Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27

On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 08:52:16PM -0500, David Starner wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 10:34:16PM -0300, João Ricardo Oliveira wrote:
> > > (BTW: How is having the verb first particularly 'logical'? I can
> > > understand why someone might say SVO (or ever OVS) was logical, but I
> > > have trouble with understand any logicalness in VSO (or OSV ).
> >
> > The verb is the most important part of the sentence. You can have a sentence
> > without an object and even without a subject, but never without a verb.
>
> How about "You there!", or "Rain."?
[snip]

Not to mention languages where there are no verbs of being. Natlangs like
Malay didn't acquire a verb to-be until relatively recently.

Ebisedian is perfectly happy with verbless sentences like
        3mir33'n0     3jhi'l0   ki'g3.
        children(org) room(org) fun(cvy)
        "From the children, from the room, [comes] fun."

The verb in the translation is, of course, only supplied out of necessity
in English; the Ebisedian here has no implied verbs, and may be equally
validly translated as "children and room are the source of fun", or
"relative to children and room, fun is from them". (Excuse me for mangling
the English to try to convey the disembodied meaning of this Ebisedian
sentence.)


T

--
Perhaps the most widespread illusion is that if we were in power we would
behave very differently from those who now hold it---when, in truth, in order
to get power we would have to become very much like them. -- Unknown