Re: THEORY: languages without arguments

Douglas Koller wrote:

>What if you did it this way:
>
>[Morisan wa] [uta o utatta koto ga] arimasu.
>(As for) Mr. Mori, there is an instance/fact that he sang a song. (rendering
>the usual translation:)
>Mr. Mori has sung a song.
>[Boku no syumi wa][kitte o atumeru koto] desu.
>(As for) my hobby, it is the affair/event/thing/fact that I collect stamps.
They are certainly possible, but there are many instances where _koto_ can be
freely replaced by _no_, which is clearly a nominalizer in those contexts.  I
don't know about for these two examples, but they are interchangable in this
sentence:

Honyaku-o suru no/koto wa muzukasi desu.
translatino-OBJ do NOM TOP difficult is.
"Translating" is difficult.

There is no appropriate noun that I know of that would allow the _no_ version
to be a relative clause.

Like I said before, I think this grammatical function evolved from relative
clauses, so it may be tough to tell them apart sometimes.  Or perhaps
sometimes
it is purely grammatical, other times a relative clause.  Or I could be
completely wrong, but I doubt it.

Marcus Smith