Re: CHAT: _Describing Morphosyntax_

[Hi, folks -- I'm back with a new email address.]

Paul Bennett wrote:

> Pirahã lacks more things than just numerals, such as clause embedding,
> relative tense, basic color terms and several other "needed" things. Thus,
> I was indicating that the "neededness" of some of the things usually
> considered "needed" can vary depending on the culture and ecology of the
> people who speak a particular language.
Of all the things that are surprising about the Piraha~ as described,
it seemed to me that one of the *least* surprising in principle was
the lack of irreducible colour terms. By analogy with the fact that
many languages *count* using reducible terms for numbers ('one more
finger to go', etc) it wouldn't have surprised me much if there had
been *various* languages in which all colour names were reducible
terms, too.

I might check out the book that this thread is about - after all, I
bought _A Practical Introduction to Phonetics_ based on accumulated
recommendations from the list, and didn't regret that.

Adrian.

P.S. An apology in advance to those in a technical capacity wrt the
list - inevitably I will sometimes forget to switch my "From" address
from the default (which is supposed to remain spam-free) to the one
I've subscribed with, causing unnecessary traffic on the server.
Sorry.