Re: Nouns, verbs, adjectives... and why they're pointless

> Joshua Shinavier wrote:
> > I disagree completely.  In Danoven there is no distinction,
>
> But Danoven is intended to be a "logical" language, thus it is invalid
> in discussions of problems with natural languages.  In *natural*
> languages, verbs are easier to define precisely than nouns, with a few
> exceptions like _felis domesticus_.
Well, seeing as this is the conlang mailing list, I was thinking more in terms
of ideal invented languages than naturally evolved ones.  Languages such as
Tolkien's which simulate natural languages are irrelevant as well.


> > I have yet to meet someone who could explain just what the distinction
between
> > nouns, verbs, and adjectives is supposed to represent;
>
> Nouns are objects, adjectives are properties, verbs are actions.  It's
> as simple as that, at least as far as prototypes go.
So simple it seems, but now could you please define for me "objects",
"properties" and "actions".  You've merely switched the terms.


The existence of non-prototypical
> examples does not make the concepts themselves any less valid, or
> "artificial, sloppy, or unnecessary", any more than the fact that there
> is no such thing as a perfectly isolating, or perfectly agglutinating
> language invalidates those concepts.
Consider a new system -- instead of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, let's have
"goods", "bads" and "neutrals".  Now let's go through a vocabulary and assign
each and every word to one of these catagories, depending on whether we find
the individual concepts good, bad, or don't care one way or the other.
A sloppy system, much sloppier than nouns, verbs, and adjectives even.
And yet it's doable; we could actually construct a language which makes this
distinction and which reflects it in its syntax.  But is it useful?
Are nouns, verbs and adjectives useful?  In my experience they are not.


  Just because a language can exist
> without these catagories, as you claim for Danoven (altho I'm skeptical
> that there's *no* distinction, including syntactic),
Danoven's syntax, in contrast to its vocabulary, is black-and-white, yes-or-no;
there is *no* distinction.  Trust me, I know this language -- I built it ;-)


 doesn't mean that
> they're unnecessary, or even possible in reality (if people other than
> yourself were to speak Danoven as a first language, would those
> distinctions evolve?  No one knows, but I'd guess that they probably
> would).
They wouldn't, as they couldn't -- much as natural languages could not lose
their PoS in any smooth manner, the evolution of the PoS in Danoven could never
be a smooth process -- the structure of the language doesn't allow it.  But I
strongly doubt that such a tendency would arise.  Lack of PoS came to be in
Danoven (early Danvet did have nouns, verbs, and adjectives) because it was
simple, elegant, and very useful; Danoven has never had a plan of evolution
beyond "improving (this, that)", and there's nothing in it which is not there
for a practical reason.  Back to the point, PoS are *not* practical.
Prove to me otherwise :)


  Quite probably, the presence of these catagories in every human
> language known points to something fundamental in the human psyche,
> especially when it comes to distinguishing objects from actions.
Actions are change, objects are static.  But this is a primitive distinction
and misleading.  There is nothing under the sun which does not represent a
change and a dynamic property.

Josh S.