Re: question about classifiers

On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Patrick Dunn wrote:
> > My question is, therefore, if I'm going to have these fifty or so pronouns
> > but no nouns, how did these pronouns evolve?
>
> Hmmm, a former noun-possessing stage?  Or a former serial verb stage.
> For instance:
>
> krz  qa xa  etu
> give I  you it.is.manufactured
>
> And word order was fairly free.  Then, later, _etu_ was shortened to
> _tu_ and migrated to a fixed order, in the process losing it's
> "verbness", and evolving into a suffix
I like this.  There could be, in fact, Advena languages with this pattern
still in existance, but in Advena "third world" nations, perhaps, without
the economic wherewithal to get to space.

> > In Earth languages with things like classifiers (you know, like in Thai),
> > how do these words evolve?  Are they just worn-down forms of the thing
> > they clasify?
>
> I believe so.  I suspect that what originally motivated their
> development in languages with them is either areal influence, or, in the
> case of the original language with it, too many homophones.  For
> instance, if a word _zang_ could mean "chicken", "boat" or "book" you
> might have "food-zang", "travel-zang" and "thing-zang" or something like
> that, with the first element evolving into a classifier by becoming
> restricted in use.
Ah.  That makes sense.

> > Or are they separate words with their own evolution?  And
> > how would the Advenae develop classifiers for things like "space crafts"
> > or even "mechanical object"?
>
> Why have classifiers?  You already use seperate verbs for things like
> "read".  You could have something like
>
> "They buillt it.  You fly in it" for "They built a space ship"
Well, they're not *really* classifiers.  They're just very specific
gendered pronouns -- for example, a pronoun with the gender "large
mechanical craft".  Although perhaps I won't get that specific.

The larger the number of pronouns I have, though, the bigger "verbal webs"
I can weave.  What I like about this idea is the amazing amounts of
information that can be jammed together in a little space.

krz-qa-tu-xa mda-qa-xa zdu-se-tu tlek-qa-tu.
give-i-it-you love-i-you read-one-it enjoy-i-it.

I give the book which I enjoyed to you whom I love.

In four words, essentially.