Re: Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)
| From: | Tamas Racsko <tracsko@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, September 27, 2004, 10:09 |
|---|
On 25 Sep 2004 11:07:57 "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@UCH...> wrote:
> There are much better examples (e.g., Georgian) of verbs agreeing
> with all arguments, so you need not have cited Sumerian.
There is another important factor of choosing examples, that is
the available knowledge of the individual, in this very case: mine.
:)) I am much more familiar with Sumerian than with Georgian.
The others I leave unanswered because IMHO they belong rather to
the discipline of the gnoseology than to the linguistics. Its
another interesting topic but I would not be discuss it here.
However, if sign languages can be treated as languages, I do not
find it heretic to treat witten Sumerian as a laguage, even if its
vocal form would be a completely different idiom. I do not find it
a possible theory to state that people in 3000 B.C. would have
tried to cheat us by inventing an unnatural "conlang", i.e. written
Sumerian. Therefore, if it would be a conlang, it still would
reflect real, natural features of early Mesopotamian linguistic
area that is worth to cite as examples.