Re: FYI re: Greenberg's Universals

Raymod Brown wrote:

>Eh?  The two languages are not AFAIK remotely connected.  They have *very*
>different grammatical structures, and that's what Greenberg's Universals
>are about.
Chinese has had lots of influence on surrounding languages, and in many
cases our documentation does not go back far enough to determine exactly
how much influence.  There are many similarities from that area that we
cannot tell whether they are native to the languages or are the result of
borrowings.  Classifiers.  Tone/pitch-accent.  Lack of wh-movement (not
uncommon in the world, of course).  Long distance anaphors.  Blocking
affects in anaphors.  Lack of agreement on the verb.  Old Japanese texts
intentionally mimicked Chinese, and whose to say what parts crept into the
mainstream language?

> >(something he did a good job of BTW).  If he already had a good
> >representation of isolating languages, then it may be reasonable to drop
> >Mandarin off in favor of Japanese.
>
>It's arguable, as you will see from the Conlang archives (especially from
>the Mark Line era) whether modern Mandarin is an "isolating" language or
>not.  What surely is not controversial is that Japanese certainly is not.
I'm quite aware of the controversy about Mandarin being "isolating".

>[....]
> >want to have two Germanic languages on his list.  Since he also apparently
> >wanted a Celtic language, it would be best to use something other than
> >English, since all the Celtic languages have been influenced to some degree
> >by English.
>
>Er?  In what way has Breton been influenced by English??
Okay.  I was over-hasty in saying "all".


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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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