Re: Tlvn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Charles wrote:

> >From Http://Members.Aol.Com/Lassailly/Tunuframe.Html wrote:
> >
> > Dans un courrier dat=E9 du 14/09/99 16:40:36  , Tom a =E9crit :
> >
> > > > But AFAIK there are no natlangs lacking fairly obvious verbs and
> > > > nouns,
> > >
> > >  Josh Roth, inter alia, has already well addressed this topic.
>
> Perhaps you could resummarize? I can see adjectives being
> replaced by intransitive verbs and genitives and articles, sorta.
> But then how to remove, rather than just disguise, either
> the nouns or the verbs? Which natlang really does that?
We're not talking about semantic relations here, but syntax.
Nouns and verbs are abstract grammatical categories that only
exist if there is reason to posit they exist in the syntax of a language.
No one (except maybe solipsists) denies that there really are things
out there that fit into semantic equivalents of those abstract
categories -- but those are semantic categories, not grammatical
categories.

So, when we're talking about syntax, we can't talk about "disguising"
the existence of a category -- the category itself either exists or it do=
esn't.
(whether or not it's reasonable to have that category is a different
question).   If a language (like Yupik Eskimo) likes to incorporate
stems whose semantic meanings represent physical objects into
an abstract category called "verbs", there's nothing stopping it from
doing that.  It's not disguised;  that's a confusion of semantics and
syntactics.  For example, in Oneida, you can incorporate the noun
itself directly into the verb:

lanV,stayV,'sthos  "he [or she] plants corn"
(where my <V,> here is [V], I think)

la-         3rd person singular affix
yV,-      to plant
-s          present tense
nV,st-    incorporated form of o-nV,ste?, 'corn'

> > >  > or excluding "valency" 3, the more-or-less indirect object.
> > >
> > >  See Comrie, "Language Universals and Linguistic Typology" p.59-61,
> > >  for some discussion on why English syntax may not warrant a separa=
te
> > >  category for "indirect object".
>
> In that sense, Spanish may not "warrant". But it's nonsense,
> e.g. in "I'm telling you this" I count 1 verb and 3 nominals.
Why are you assuming I agree with Comrie?  All I meant to
do was to show you that the world doesn't usually fit into our
neat little categorizations as often as we'd like it to. When you
make a claim about linguistic typology, one needs to be
able to back it up with facts, closely analyzed.

And please -- don't dismiss Comrie unless you've read what
he has to say. :)