Re: How many verbs?

--- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>
> *verb* /vɜ:b/ n. (V) One of the most important
> lexical categories, and one
> which is seemingly universal. The class of verbs i
> every language is both
> large and open. Grammatically speaking, verbs are
> most obviously
> distinguished by the fact that each verb typically
> requires the presence
> in its sentence of a specific set of NP [noun
> phrase] arguments, each of
> which typically represents some particular semantic
> role and each of which
> may be required to appear in some particular
> grammatical form (particular
> case marking, particular preposition etc.).
>
> So wrote the late Larry Trask in "A Dictionary of
> Grammatical Terms in
> Linguistics". Not my idea of 'nothing'; and I'm
> trying to figure out how
> 'meaning relations' differs radically from 'semantic
> roles'.
>
> But then, what did Larry Trask know about
> linguistics?
>
I was referring to the permanent confusion between the
syntactical notion of "verb", and the semantics of
that so-called "verb". It is nearly impossible to
define a verb otherwise than syntactically, and yet,
in every grammar, you will find explanations like
"verb is used to express action, or state, or changing
of state", mixed up with syntactical notions, and this
simply doesn't work. As other list addicts already
pointed out many times, a verb in language A doesn't
have to be a verb in language B. To me, the notion of
"verb" is uninteresting except for purely syntactic
purposes. What is interesting is the semantic relation
defined between two concepts.

Oh, I nearly forgot to add: IMO.



=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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