Re: Languages without verbs

Mark Reed wrote:

>be, do, go, have . . .
Maybe: be do go, there is  - and one could easily eliminate equative/class
membership "be" with simple collocation: He man "He is a man", John doctor
"John is a doctor", He fool 'he is a fool'

One could eliminate "have" by conflating it with 'there is' + a case form
(dative, possessive); or devising "there-is possession [of X] [by Y] .

In the verbless lang. I devised a very long (and unsophisticated) time ago,
there was only one verbal form:  "there is...", but lots of verbal nouns,
like running, loving, falling etc.  I felt even then that it was sort of a
cop-out.

"There was running by me = I ran"
"There is money to me ~ there is my money (cf. Indonesian 'ada uang/ku') = I
have money"
"There is loving (of, w.r.t.) Mary by John = John loves Mary"  and so on.
The idea was quickly abandoned :-(