Re: All-verb language - instalment 1

Estel - your all-verb idea is very interesting, and reminds me of my
own conlang Telona.  I wonder on what grounds you distinguish your
four verb classes; you say "distinguished mainly on semantic grounds"
- mainly or purely?  If, for example, there are syntactic grounds for
distinguishing between the verb classes, then I suspect you would find
that they would not all be best described as verbs.

On the other hand, there may be no syntactic differences, and the
classes may be distinguished only by the kinds of English words they
translate (would you have had the same four classes if your first
language had been Mandarin?).  But then you effectively have a
language with only one syntactic word class (a goal of mine for
several years!) - so why call the words verbs?

The word 'verb' describes a particular syntactic type within a
standard noun-verb-adjective-etc. system.  If all words are
syntactically equivalent, then every word in your language must be
capable of fulfilling the referential function of a noun, the
descriptive function of an adjective, the oblique-argument-taking
function of a verb, the anaphoric function of a pronoun, etc., etc.

I think of my Telona as an all-noun language, although every word may
optionally take a 'direct object'.  When I'm creating words for
Telona, I deliberately try to put together systems of reference and
description that cut across the boundaries of the English parts of
speech, which I think would be more natural in a language whose
speakers know nothing of noun-verb distinctions.  Have a look at my
(sadly incomplete) reference document at
http://knibb.free.fr/030523.pdf - I'd be interested to hear whether
you think Telona is really all-verb, or your language is really all-
noun, or something in between. :)

your colleague in single-class conlanging,
Jonathan.

[reply to jonathan underscore knibb at hotmail dot com]
--
'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
Auden/Britten, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'

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