Re: CHAT: New Member With Questions
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Friday, March 16, 2001, 3:12 |
Brandon Denny wrote:
> 2) Again With Word Classes. Can a language make a distiction in class
> between, say, a proper noun, and a abstract noun? Does any know of any
> languages that do?
Fijian (and many other Austronesian languages) distinguishes common
nouns (marked by the article _na_) from proper nouns (marked by _ko_)
> If I wanted to say, "The Man came from China," would the sentance be:
> (In SOV format)
> Man+Nom Come.Past China.Acc
> Or
> Man+Nom Come.Past China.Abl
I'm not sure why accusative would be used for that, unless "come" is
simply an irregular verb, in which case there'd still be no conflict,
because the verb "come" would simply take accusative for source.
However, there could be some irregularity, like Finnish, IIRC, uses the
inessive for most locations, but some cities take a different case.
--
Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon
A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb
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