Re: Tlvn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

In a message dated 9/13/1999 9:15:22 PM, fflores@ARNET.COM.AR writes:

>I just read _Tl=F6n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius_, this fabulous story
>of J. L. Borges about an imaginary world... I was just wondering
>whether someone else has read it too. It's just something you
>can't miss! The main focus is on the culture, but the two main
>mother languages in particular are described in some detail.
>The southern hemisphere Ursprache, says Borges, is an all-verb
>language, while the northern hemisphere's one is all-adjective;
>the main thing about this conception of the world is that there
>are no things that exist on its own along time, so there isn't
>a concept for nouns. Things are just described by actions and
>attributes, never in themselves.
>
>I can read it in the original language. Weep! :)
>
>--Pablo Flores

Hmm, I read that a while ago (in English, tho I could probably read it in=20
Spanish if I tried :-) ). I think this was brought up once before, the idea=20
of a language being all verbs, or all adjectives, or all nouns. I think the=20
distinction of verbs and nouns and adjectives is somewhat arbitrary. Who's t=
o=20
say that in the "all verb" language, some of the words aren't really nouns?=20
How could you prove it either way? And if you really wanted to, you could sa=
y=20
that Chinese doesn't have any nouns either - "r=EC" (they started teaching=20
Mandarin at my school this year!! Yay!!), the word for sun, is usualy called=20
a noun. But I could say if I wanted to, that it was really something more=20
like, "being sunny," and it was thus a verb. If there are no obvious ways to=20
tell nouns and verbs apart, e.g., if they all have the same inflections or=20
agglutinative suffixes, or have none at all, or are used in the same way=20
syntax-wise, then they can be called whatever you want.

Josh Roth
http://members.aol.com/fuscian