Re: inverse constructions

Gerald Koenig wrote:
> The verb and its 3 arguments total 4 elements forming the basic
> grammatical structure of a full sentence. Just as we have 2 dimensional
> structures, such as writing, we can have 2 dimensional languages, as
> attested by Nick, but they are not fully formed. They seem suited to a
> "flatland" of fiction, not a relativistic universe. It would be
> interesting to know the cultures they thrived in, and what was
> hierachical structure there. They seem less suited to describe a three
> dimensional world.
Hunh?  I'm sorry, but I don't think that this is a valid analogy.  A lot
of language have no cases, does that make them "zero dimensional"?
Besides, those languages that only have two or no (one?) cases simply
use word order and/or adpositions to compensate for it.  For instance,
consider the English sentence "John gave the boy the gift" - word order
distinguishes between "nominative", "accusative", and "dative" - dative
can also be distinguished by the preposition "to" as in "John gave the
gift TO the boy"

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