Re: NonVerbal Conlang?

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:48:02 -0800, Michael Adams
<michael.adams1@...> wrote:

>Anyone worked on such an animal?
>
>Be it like American Sign or like, or like how Baseball players "talk" to
>each other at the game?
>
>Also how much of your conlang is non-verbal or just part of the nomal
>human range of facial/body/hand and like motions?
>
>Mike
>
Answers to this thread have interpreted "nonverbal" in at least the
following two different ways;

(1) non-oral/aural, that is, a language that isn't spoken and heard;
(2) without verbs.

(BTW I believe the OP meant meaning (1); but I think both types of answers
have been interesting.)

I want to open a third meaning;
(3) a spoken-and-heard language without words.

This should be quite possible, because there are several major definitions
of "word", and none of them is universally cross-linguistically valid.

In fact for each major definition of "word", there are several extant
natlangs which are "non-verbal" by that definition; either they don't have
any "words" of that sort, or most utterances contain none, or most
utterances don't mostly consist of them.

My long-previous post about Milewski's studies of American languages
included some he thought didn't use any, or not usually more than
one, "word" per clause.

I think And Rosta's conlang might be an example of a "non-verbal" language
by more than one such definition.  (Even though he works IRL with "Word
Grammar" as well as "Dependency Grammar".) His conlang's lexicon consists
of several sememes (not calling them morphemes, pace David Peterson) and
several linking elements (still not calling them morphemes); neither they,
nor smallish-to-mediumish assemblies of them, satisfy some of the major
definitions of "words".

http://people.emich.edu/tseely/ondefinitionofword.htm
is a very good introduction to the problem.


http://www.mun.ca/cayuga/pubs/sshrc/7_previous_and_ongoing.rtf
includes the following paragraph:
"Dyck used these grants to carry out two lines of research, one of which is
relevant to the proposed project: Dyck's research focussed on the
definition of 'word' in Cayuga: in general, while speakers of a given
language intuitively know what a 'word' is, a cross-linguistic definition
of the 'word' has proven elusive. For example, a Cayuga 'word' often
contains several morphological words."

And
http://72.14.203.104/\
search?q=cache:gpHbifH2nxMJ:www.mun.ca/cayuga/pubs/sshrc/\
2_summary.rtf\
+cross-linguistic+definition+of+%22word%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=15

includes the following:
"The second goal will also be met by linguistic research on examples of
particles -- small, one-syllable words such as ahslh still, yet, etc., and
gvh question word --from the transcribed recordings. One example of issues
addressed by this research is the question of what defines the word from a
sound-based perspective. There is no single criterion for defining the word
in European languages; this problem is magnified in languages such as
Cayuga, in which verbs in particular are often equivalent to sentences in
structure and in expressive power. Particles are highly relevant to
arriving at a cross-linguistic definition of the word because, while they
are words according to several criteria, Cayuga speakers treat groups of
particles as single words. The Cayuga practice reflects an intuitive
understanding of the word which is markedly different from the definition
of the word in other languages. Studying the Cayuga concept can help to
elucidate the definition of the word cross-linguistically."


http://books.google.com/books?id=xSBYbn_L8qYC&dq=cross\
-linguistic+definition+of+%22word\
%22&pg=PA28&ots=Qmmxf3GMD9&sig=ozMh8kXRtur8mhTDxXo88ZgOyeU&prev=http://www.\
google.com/search%3Fq%3Dcross-linguistic%2Bdefinition%2Bof%2B%2522word\
%2522&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1

mentions "phonological word" and "grammatical word".

Also look at
http://www.dur.ac.uk/Linguistics/syllabi/LING3251.html
and search it for the string "word".

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=3672
also has a book "on the definition of word".

http://assets.cambridge.org/052181/8990/sample/0521818990ws.pdf
includes Dixon & Aikhenvald's quote of several grammarians, including
Milewski, to the effect that the "word" is irrelevant, or at least not-very-
relevant, in the polysynthetic languages of North America.

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/q1007_lecture_08.pdf
is about the possibility of cross-linguistically valid definition(s) of
word-classes, i.e. "parts-of-speech".

HTH
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eldin