Re: Tlvn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Cognitive Grammar a la Roland Langacker has language- and
syntax-independent characterizations of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.=20
They are such that using them one could non-vacuously describe a
language as "having only nouns," verbs, and adjectives.  However, a
language which has only constructions which profile a "region in a
domain," an "atemporal relation," or a "process" (Langacker's
characterization of nouns, adjectives, and verbs respectively) would
be either crippled or unusable by humans.  I would think that in order
to have a usable "all-verb" language you'd have to have ways of
turning verbs into adjectives and nouns, and vice versa for the other
types.

What might be slightly more feasible is an "all-verb-root" language,
where you have to use nominalizing affixes to create things which
function as nouns, or an "all-noun-root" language, or something of
that sort.

"Allnoun" by Tom Breton isn't really all noun and doesn't claim to
be; it's all nouns and *punctuation marks*, which are extremely
important to the way it works.  Also, every sentence carries an
implicit verb: "X exists" where X is the rest of the sentence.

I think that it probably comes close to qualifying as a true
almost-all-noun-language, but I suspect that it also falls into the
"unusable by humans" category.  Or at least "unusable by humans as a
natural language.  It's fascinating in its own right though.

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Ed just stopped by to see what condition his condition was in.
                   edheil@postmark.net
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Josh Roth wrote:

> In a message dated 9/13/1999 9:15:22 PM, fflores@ARNET.COM.AR writes:
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> >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
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>=20
> 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

> of a language being all verbs, or all adjectives, or all nouns. I think=
 the

> distinction of verbs and nouns and adjectives is somewhat arbitrary. Wh=
o's
to=20
> say that in the "all verb" language, some of the words aren't really no=
uns?

> How could you prove it either way? And if you really wanted to, you cou=
ld
say=20
> that Chinese doesn't have any nouns either - "r=EC" (they started teach=
ing=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 mo=
re=20
> like, "being sunny," and it was thus a verb. If there are no obvious wa=
ys
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 wa=
y=20
> syntax-wise, then they can be called whatever you want.
>=20
> Josh Roth
> http://members.aol.com/fuscian
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