceless "th" sound) and the same
>thing voiced wich sound less differenciable of only [T] and [D]
>
>are these existing in some language?
German has the labiodental affricate [pf], and German dialects have an
affricate usually analyzed as [kx], but which could also be described as
[qX]. For what I know, both are very unusual sounds, that is, there are very
few natlangs that feature them.


>Is there an other voice that I don't know wich I could represent or
>something similar to voice to tell
I'm not sure whether the focus as found in Tagalog could be described as a
kind of grammatical voice. It's described at en.wikipedia.org .


>I would also like to know if there are languages where intransitivity
>doesn't exists
>
>Probably that the same accusative pronoun than the subject can be used to
>show it happens on itselt in addition with the use of the middle voice
>
>It's because I would like to avoid having to deal with sentences without
>object it would ruin my system
There are languages that require a zero subject in sentences that don't
really have a semantical subject, e.g. "il pleut" or "it rains".
Analogically, I could think of a zero object, like "je LE dors", "I sleep
IT", "il LE pleut", "it rains IT". I don't know whether this is found in any
natlang.


>last thing would be to ask for this:
>
>can a language without an almost clear way to recognize verbs from nouns
>have a free or variable word other?
>
>by "an almost clear way to recognize verbs from nouns" I mean like in
>spanish, each verbs end in "r" or in french, each verbs end in sounds [R]
>("ir", "oir", "re") or [e] ("er")
This is not how they would be normally characterized. The usual way to
characterize them is that they are the words which take endings according to
person, number, and tense/aspect.

>but in english for example there's no way to distinc verbs from nouns and,
>sometimes, from adjectives making that a word like "grow" can be a verb or
>a noun
>
>and theorically, every nouns can be used as a verb. I've already heard a
>funny song ending with "my cellular banana your phone" because nothing
>shows that it could not be a verb
It doesn't have the third person ending: my cellular bananas your phone.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust