Re: Only verbs and nouns

From: "Karapcik, Mike" <Karapcik@...>

>    Though some might balk at the reference (as I don my +5 Flame-resistant
> armor) Klingon does this. There are three categories of words: Nouns,
Verbs
> (the largest), and Leftovers.
>    Adjectives and adverbs are treated as verbs, and so can gain all the
> layers of verb affixes.
No flame coming from this direction. I've read that Arabic and general
Semitic grammar is based on three types of words, that is, the verb, the
noun and the particle. But honestly, I can't subscribe to that view, since
adjectives can be derived from both verbs and nouns. And since adjectives
exist in the language, they are a part of speech. Same goes for adverbs,
conjunctions, prepositions, the definite article, pronouns, interjections,
and so on.

I feel the attitude taken by the grammarian, whose name I forgot, was
classical Eurocentris; he was probably implying that somehow Semitic
languages aren't as sophisticated as Indo-European languages. But why can't
one say that IE languages have only nouns, verbs and particles?

Also, I don't think Klingon is supposed to be that intricate of a language
in the same terms as Vedic Sanskrit, because the Klingons are probably much
more linear in thought, while Tolkien's Sindarin Elves are
multi-dimensional. But I know neither artlang very well at all.

(Once again, it all seems to me as culturally-biased arguments, since all
languages have the capacity of being both very simple and very complex when
it comes to actual usage. Just in much different ways.)

ObConlang: The Techian grammarians describe their language as having those
same three parts of speech, but that's because they've had a long tradition
of being modest about themselves and their culture. They claim their nouns
only have three or four genders!

~Danny~


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