Re: Language "laws"?

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 01:56:47 +0200, Steven Williams <feurieaux@...> wrote:
> For example, I've never seen a language without
> pronouns; even my own conlang, Gi-nàin, has two. I did
> try to eliminate those two completely, but generally,
> every language will have a way of referring to an
> antecedent without actually repeating the full
> antecedent, even if they don't use it as often as our
> very pronoun-happy English.
Everett's paper on the Pirahã language argues that it has no native
pronouns, though it does now have some which appear to be borrowed.
(And in general, they do appear to repeat the antecedent a lot of the
time, either in full or with a similar word ("jaguar ... cat ...
animal").)

But then, the fact that they have not subordinate clauses (IIRC) makes
the syntax easier and dispenses with having to deal with sentences as
objects, for example ("It rained yesterday; *this* displeased me").

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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