Re: LANGUAGE LAWS

Nik wrote :

Tommie wrote :

> The problem with your argument lies in crude sign languages created by
> deaf people isolated from other deaf people.  Before there was any deaf
> community, deaf people simply created a few crude signs, which their
> family could interpret.  They might have a sign for "food/eat" (note
> that when I said "a few nouns and verbs, I did not mean that they were
> necessarily differentiated, only that there were probably no words that
> functioned as adpositions, etc,), or "water/drink", and things like
> that.  These are *definite* words.  Note that I agree that there
> probably weren't words that were specifically nouns, or specifically
> verbs, I simply meant that the first words probably were noun/verbs,
> with few, if any, modifiers such as adjectives and adverbs, and probably
> no gramatical relations like adpositions.
>
That's also how I understood your post. I've lost all proficiency in linguothing
since long, but I venture quoting linguics and say that words, grammemes,
morphemes etc. refer to 'concepts'. I don't know what 'concepts' refer to in
turn but linguists can't agree on that very basic issue either, so why couldn't
conlangers discuss the point ? ;-)
The term of 'universals' has thus been created to cram all human experience that
could not still be addressed given the state of nowadays' sciences (remember
'classifiers' ?:-)
But actually, let me get rid of cases, universals and stuff for a few secs and
wonder freely. When I was a child, the world was ruled by laws I could not
understand. In a first step I just did not understand that I did not understand
(:-). So the world was a place of items never involved in any process because
each object had an immutable role that I never tried identifying. I knew things
and people involved in states, not in processes, and these states where
referring to items in my environment, reversely to my current logics (one
should get that kind logics before 30 but I still wonder when watching some
people drive in Paris :-). That's how I expressed my first theme-rheme phrase.
I could not install things well in my own chrono-experience. But - luckily :-)
- in a second step I could understand that I did not quite understand the whole
thing. So I figured out rules that did not exist, trying to make sense out of
experience. Every item was like involved as a shadowy agent!
 i!
!
!
n countless mysterious processes :-). That's how I uttered my first predicates.
My chrono-experience was still blurred but I was construing fixed references. I
could understand that some things 'become', 'end', so both the process itself
and the lack of process became concepts 'inside' other concepts (learn > know)
then longer after, outside them (I have learned // I know) . That's how I
mastered my first verbs :-).
ABSolutive usually refers to a state, which very close to process, but not quite alike.
AGEntive and patientive tell one from another.
I don't say that these systems are 'childish', but only that they show different
sensibilities in chrono-experience.

Mathias

> --
> "It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
> was hanged." - Irish proverb
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