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

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 9, 1998, 13:33
Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> I totally agree with Josh. Parts of speech are only accidental and I think > a language with PoS can evolve into a language without PoS and the contrary > is true also. PoS are not mandatory, there is no "universal grammatical > feature" that forces people to make a distinction between nouns and verbs. > In fact, I know that at least one natlang, Nootka, that really has no parts > of speech. Nearly everything's possible in that natlang (I'll find an > example if you wish).
I greatly disagree with that. Altho I don't know anything about Nootka, I find it *very* hard to believe that it makes *no* distinction between nouns and verbs - it must make some syntactic distinction, at least. -- "We're not obsessed, we're focused!" - X-Philes' motto, by Gizzie http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files ICQ: 18656696 AOL: NikTailor