Re: THEORY: languages without arguments

Marcus Smith wrote:
> I've just joined the list, and wouldn't you know it, this topic is what
> I've been working on for the past couple of months.
Greetings!  Are you a professional linguist?

> (If "pig" and "this" or "all" and "egg" change places, the sentences are
> ungrammatical.)
So, is it correct to say that the adjective must precede the noun, but
it doesn't matter how many things go between them?

> Except that you can get nominals without the "adpositions".  In colloquial
> Japanese, if the grammatical function of the noun can be determined from
> context, the particle is frequently left off.
Is this a recent development, perhaps influenced by Western languages,
or is this an ancient phenomenon?  If the first, could it be that
Japanese is simply in the midst of a change?  If the second, then it
would be a challenge to the theory, or at least to Japanese's status as
an example.

> Japanese also does not have the free word order of these head marking
> languages.  NPs rarely come after the verb, and when they do it is under
> very specific situations.
What kind of situations?  I was under the impression that Japanese NEVER
placed anything after the verb.

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