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

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

>         Really? but is it a syntactic distinction or a semantic one?
In Mandarin?  There are clear syntactic limits:  certain suffixes
can only attach to verbs, others only to nouns.  Indeed, there are
morphological distinctions as well: words with the (now meaningless)
suffixes "tou" and "zi" are always nouns.

(As has been established on this list, Mandarin has more inflectional
morphology than English has.)

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
        You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
        You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
                Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)