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Re: GROUPLANG : POLL2 (Re: cases, modifiers, pron

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Saturday, October 24, 1998, 16:26
Pablo Flores bez:
> I'm trying to make sense of all the possible distinctions, of course. > But I'm beginning to find the case system too logical, and certainly > not very natural (I mean not natural in the sense that I have to *think* > hard sometimes to use case X in situation Y; it doesn't pop out).
Well, that's true with any foreign language, unless you're fluent in a language, you have to think about what case/adposition/whatever you need to use, and that's especially true when dealing with a fundamentally different system. Even ergative-absolutive doesn't come naturally if you're used to an accusative-nominative system, and that's a relatively small difference between those two systems.
> I'm starting to think > the idea of merging nouns and verbs wasn't so good after all.
Ditto here, but for different reasons. I have no problems with sharing roots, heck, English does that all the time (e.g., water, comb, run), but to indicate verbs by means of cases just strikes me as unnatural. -- "It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father was hanged." - Irish proverb http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files ICQ: 18656696 AOL: NikTailor