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

Ray Brown scripsit:

> 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. 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.
Non sequitur.  Lojban has noun phrases (sumti), but no nouns; that is, the
head of a noun phrase is always a verb (selbri), with a determiner that
means "that which is the (first, second, third ...) argument of this verb".
Thus the verb "cribe" means "be a bear", and "lo cribe" is "that which
is a bear".  Lojban does of course have Case, although it has a more
flexible notion of it than linguists who make use of Case generally intend.

This is probably a non-naturalistic feature of Lojban, but it may be an
anadewism after all.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
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