Re: verbs = nouns?

H. S. Teoh wrote:

>Though it does feel weird to realize that my understanding
>of how the language works turns out to be possibly incorrect :-P
Even if you go into linguistics professionally, that feeling will never go
away. I found things in Pima just this week that challenged how I perceive
things. The one syntax professor I've told about it had never heard of
anything like it either.

>I don't know why -- perhaps it's because of my early exposure to English
>-- but I just find it hard to convince myself that Chinese adjectives
>really aren't the same as English adjectives.
You are in good company. Ives Goddard, a famous American Indianist, refuses
to believe that languages can treat numbers like verbs, even though many
American Indian languages he works on do so.




Marcus Smith

"Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing."
                -- Thomas Huxley