Re: Nouns with arguments, verbs without arguments

Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
<<<
This isn't quite the sort of thing I'm looking for; intransitive verbs at
least take subjects. "Rain" in Lindiga doesn't take any arguments at all,
either a subject or an object; you need to use prepositions to get any
nouns to go with "rain".
>>>
Hmmm. Yeah. I reread your post and mine was kind of absolutely off-topic I'm
afraid.

<<<
Can these words occur by themselves (can you say "kaya" without adding
"uang", or does "kaya" require some kind of argument, like "tlazi" in
Lindiga)?
>>>
Yes, you can say "kaya" without adding anything. Ok, so, er.
Well, your stuff is definitely different. I have the feeling it's a bit as
if your nouns were like the English adjective "worth" (you need say or imply
"worth something") or the adjectival nouns "each", "any", "all", etc. Or
they could be likened to classifiers ("a unit, quantity, pattern, pair,
item, attribute [OF/TO/FROM/AS/etc.] something else"). But that would make a
whole lot of classifiers! I can't think of any lang whose verbs are always
impersonal and requiring a preposition (unless you liken a partitive
genitive tag to a "preposition".) But I've read some chunks of New-Guinea
langs that have a co-verb predicate system where a first co-verb classifies
the predicate and the second precises the role of the arguments. But I think
you know some Algonquin langs and maybe some of them have this system too
and some conlangs work like that as well if I remember (although maybe the
two co-verbs have each an argument). But, right, none of the co-verbs is a
preposition.

(A French linguistic book I have considers an impersonal verb system with no
verbal voice as "présentatif" ("here is X") or "existenciel" (there is X")
and "attributif" ("Y's X") by contrast to the usual "active" verbal system
("X is/does/has Y (to Z)".)

Am I still off-topic?

Mathias

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