Re: Necessary Components of a Language

On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 08:13:02PM -0400, Jim Henry wrote:
> On 4/24/07, MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com <MorphemeAddict@...>
> wrote:
> >In a message dated 4/23/2007 7:33:02 PM Central Daylight Time,
> >jimhenry1973@GMAIL.COM writes:
>
> >> 4. A way of indicating the sense in which a sentence is
> >> intended (mood or mode, roughly speaking - is it a
> >> question, statement, command, performative...?)
>
> >In many languages this is marked only by inflection.  The words themselves
> >are exactly the same.
>
> The two sentences seem to be in contradiction, unless you mean "words"
> in the abstract sense in which e.g.  "devi", "devu" and "devas" are
> all the same word?
[...]

He meant intonation (as in "inflection of voice").

Russian is one example where questions are exactly the same as
indicative clauses, except for tone of voice.


--T