Re: THEORY nouns and cases (was: Verbs derived from noun cases)

Hi!

Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> writes:
>..
> I apologize if any of what I say seems hostile.
I did not notice you being hostile at all.  I understand that you just
want to understand what I mean.  That's why we're talking.

Please don't take my postings as offensive.  It's just fun to try to
find an agreement. :-)

> > Hmm, I don't mean by case that the nouns are morphologically changed.
> > E.g. Chinese also has two cases (the one in front of the verb and the
> > one after) but marks none by morphological processes.
>
> Ah - we're talking at cross-purposes. You are using 'case' in the sense it
> is used in Government-Binding theory;
After reading what you describe, yes, I think I meant that.

> Clearly, if you accept, as you apparently do, meaning (2) above, then
> Chinese has two cases: nominative and accusative. If, like me, you accept
> _only_ meaning (1) then clearly Chinese has no cases.
Hmm, but I don't really see a big difference in marking it
morphologically or marking it by position.  Furthermore, IIRC, in the
case of Chinese, when you front an object for pragmatic reasons, you
can mark it with a particle to be the dislocated object.  I think it
was a suffixed 'ba', but I'm not sure.

You might now say: ok, then *Chinese* does have case, but other
languages don't.  I just fail to see that it is a big difference of
using order or morphology.

> To me a skeptic like me, meaning (2) seems to me to confuse verbal
> argument with case.
Ok, those cases that are direct arguments to the verbs I would call
'core cases'.  They need not be the only cases that exist, so I need
the term 'argument', too.

> > In contrast to your intuition, I find it counterintuitive to speak
> > of zero cases, since with no case, you cannot talk. :-)
Errm, sorry for being polemic. :-)

> > Agreed.  But is it necessary to have contrasting forms or would you
> > say, as I did above, that Chinese has two cases?  (In some verbs even
> > three (the typical 'give': 'Wo3 gei2 ni3 shu1')).
>
> Ooh - so 'gei2 ni3' is dative case? Sorry, I do not agree. I've explained
> the reasons above.
No, I meant 'ni3' is in the third case, since it is the third argument
to the verb (which is probably clearer terminology).

But ok, maybe the difference between case, prepositional phrases and
verb+noun phrases is vague.  Or is it not?  Can Finnish cases like
allative be analysed as postpositional phrases?  If not, why not?  I
only have an intuitive idea that they can't.  When is it case, when
affix?  If there was no vowel harmony, is it still an affix?  What
about Japanese?

I confess that I am use the terms intuitively, because I don't have
the strict definitions I'd like to have.

> > Ok.  But although intuitively clear what he wants to say, 'noun' would
> > still be a misnomer, since it is a syntactical category.  'objects' or
> > 'entities' or 'thing made of matter' would probably be better.
>
> Er - but, according to Trask, even in GB theory case is "a
> putatively universal abstract property of noun phrases", i.e. if you
> have case, you have 'nouns'.
Ah, ok.  'Putatively.' :-) Does it apply to languages with only one
class?  Which property is a putatively universal abstract property of
verbs?  If there is only such property, would that forbid languages
with only one open lexical class?  Or would that suggest that the
terms apply to languages only that have distinct classes of 'noun' and
'verb'?

Could we agree that the words in AllNouns are 'nouns' and 'verbs' at
the same time (or, at least, they fulfil one or the other purpose when
used in a sentence) and that, therefore, 'noun' is inappropriate?

My current conlang seems to violate the above putative universal
because it allows phrases to have case.  I'm sure I've seen natural
languages attaching case markers to phrases.  So is case not more a
property of arguments and adjuncts?

> Above you stated: "I find it counterintuitive to speak of zero
> cases, since with no case, you cannot talk. :-) "
Yes.  But although there is case on words, I would not call the
lexicon entries 'nouns'.

What about languages with only one lexical class like Nootka?  You can
attach verbal affixes to then or nominal affixes.  Syntactically, you
change their function in the sentence by that, calling them verb in
the one case and nouns in the other.  But if you can do this with all
words of the language, that's helpful for naming the functions words
have in sentences, but not for calling the words themselves 'nouns' or
'verbs'.

I don't see the difference in the lexicon.  There is an entry:

 'abc'  - 'noun denoting the 1st person singular'
 'xyz'  - 'the-act-of-eating'

These is supposed to be a nouns.  Why?

Sentence: 'abc' 'xyz'.

This probably translates as either a) 'My act-of-eating' or b) 'I eat'.

Would you say 'xyz' in a) it is noun and in b) it is a verb in
languages that only have on class?

> If, as you say, you cannot talk without cases, and case is a property of
> noun phrases, then, surely, it must mean that you cannot talk without
> nouns.
No, just in languages with one open lexical class, case is attached to
'words' not to 'nouns'.  There may be languages that even
morphologically mark case on the 'words'.  They are still not nouns,
since these languages probably mark strictly verbal categories on the
same 'words', too.

> Therefore, if it is agreed that a language has only one class of
> things, that class must be 'noun' as you cannot talk without nouns.
No, I attach case to verbs, too. :-)

(This is polemic, I think 'verb' is inpropriate for the one and only
class of words, too.)

> or you are defining 'case' in a meaning not given by Trask. Either
> way, it is still clear that you and I mean different things by
> 'case'.
I think the situation is clear in languages that clearly have a
distinct category of nouns.  The debate is only about nomenclature in
languages that don't.  Maybe I'm making my private vocabulary for
those language, but I really fail to see that you think 'noun' is
appropriate for such languages.

> 'Jo', 'dog'. 'wife' in fact, but he moves quite quickly to 'act-of-howling'
> , 'act-of-throwing'.
The latter should not be called nouns in one-class languages.  That's
my opinion.  It's a misnomer.  The same vocabulary could be put as
'be-a-dog', 'be-a-wife', 'throw' without any difference.  And then
you want to call it 'verb'?

No, I think, both 'verb' and 'noun' are inappropriate terms for
one-class languages.  You could call them 'verbs' or 'nouns' depending
on what the English word is, or depending on what the closest function
in a sentence would be -- that would be less confusing, I think.

> Another misunderstanding, I regret. ... language we commonly call
> "Hittite" ... Similarly, we now know that the speakers of "Hittite"
> called the language _Nesili_. ...
Ok.  I misunderstood that.

There is still a difference: 'Hittite' is a name being nothing else
but the name of a language.  But 'AllNouns' implies 'nouns'.  That's a
different type of mismatch.

> Confusion will arise if one is not aware there are different linguistic
> theories and different 'schools' of linguistics.
I am aware of the fact, but I am not familiar with these schools.

I'm a hobby linguist and I hope people will still have fun discussing
with me and my obviously crude definitions. :-)

**Henrik