Re: Tlvn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

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> Van: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
> Aan: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
> Onderwerp: Re: Tlvn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
> Datum: woensdag 15 september 1999 14:37
>
> "R. Nierse" wrote:
> > I see in the examples that
> > Lillooet does not need morphology or some other instrument to change
verbs
> > into nouns and v.v.. That makes me think that Lillooet does not really
> > distinguish nouns from verbs.
>
> If so, then English does not either.  There's no consistent morphology
> to change nouns into verbs, or vice versa.
There is no consistant morphology, but there *is* morphology. We need a
way, something extra, to show that it is something else than a noun.

  Sure, there are suffixes
> like -ize and -tion, but it's also quite easy to change parts of speach
> around, as in "I watered the garden", where "water" is turned into a
> verb.  I notice that in your example there are verbal inflections on the
> word for "coyote", indicating that it's a verb.
>
> I tend to go with a prototype theory, that is, verbs are words that are
> treated like prototypical verbs.  A prototypical verb is an action with
> both a causer and an affected being (i.e., transitive verbs), other
> kinds of verbs are extensions of this, which explains why no languages
> use constructions like "I am the hitter of him", but some do use
> constructions like "To me is the car" for "I have the car" (because
> "hit" is a prototypical verb, while "have" isn't)
>
> Prototypical nouns, on the other hand, are physical objects, while other
> nouns are an extension of that concept.
>
> --
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> Benjamin Franklin
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