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Re: R: Re: Spoken Thoughts ( My second, better formed, non crappy Language)

From:SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY <smithma@...>
Date:Sunday, December 31, 2000, 3:07
On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Mangiat wrote:

> > Nothing wrong with that. My current project Igassik (name to be changed > > soon) has no case distinctions. Furthermore, I've done work with a couple > > natlangs that have no case. > > Many modern European languages do not have case: Romance languages, Germanic > languages (except German, Icelandic and Faeroese), even a language which was > so inflective in the past as Bulgarian has today lost its case system, > iirc - Vasiliy?
Yes, but all these languages still have case distinctions in the pronoun system, from what I recall. I'm talking about languages that have NO case anywhere. When I was younger I thought that cases were a strange
> feature only two ancient languages had: Latin and Greek (the ones I knew > something about). How is the situation worldwide? Are there more languages > with or withour a case system?
I think case is more common than no cases (counting languages that only distinguish cases in the pronouns). But that is only a gut reaction to what I've seen. I've never seen it discussed explicitly.
> > My conlang Telek only distinguishes verbs, nouns, and particles. No > > adjectives, adverbs, or adpositions. That isn't unheard of at all in the > > natural language sector -- some people even claim there are languages that > > only have one part of speech, ie. verbs. (I'm skeptical - I think you > > need at least verbs and nouns)) > > Are these languages Amirindian ones? An old book of mine describes the > verbal system of some Amerindian tongues as 'so powerful that nouns do > appear as diminished.' It says that some langs use verbal phrases as 'I live > here' to translate 'my house': is this true?
Yup, it is quite common for words in American Indian languages to be nominalized verb phrases. For example, the word for table in Pima is _nolaftakudh_ which breaks up as _nolaf_ 'eat', _ta_ 'result of X-ing', and _kudh_ 'thing used in X-ing', so literally something like 'that which is used in eating'. I cannot recall the exact word, but in Chickasaw TV means something like 'see oneself on it'.
> > There are a few things you can do. > > > > 1) don't have either. Lots of languages don't have either. > > 2) have the indefinite _a_ but not _the_. > > 3) have both, like English. > > Why can't I have _the_ but not _a_?
Oversight. I've seen many more languages that have an indefinite but no definite, but that is probably just an accident. Marcus