Re: Verb order in Montreiano

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, Marcus Smith wrote:

> Yoon Ha wrote:
>
> >Forgive me ignorance; what's the Amerind hypothesis?  I do recall some
> >discussion of some flaky hypothesis? that Amerind languages? were
> >related? to something in Europe maybe? but I don't remember details or if
> >it is what you're talking about here.
>
> The Amerind hypothesis claims that all the languages of the Americas except
> Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene (Athabascan-Tlingit-Eyak(-Haida)) are one family.
> The idea is intriguing, especially considering the fact that the biological
> evidence (dentition and blood-typing) follows a very similar division.
> Unfortunately, the inventor (Joseph Greenberg) was unrigorous and careless
> in his methodology, so his data do not actually prove his hypothesis. And
> since his quality of scholarship was so shoddy (he includes seven languages
> that aren't even real), few people have taken up his proposal and tried to
> find better evidence for it. The ones who do follow the same shoddy procedures.
!
Reminds me of something my anthro-major friend sent me, which was an
ethnography of Antarctican peoples.  Other than the fact that there
aren't Antarctican peoples, the thing looked quite convincing, which was
no doubt the author's intent.  =^)

> >Speaking of which, where can I find info on what Ainu looks like  (The
> >language)?  About
>
> The best overview of the language is found in Shibatani's 'The Languages of
> Japan', Cambridge University Press. There are some good grammars out there,
> but most of them are in Japanese. People who are interested in
> non-configurational languages or noun incorporation would probably enjoy
> learning more about this wonderful language. (Too bad it's extinct -- I
> would have loved to do work on it).
If Cornell U. doesn't have it, I can probably abuse interlibrary loan to
get my hands on it.  Thanks!

(Well, there's another motivation for learning Japanese...Heisig's book
on learning the hiragana in 3 hours *really does* work, except I keep
forgetting what "ru" and "ya" look like.  Next: katakana....)

YHL