Re: How many verbs?

On Jul 12, 2004, at 1:10 PM, Gary Shannon wrote:

> This is just a random thought, but I was wondering if
> there were any natlangs with this feature that
> occurred to me for use in a conlang.  The number of
> verbs in the language would be very small, covering
> only the most basic form of a particular action and
> the details would be provided by an adverb-like word
> that narrowed down the meaning of the verb.
I think Sylvia's Kelen does this; IIRC, there were four verbs. I hope
she'll responed with some more details.

> For example, the language would not have the verbs "to
> run" or "to walk", but would use adverbs with the verb
> "to move" giving, for example: "to move 'runly'" or
> "to move 'walkly'".  These adverbs could then be
> applied to other verbs to create idioms unique to the
> language like: (using English words)
>
> This boy act-he excitedly too-much did, and speak-he
> runly did.  Speak-I requestly did, that speak-he
> walkly do.
>
> By using the adverbs "runly" and "walkly" in different
> contexts their meanings would somewhat broader and
> more versatile, thus keeping the number of such
> special adverbs reasonably small as well.
This strikes me as being a common strategy for verbs of motion in
particular, especially among the languages of Native America. I'm
implementing something like this in Miapimoquitch; here's an example
from a message on directionals I posted here quite a while ago:

\t waanai tattakatesi [wa:nai tattaGat1si]
\m wa= anai ta-       ttaka   -te   -si
\g 1=  up   RED:PAUC- move:UN -FOOT -towards

\f 'A few of us are coming up on foot.'

In this example, the basic predicate means 'move'. With the addition of
a directional predicate and some lexical suffixes, you get the meaning
'come up (the hill) on foot'.

> So I can't help but wonder how small a set of verbs
> would constitute a useful set.  I'm not thinking of
> minimalism for its own sake, but to create as many
> verbs as would be useful without violating the spirit
> of not creating a new verb when a verb + adverb would
> do the job.  A mere 10 verbs and 10 adverbs would give
> 100 verb + adverb combinations possibly taking over
> for 100 separate English verbs, or possibly creating
> novel meanings not expressible in English without some
> circumlocution.
Again, Sylvia will have thought about this; she should have some
interesting observations.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

Grammatica vna et eadem est secundum substanciam in omnibus linguis,
licet accidentaliter varietur. - Roger Bacon (1214-1294)