Re: Syntaxy-Turvy (long, crazy)

At 12:19 28.6.2000 -0400, Vasiliy Chernov wrote:

>Interestingly, it seems that verbs tend to denote dynamic situations
>with potentially several participants, whereas nouns more typically
>point to relatively stable entities with usually only few features
>attributed to them in each occurrence. So verbal syntax is usually
>richer and requires some means to distinguish more roles. Can this be
>reversed, I wonder?
Probably not beyond marking voice on the participants instead of on the
verbs.  IMHO the only "weird syntax" likely to exist is one where all full
words are formally verbs, but then whatever you do to make them function as
entity-lables will make them nouns in a functional sense.  The same applies
of course to all-nouns, but as I said I feel an all-noun natlang unlikely.



/BP
--
  B.Philip Jonsson  mailto:melroch@mail.com
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