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Re: genitive

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 1, 2002, 21:34
David Peterson wrote:
>Ebera wrote: > ><<Adjective *is* a noun case. The noun marked at the adjective provides an >additional information on the quality or the state of its referent. Just >like the locative provides an information on where its referent is.>> > > [Satire beginning] What? How could you possibly think this? There >are >no such things as nouns. Maybe you got this idea from *your* language and >the others you've studied, but that's not the way it really is, oh no. You >see, in the *real* world, nouns don't exist; only verbs do. There are >verbs >meaning "to be a mother", "to be a rock", "to be a stapler", etc. >Adjectives >are just just a part of these verbs, so you'll have one verb which means >"to >be a stapler" and another which means "to be a red stapler". I really >don't >see how you could possibly have missed this. [Satire end] > > Point being, any type of classification which puts one idea over >another >and identifies one method of classification as clearly superior and >necessarily more realistic than another type of classification isn't valid, >because true abstraction is impossible. The classification you came up >with >seems more reactionary, in that because European language classify >description in one way, then, logically, the other way of classifying >description must be the "correct", "real" way. Such an argument is >illogical. >
Still, it appears that the noun~verb distinction is hard-wired into the human brain, which rather suggests that classifications that include this distinction may be better for describing human language than ones that don't. Andreas _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.