Re: Languages without verbs

On Thu, 2008-11-13 at 17:56 +0100, Henrik Theiling wrote:

> A common thing is to remove *most* verbs, often leaving only one verb.
> Japanese is famous for borrowing verbs as nouns and using 'suru' (to
> do) to make it a verb in Japanese.  And Basque, IIRC, only has very
> few verbs, in the order of five.
Some Papuan languages are like that. Kalam is said to have less than 100
verbs, and only a couple of dozen are in general use:

ag "make a noise", am "go", ap "come", ay "stabilise", d "control", ñb
"consume", nŋ "perceive", ñ "transfer", pk "hit", pwŋy "impinge on", tk
"make discontinuous", yap "descend", yn "burn"

They can then be used in serial constructions for clarity: ñb nŋ
"taste", d nŋ "feel", ag nñ "tell".

yad am mon pk d ap aypyn "I go wood hit hold come put-PERF-ISG" i.e.
"I've got the firewood"

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