Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Verbs and Nouns
90 views
Skip to first unread message
DKleinecke
Apr 8, 2012, 8:30:10 PM4/8/12
to
There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns, of course, but they are few and far between.
I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via verbs.
Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies are not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via verbs.
Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies are not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 9, 2012, 12:03:58 AM4/9/12
to
(850 words total).
Nathan Sanders
Apr 9, 2012, 2:27:20 AM4/9/12
to
In article
<12080790.1383.1333931410504.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbgg10>,
in the dictionary) or token frequency (i.e., frequency of what's used
in conversation)?
If the latter, which kinds of conversations? Spoken, written,
technical, casual, speeches, between friends, between family, between
employer-employee, ...?
And for "noun" and "verb", do you just mean full words, or would you
count, say, an incorporated noun stem as a noun? For example, in
Nahuatl, you can say:
(1) niccua tlaxcalli
ni-c-cua tlaxcal-li
1S-3S-eat tortilla-ABS
'I am eating tortillas'
But you can also say:
(2) nitlaxcalcua
ni-tlaxcal-cua
'I am eating tortillas' (lit. 'I am tortilla-eating')
Does (2) contain a noun and a verb, or just a verb?
Are you counting different meanings of the same noun/verb as different
nouns/verbs, and if so, how distinct must the meanings be to count as
different words? For example, a "set" could be a sub-unit of a tennis
match, or a formal mathematical object, or a group of repeated
exercises (a set of push-ups), or a kit (a chemistry set), or a single
electronic apparatus (a television set), or a group of songs in a
single musical session, or a constructed location for a film, with
many of those being clearly semantically related, but still
identifiably distinct uses.
What about different verb+particle constructions that aren't fully
compositionally transparent? For example "look forward" means
'anticipate', "look out" means 'be cautious', "look after" means 'take
care of', "look over" means 'inspect', and "look up" means 'search for
in a reference', "look into" means 'invesitage', and you have to learn
the meanings of each verb+particle separately from the others.
You can of course give a post hoc rationalization for the meaning of
each, but you couldn't *predict* the meanings of each in advance. Why
couldn't "look forward" and "look out" have opposite meanings? (Cf.
the dual meaning of "anxious"). And when we "look up" something in a
dictionary, the dictionary is usually physically *down*, below our
eyes (few people look things up while craning their necks back).
Sure, it's an authority, and authorities are metaphorically "up", but
authorities aren't the only things that are, so "look up" is not
*predictably*, uniquely linked to authority. It could have just as
easily been metaphorically linked to age (grow up), or intensity
(clean up), or completion (button up), or attention (bring up), etc.
> The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> verbs.
Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
frequency!
And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions (though it usually conveys
the tense of the sentence, so it isn't completely meaningless). I
guess one could argue that the existential "be" in there-existentials
doesn't add any information that the "there" doesn't already add,
except again the tense, of course. Likewise for the "be" used in
passives, and maybe the aspectual helping verbs "be" and "have".
There may be a few more, but nearly all verbs add something to the
meaning of an utterance, even if it's just the tense.
There aren't very many such meaningless/redundant nouns, either,
unless you collapse the pronouns in with the nouns.
> Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies are
> not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
My hunch is that, no, the literature isn't useful, in part, because
the question is difficult to frame, and even once framed, it may not
even ask anything important (and thus, no one cared enough to answer
it).
But I don't know the corpus linguistics literature very well, so my
hunch could likely be wrong.
Nathan
--
Department of Linguistics
Swarthmore College
http://sanders.phonologist.org/
<12080790.1383.1333931410504.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbgg10>,
DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns,
> of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are
> mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
Are you referring to type frequency (i.e., frequency of what's listed
> There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns,
> of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are
> mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
in the dictionary) or token frequency (i.e., frequency of what's used
in conversation)?
If the latter, which kinds of conversations? Spoken, written,
technical, casual, speeches, between friends, between family, between
employer-employee, ...?
And for "noun" and "verb", do you just mean full words, or would you
count, say, an incorporated noun stem as a noun? For example, in
Nahuatl, you can say:
(1) niccua tlaxcalli
ni-c-cua tlaxcal-li
1S-3S-eat tortilla-ABS
'I am eating tortillas'
But you can also say:
(2) nitlaxcalcua
ni-tlaxcal-cua
'I am eating tortillas' (lit. 'I am tortilla-eating')
Does (2) contain a noun and a verb, or just a verb?
Are you counting different meanings of the same noun/verb as different
nouns/verbs, and if so, how distinct must the meanings be to count as
different words? For example, a "set" could be a sub-unit of a tennis
match, or a formal mathematical object, or a group of repeated
exercises (a set of push-ups), or a kit (a chemistry set), or a single
electronic apparatus (a television set), or a group of songs in a
single musical session, or a constructed location for a film, with
many of those being clearly semantically related, but still
identifiably distinct uses.
What about different verb+particle constructions that aren't fully
compositionally transparent? For example "look forward" means
'anticipate', "look out" means 'be cautious', "look after" means 'take
care of', "look over" means 'inspect', and "look up" means 'search for
in a reference', "look into" means 'invesitage', and you have to learn
the meanings of each verb+particle separately from the others.
You can of course give a post hoc rationalization for the meaning of
each, but you couldn't *predict* the meanings of each in advance. Why
couldn't "look forward" and "look out" have opposite meanings? (Cf.
the dual meaning of "anxious"). And when we "look up" something in a
dictionary, the dictionary is usually physically *down*, below our
eyes (few people look things up while craning their necks back).
Sure, it's an authority, and authorities are metaphorically "up", but
authorities aren't the only things that are, so "look up" is not
*predictably*, uniquely linked to authority. It could have just as
easily been metaphorically linked to age (grow up), or intensity
(clean up), or completion (button up), or attention (bring up), etc.
> The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> verbs.
frequency!
And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions (though it usually conveys
the tense of the sentence, so it isn't completely meaningless). I
guess one could argue that the existential "be" in there-existentials
doesn't add any information that the "there" doesn't already add,
except again the tense, of course. Likewise for the "be" used in
passives, and maybe the aspectual helping verbs "be" and "have".
There may be a few more, but nearly all verbs add something to the
meaning of an utterance, even if it's just the tense.
There aren't very many such meaningless/redundant nouns, either,
unless you collapse the pronouns in with the nouns.
> Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies are
> not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
the question is difficult to frame, and even once framed, it may not
even ask anything important (and thus, no one cared enough to answer
it).
But I don't know the corpus linguistics literature very well, so my
hunch could likely be wrong.
Nathan
--
Department of Linguistics
Swarthmore College
http://sanders.phonologist.org/
Joachim Pense
Apr 9, 2012, 2:38:38 AM4/9/12
to
Am 09.04.2012 02:30, schrieb DKleinecke:
> There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns, of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
>
Joachim
DKleinecke
Apr 9, 2012, 6:39:39 PM4/9/12
to
DKleinecke
Apr 9, 2012, 6:44:35 PM4/9/12
to
But is it fair to consider Basic English a language ?
DKleinecke
Apr 9, 2012, 7:19:51 PM4/9/12
to
On Sunday, April 8, 2012 11:27:20 PM UTC-7, Nathan Sanders wrote:
> In article
> <12080790.1383.1333931410504.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbgg10>,
> DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns,
> > of course, but they are few and far between.
> >
> > I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are
> > mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> Are you referring to type frequency (i.e., frequency of what's listed
> in the dictionary) or token frequency (i.e., frequency of what's used
> in conversation)?
I intended what you call token frequency. See my reply to Peter.
> In article
> <12080790.1383.1333931410504.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbgg10>,
> DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns,
> > of course, but they are few and far between.
> >
> > I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are
> > mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> Are you referring to type frequency (i.e., frequency of what's listed
> in the dictionary) or token frequency (i.e., frequency of what's used
> in conversation)?
> If the latter, which kinds of conversations? Spoken, written,
> technical, casual, speeches, between friends, between family, between
> employer-employee, ...?
By and large the verb-heavy languages are spoken by smallish groups of people in remote areas. The corpus we can see is mostly narrative. But we also have impressionistic reports from linguists who did the field work.
> And for "noun" and "verb", do you just mean full words, or would you
> count, say, an incorporated noun stem as a noun? For example, in
> Nahuatl, you can say:
>
> (1) niccua tlaxcalli
> ni-c-cua tlaxcal-li
> 1S-3S-eat tortilla-ABS
> 'I am eating tortillas'
>
> But you can also say:
>
> (2) nitlaxcalcua
> ni-tlaxcal-cua
> 'I am eating tortillas' (lit. 'I am tortilla-eating')
>
> Does (2) contain a noun and a verb, or just a verb?
> Are you counting different meanings of the same noun/verb as different
> nouns/verbs, and if so, how distinct must the meanings be to count as
> different words? For example, a "set" could be a sub-unit of a tennis
> match, or a formal mathematical object, or a group of repeated
> exercises (a set of push-ups), or a kit (a chemistry set), or a single
> electronic apparatus (a television set), or a group of songs in a
> single musical session, or a constructed location for a film, with
> many of those being clearly semantically related, but still
> identifiably distinct uses.
non-verbal sentences.
>
> What about different verb+particle constructions that aren't fully
> compositionally transparent? For example "look forward" means
> 'anticipate', "look out" means 'be cautious', "look after" means 'take
> care of', "look over" means 'inspect', and "look up" means 'search for
> in a reference', "look into" means 'invesitage', and you have to learn
> the meanings of each verb+particle separately from the others.
These questions matter, of course, in communication, but not in my question. All the particles belong to class "other" and are not counted either way. The analysis of these verbal adjuncts is an extremely interesting - but it was not what I inquired about.
> What about different verb+particle constructions that aren't fully
> compositionally transparent? For example "look forward" means
> 'anticipate', "look out" means 'be cautious', "look after" means 'take
> care of', "look over" means 'inspect', and "look up" means 'search for
> in a reference', "look into" means 'invesitage', and you have to learn
> the meanings of each verb+particle separately from the others.
> > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > verbs.
>
> Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> frequency!
> And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
> the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions (though it usually conveys
> the tense of the sentence, so it isn't completely meaningless). I
> guess one could argue that the existential "be" in there-existentials
> doesn't add any information that the "there" doesn't already add,
> except again the tense, of course. Likewise for the "be" used in
> passives, and maybe the aspectual helping verbs "be" and "have".
> There may be a few more, but nearly all verbs add something to the
> meaning of an utterance, even if it's just the tense.
> > Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies are
> > not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
>
> My hunch is that, no, the literature isn't useful, in part, because
> the question is difficult to frame, and even once framed, it may not
> even ask anything important (and thus, no one cared enough to answer
> it).
>
> But I don't know the corpus linguistics literature very well, so my
> hunch could likely be wrong.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Apr 9, 2012, 9:05:37 PM4/9/12
to
On Apr 9, 12:30 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns, of course, but they are few and far between.
Which languages do you have in mind?
> There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns, of course, but they are few and far between.
Nathan Sanders
Apr 9, 2012, 9:11:34 PM4/9/12
to
In article
<13887824.1145.1334013591976.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbbnw6>,
frequency instead? Or why not both? You could very well find a
language with a disproportionately large number of verbs in the
lexicon, but a disproportionally large number of nouns in utterances,
and then find another language with exactly the opposite pattern.
> > If the latter, which kinds of conversations? Spoken, written,
> > technical, casual, speeches, between friends, between family, between
> > employer-employee, ...?
>
> I hate to do this - yes. All and/or any. The more focused the better.
I would easily believe that different styles of conversation could
have different frequencies. And if they do, how would these different
styles be weighted with respect to each other? What if casual speech
is verb-heavy, but formal speech is noun-heavy?
> > And for "noun" and "verb", do you just mean full words, or would you
> > count, say, an incorporated noun stem as a noun? For example, in
> > Nahuatl, you can say:
> >
> > (1) niccua tlaxcalli
> > ni-c-cua tlaxcal-li
> > 1S-3S-eat tortilla-ABS
> > 'I am eating tortillas'
> >
> > But you can also say:
> >
> > (2) nitlaxcalcua
> > ni-tlaxcal-cua
> > 'I am eating tortillas' (lit. 'I am tortilla-eating')
> >
> > Does (2) contain a noun and a verb, or just a verb?
>
> I assumed one could separate out phonological words and assign them to verb,
> noun or other.
That's a bit of a dangerous assumption. It's not always obvious where
word boundaries are in any given language, because some languages
don't have any word boundary phonology that is distinct from morpheme
or syllable boundary phonology, and if every word boundary coincides
with a morpheme or syllable boundary, you can't tell where words end
and begin.
> Your second example is, in my opinion, a single word. I know
> next to nothing about Nahuatl but I would have to assure myself somehow that
> the tlaxcal in (2) was an actual incorporated noun and not a noun subjected
> to derivation into a verb.
Morphosyntactically, "tlaxcalcua" behaves as a verb (for example, it
shows subject-verb agreement with the ni- prefix) and "tlaxcal" when
part of "tlaxcalcua" does not behave morphosyntactically as a noun (it
doesn't allow any nominal affixes, like the usually obligatory
absolutive -li, or plural, or possession, or anything nominal
morphology).
But in terms of communicative content, and number and type of lexical
stems, (1) and (2) are equivalent. They only differ in the order of
the lexical stems (V-N in (1) versus N-V in (2)), and the required
inflections (nominal and verbal in (1) versus verbal only in (2)).
> > Are you counting different meanings of the same noun/verb as different
> > nouns/verbs, and if so, how distinct must the meanings be to count as
> > different words? For example, a "set" could be a sub-unit of a tennis
> > match, or a formal mathematical object, or a group of repeated
> > exercises (a set of push-ups), or a kit (a chemistry set), or a single
> > electronic apparatus (a television set), or a group of songs in a
> > single musical session, or a constructed location for a film, with
> > many of those being clearly semantically related, but still
> > identifiably distinct uses.
>
> This was strictly a formal syntactic question.
Finding a universal way to separate out the syntax from the lexicon,
the morphology, or the semantics is quite probably an utterly
impossible task.
> All nouns, whatever their
> meanings count exactly the same and all verbs likewise.
But the question is, what counts as a noun? Are you talking about
noun stems (a lexical definition)? Are you talking about words
(whatever those may be...) that exhibit nominal morphology? How are
you defining what is and is not a noun?
For example, what about gerunds, which behave partly like nouns (they
can be possessed, be in subject position, and take adjectival
modifiers: "my continuous smoking bothered him") and partly like verbs
(they can take nominal direct objects, verb phrase complements, and
adverbial modifiers: "defiantly smoking a cigarette bothers him", "my
having smoked a cigarette yesterday bothered him")?
Compare "they watched my dancing" to "they watched me dancing" to
"they watched as I danced". As you move from one sentence to the
next, the instance of "dance" seems more verb-like and less noun-like.
And English also has something like noun incorporation, as in "I went
grocery shopping" (cf. "I went shopping for groceries", which clearly
has one noun)? And what about compounds, like "he's a rat catcher",
or "there's a mousetrap"?
It's just not clear to me that nouns and verbs can be so easily
catalogued in English, let alone in a wide variety of languages with
vastly different morphosyntax.
> If there is any
> semantics to be done it would be restoring implicit copulas in languages with
> non-verbal sentences.
Do those restored copulas count towards the number of verbs? If so,
what about other types of missing words, like the missing noun in "I
have two dogs, and John has one" or the missing verb in "Mary ate
fish, and John, ham"?
> > What about different verb+particle constructions that aren't fully
> > compositionally transparent? For example "look forward" means
> > 'anticipate', "look out" means 'be cautious', "look after" means 'take
> > care of', "look over" means 'inspect', and "look up" means 'search for
> > in a reference', "look into" means 'invesitage', and you have to learn
> > the meanings of each verb+particle separately from the others.
>
> These questions matter, of course, in communication, but not in my question.
> All the particles belong to class "other" and are not counted either way.
> The analysis of these verbal adjuncts is an extremely interesting - but it
> was not what I inquired about.
It would matter if you were interested in type frequency (I didn't
know when I asked these questions which frequencies you were
interested in).
> > > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to
> > > be
> > > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but
> > > what
> > > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > > verbs.
> >
> > Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> > frequency!
>
> I agree - but I think there is a correlation. My text analysis techniques put
> in front of me sentences where all the non-verbal material has been replaced
> by symbols. In the material in question it was impossible to form any notion
> of what was going on from the verbs alone.
I don't see how that's any less true for nouns. If you know that
"dogs" and "cats" are the only nouns in a sentence, you have no idea
which did what to which, if anything even happened at all! The full
sentence could be "the dogs chased the cats", or "the dogs were chased
by the cats", or "the dogs saw the cats", or "the dogs wanted to chase
the cats", or "the dogs didn't chase the cats", or "the dogs and cats
did nothing", or "dogs and cats are natural enemies", or even "there
were no dogs and cats"!
> > And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> > There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
> > the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions (though it usually conveys
> > the tense of the sentence, so it isn't completely meaningless). I
> > guess one could argue that the existential "be" in there-existentials
> > doesn't add any information that the "there" doesn't already add,
> > except again the tense, of course. Likewise for the "be" used in
> > passives, and maybe the aspectual helping verbs "be" and "have".
> > There may be a few more, but nearly all verbs add something to the
> > meaning of an utterance, even if it's just the tense.
>
> I agree - which is why finding a text where verbs communicate very little is
> so striking. Ordinary English is, in my opinion lacking any statistics, not
> especially noun-heavy.
>
> > > Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies
> > > are
> > > not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
> >
> > My hunch is that, no, the literature isn't useful, in part, because
> > the question is difficult to frame, and even once framed, it may not
> > even ask anything important (and thus, no one cared enough to answer
> > it).
> >
> > But I don't know the corpus linguistics literature very well, so my
> > hunch could likely be wrong.
>
> I could put on my Whorfian hat and claim it must make a difference in the way
> you think.
Why you put on such a weird hat?
<13887824.1145.1334013591976.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbbnw6>,
DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, April 8, 2012 11:27:20 PM UTC-7, Nathan Sanders wrote:
> > In article
> > <12080790.1383.1333931410504.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbgg10>,
> > DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are
> > > nouns,
> > > of course, but they are few and far between.
> > >
> > > I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are
> > > mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far
> > > between.
> >
> > Are you referring to type frequency (i.e., frequency of what's listed
> > in the dictionary) or token frequency (i.e., frequency of what's used
> > in conversation)?
>
> I intended what you call token frequency. See my reply to Peter.
Which then raises the question: why? Or rather, why not type
> On Sunday, April 8, 2012 11:27:20 PM UTC-7, Nathan Sanders wrote:
> > In article
> > <12080790.1383.1333931410504.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbgg10>,
> > DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are
> > > nouns,
> > > of course, but they are few and far between.
> > >
> > > I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are
> > > mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far
> > > between.
> >
> > Are you referring to type frequency (i.e., frequency of what's listed
> > in the dictionary) or token frequency (i.e., frequency of what's used
> > in conversation)?
>
> I intended what you call token frequency. See my reply to Peter.
frequency instead? Or why not both? You could very well find a
language with a disproportionately large number of verbs in the
lexicon, but a disproportionally large number of nouns in utterances,
and then find another language with exactly the opposite pattern.
> > If the latter, which kinds of conversations? Spoken, written,
> > technical, casual, speeches, between friends, between family, between
> > employer-employee, ...?
>
> I hate to do this - yes. All and/or any. The more focused the better.
have different frequencies. And if they do, how would these different
styles be weighted with respect to each other? What if casual speech
is verb-heavy, but formal speech is noun-heavy?
> > And for "noun" and "verb", do you just mean full words, or would you
> > count, say, an incorporated noun stem as a noun? For example, in
> > Nahuatl, you can say:
> >
> > (1) niccua tlaxcalli
> > ni-c-cua tlaxcal-li
> > 1S-3S-eat tortilla-ABS
> > 'I am eating tortillas'
> >
> > But you can also say:
> >
> > (2) nitlaxcalcua
> > ni-tlaxcal-cua
> > 'I am eating tortillas' (lit. 'I am tortilla-eating')
> >
> > Does (2) contain a noun and a verb, or just a verb?
>
> I assumed one could separate out phonological words and assign them to verb,
> noun or other.
word boundaries are in any given language, because some languages
don't have any word boundary phonology that is distinct from morpheme
or syllable boundary phonology, and if every word boundary coincides
with a morpheme or syllable boundary, you can't tell where words end
and begin.
> Your second example is, in my opinion, a single word. I know
> next to nothing about Nahuatl but I would have to assure myself somehow that
> the tlaxcal in (2) was an actual incorporated noun and not a noun subjected
> to derivation into a verb.
shows subject-verb agreement with the ni- prefix) and "tlaxcal" when
part of "tlaxcalcua" does not behave morphosyntactically as a noun (it
doesn't allow any nominal affixes, like the usually obligatory
absolutive -li, or plural, or possession, or anything nominal
morphology).
But in terms of communicative content, and number and type of lexical
stems, (1) and (2) are equivalent. They only differ in the order of
the lexical stems (V-N in (1) versus N-V in (2)), and the required
inflections (nominal and verbal in (1) versus verbal only in (2)).
> > Are you counting different meanings of the same noun/verb as different
> > nouns/verbs, and if so, how distinct must the meanings be to count as
> > different words? For example, a "set" could be a sub-unit of a tennis
> > match, or a formal mathematical object, or a group of repeated
> > exercises (a set of push-ups), or a kit (a chemistry set), or a single
> > electronic apparatus (a television set), or a group of songs in a
> > single musical session, or a constructed location for a film, with
> > many of those being clearly semantically related, but still
> > identifiably distinct uses.
>
> This was strictly a formal syntactic question.
the morphology, or the semantics is quite probably an utterly
impossible task.
> All nouns, whatever their
> meanings count exactly the same and all verbs likewise.
noun stems (a lexical definition)? Are you talking about words
(whatever those may be...) that exhibit nominal morphology? How are
you defining what is and is not a noun?
For example, what about gerunds, which behave partly like nouns (they
can be possessed, be in subject position, and take adjectival
modifiers: "my continuous smoking bothered him") and partly like verbs
(they can take nominal direct objects, verb phrase complements, and
adverbial modifiers: "defiantly smoking a cigarette bothers him", "my
having smoked a cigarette yesterday bothered him")?
Compare "they watched my dancing" to "they watched me dancing" to
"they watched as I danced". As you move from one sentence to the
next, the instance of "dance" seems more verb-like and less noun-like.
And English also has something like noun incorporation, as in "I went
grocery shopping" (cf. "I went shopping for groceries", which clearly
has one noun)? And what about compounds, like "he's a rat catcher",
or "there's a mousetrap"?
It's just not clear to me that nouns and verbs can be so easily
catalogued in English, let alone in a wide variety of languages with
vastly different morphosyntax.
> If there is any
> semantics to be done it would be restoring implicit copulas in languages with
> non-verbal sentences.
what about other types of missing words, like the missing noun in "I
have two dogs, and John has one" or the missing verb in "Mary ate
fish, and John, ham"?
> > What about different verb+particle constructions that aren't fully
> > compositionally transparent? For example "look forward" means
> > 'anticipate', "look out" means 'be cautious', "look after" means 'take
> > care of', "look over" means 'inspect', and "look up" means 'search for
> > in a reference', "look into" means 'invesitage', and you have to learn
> > the meanings of each verb+particle separately from the others.
>
> These questions matter, of course, in communication, but not in my question.
> All the particles belong to class "other" and are not counted either way.
> The analysis of these verbal adjuncts is an extremely interesting - but it
> was not what I inquired about.
know when I asked these questions which frequencies you were
interested in).
> > > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to
> > > be
> > > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but
> > > what
> > > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > > verbs.
> >
> > Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> > frequency!
>
> I agree - but I think there is a correlation. My text analysis techniques put
> in front of me sentences where all the non-verbal material has been replaced
> by symbols. In the material in question it was impossible to form any notion
> of what was going on from the verbs alone.
"dogs" and "cats" are the only nouns in a sentence, you have no idea
which did what to which, if anything even happened at all! The full
sentence could be "the dogs chased the cats", or "the dogs were chased
by the cats", or "the dogs saw the cats", or "the dogs wanted to chase
the cats", or "the dogs didn't chase the cats", or "the dogs and cats
did nothing", or "dogs and cats are natural enemies", or even "there
were no dogs and cats"!
> > And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> > There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
> > the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions (though it usually conveys
> > the tense of the sentence, so it isn't completely meaningless). I
> > guess one could argue that the existential "be" in there-existentials
> > doesn't add any information that the "there" doesn't already add,
> > except again the tense, of course. Likewise for the "be" used in
> > passives, and maybe the aspectual helping verbs "be" and "have".
> > There may be a few more, but nearly all verbs add something to the
> > meaning of an utterance, even if it's just the tense.
>
> I agree - which is why finding a text where verbs communicate very little is
> so striking. Ordinary English is, in my opinion lacking any statistics, not
> especially noun-heavy.
>
> > > Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies
> > > are
> > > not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
> >
> > My hunch is that, no, the literature isn't useful, in part, because
> > the question is difficult to frame, and even once framed, it may not
> > even ask anything important (and thus, no one cared enough to answer
> > it).
> >
> > But I don't know the corpus linguistics literature very well, so my
> > hunch could likely be wrong.
>
> I could put on my Whorfian hat and claim it must make a difference in the way
> you think.
Nathan Sanders
Apr 9, 2012, 9:14:51 PM4/9/12
to
In article
<19c03fac-1673-40c9...@a8g2000pbe.googlegroups.com>,
I was just about to post the same question! :-)
<19c03fac-1673-40c9...@a8g2000pbe.googlegroups.com>,
Brian M. Scott
Apr 10, 2012, 12:12:29 AM4/10/12
to
On Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:11:34 -0400, Nathan Sanders
<san...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in
<news:sanders-644666...@free.teranews.com> in
sci.lang:
> In article
> <13887824.1145.1334013591976.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbbnw6>,
> DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
>> If there is any semantics to be done it would be
>> restoring implicit copulas in languages with non-verbal
>> sentences.
> Do those restored copulas count towards the number of
> verbs? If so, what about other types of missing words,
> like the missing noun in "I have two dogs, and John has
> one" or the missing verb in "Mary ate fish, and John,
> ham"?
Or these examples from Old Norse.
Konungr lét skíra Hákon ok kenna rétta trú.
King let baptize Hákon and teach true faith.
The king had Hákon baptized and taught the true faith.
(Missing direct object.)
Þat mæltu sumir, at leitat skyldi um sættir.
That said some, that sought should about settlement.
Some said that an attempt should be made to reach a
settlement.
(Missing infinitive, <vera> 'to be'.)
Tǫlðu sumir várkunn, at hann vildi eigi miðla ríkit.
Said some cause that he wanted not divide earldom-the.
Some said there was understandable cause for his
unwillingness to divide the earldom.
(Missing infinitive <vera> in accusative + infinitive
construction.)
Fimm menn hǫfðu bana af liði Helga, en sárir allir aðrir.
Five men had death from force of-Helgi, but wounded all
others.
Five of Helgi's men were killed, and all the others were
wounded.
(Missing finite verb, <váru> 'were'.)
Ætlaði hann yfir á Nes.
Intended he over to Caithness.
He intended to go over to Caithness.
(Missing verb of motion.)
Sámr sagðisk vilja heim aptr.
Sámr said-of-himself want home back.
Sámr said he wanted to go back home.
(Missing verb of motion.)
Never mind omissions familiar from English, like:
Karl hljóp á annat skip ok bað þá taka til ára.
Karl leaped onto another ship and bade them take to oars.
Karl leaped onto another ship and told them to start
rowing.
(Missing subject.)
Brian
<san...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in
<news:sanders-644666...@free.teranews.com> in
sci.lang:
> In article
> <13887824.1145.1334013591976.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@pbbnw6>,
> DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If there is any semantics to be done it would be
>> restoring implicit copulas in languages with non-verbal
>> sentences.
> Do those restored copulas count towards the number of
> verbs? If so, what about other types of missing words,
> like the missing noun in "I have two dogs, and John has
> one" or the missing verb in "Mary ate fish, and John,
> ham"?
Konungr lét skíra Hákon ok kenna rétta trú.
King let baptize Hákon and teach true faith.
The king had Hákon baptized and taught the true faith.
(Missing direct object.)
Þat mæltu sumir, at leitat skyldi um sættir.
That said some, that sought should about settlement.
Some said that an attempt should be made to reach a
settlement.
(Missing infinitive, <vera> 'to be'.)
Tǫlðu sumir várkunn, at hann vildi eigi miðla ríkit.
Said some cause that he wanted not divide earldom-the.
Some said there was understandable cause for his
unwillingness to divide the earldom.
(Missing infinitive <vera> in accusative + infinitive
construction.)
Fimm menn hǫfðu bana af liði Helga, en sárir allir aðrir.
Five men had death from force of-Helgi, but wounded all
others.
Five of Helgi's men were killed, and all the others were
wounded.
(Missing finite verb, <váru> 'were'.)
Ætlaði hann yfir á Nes.
Intended he over to Caithness.
He intended to go over to Caithness.
(Missing verb of motion.)
Sámr sagðisk vilja heim aptr.
Sámr said-of-himself want home back.
Sámr said he wanted to go back home.
(Missing verb of motion.)
Never mind omissions familiar from English, like:
Karl hljóp á annat skip ok bað þá taka til ára.
Karl leaped onto another ship and bade them take to oars.
Karl leaped onto another ship and told them to start
rowing.
(Missing subject.)
Brian
Adam Funk
Apr 10, 2012, 10:39:38 AM4/10/12
to
"have" in English anyway.
--
In the 1970s, people began receiving utility bills for
-£999,999,996.32 and it became harder to sustain the
myth of the infallible electronic brain. (Stob 2001)
Helmut Richter
Apr 10, 2012, 2:46:41 PM4/10/12
to
On Mon, 9 Apr 2012, Nathan Sanders wrote:
> DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > verbs.
>
> Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> frequency!
>
> And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
> the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions [...]
In German (I do not know whether the same phenomenon exists in English as
well) there is a writing style which is called nominal style: replace
verbs by "meaningless" or "generic" verbs and insert the previous verb as
a noun. "Meaningless" does not mean they do not convey any meaning, they
just do not convey a meaning that is relevant for the meaning of the
sentence. Popular verbs for the purpose are "durchführen" (perform,
execute), "beinhalten" (comprehend), "darstellen" (constitute), and other
longish verbs that can easily be made part of any sentence. Instead of
"Ich habe erwogen, zu messen" (I considered measuring) you might say "Ich
habe in Erwägung gezogen, eine Messung durchzuführen" (I took into
consideration to perform a measurement). This example is from
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalstil where you also find a number of
other transformations to accomplish nominal style.
Well, this is a question not of language but of style. However, it could
be that different languages are to different extent open for nominal
style, probably German more than English (because both the cases and the
construction of long compounds are very useful for combining nouns with
not so many intervening verbs). I have never learnt Sanskrit but was told
that a similar nominal style was used in classical philosophical works in
Sanskrit.
It becomes a question of language proper and not only of style when a
langauges makes regular use of such constructs. One could imagine a
language which has no or very few verbs, and these serve only as glue,
i.e. as purely functional particles, between the nouns. In such a
language, you do no longer speak and laugh but you perform a speaking and
laughing, or you are a speaker or laugher. The other way round is harder
to imagine: a language where you have no table or chair but only things
that are tabling or chairing. This is so at least for us Europeans who
have in their languages lots of noun-making devices (for "to train" a
training, a trainer and a trainee) but very few verb-making devices --
even though people say that in English every noun can be verbed.
I do not know a natural language that makes everything a noun but there is
a constructed language along these lines, AllNoun by Tom Breton
(http://www.panix.com/~tehom/allnoun/allnoun8.faq).
Adjectives are easier to get rid of than either nouns or verbs. For
instance Hebrew, in particular Classical Hebrew, has lots of verbs that
translate into English as "be ..." or "make something ..." where "..."
stands for an adjective, thus using verbs instead of adjectives, and of
the remaining adjectives, there are probably some that are frozen
participles of such verbs with adjective meaning. Swahili, on the other
hand, uses nouns for many adjectives using constructs like "having
strength" instead of "strong" in many instances.
> (though it usually conveys
> the tense of the sentence, so it isn't completely meaningless). I
> guess one could argue that the existential "be" in there-existentials
> doesn't add any information that the "there" doesn't already add,
> except again the tense, of course. Likewise for the "be" used in
> passives, and maybe the aspectual helping verbs "be" and "have".
> There may be a few more, but nearly all verbs add something to the
> meaning of an utterance, even if it's just the tense.
It it's just the tense that is left, it is a functional particle. I would
call it a verb-free language even if some verbs are left that have no
meaning other than to combine nouns, such as "is", "has", "is part of",
"has property", etc.
The interesting question is what happens when new words for new things
have to be coined: will the speakers of the language coin only new nouns
which they then use in sentences with the old verbs, or will they coin new
verbs as well? Perhaps the noun-heavy texts which David Kleinecke noticed
in engineering magazines come from the dilemma that new English terms are
mainly new nouns.
--
Helmut Richter
> DKleinecke <dklei...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > verbs.
>
> Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> frequency!
>
> And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
In German (I do not know whether the same phenomenon exists in English as
well) there is a writing style which is called nominal style: replace
verbs by "meaningless" or "generic" verbs and insert the previous verb as
a noun. "Meaningless" does not mean they do not convey any meaning, they
just do not convey a meaning that is relevant for the meaning of the
sentence. Popular verbs for the purpose are "durchführen" (perform,
execute), "beinhalten" (comprehend), "darstellen" (constitute), and other
longish verbs that can easily be made part of any sentence. Instead of
"Ich habe erwogen, zu messen" (I considered measuring) you might say "Ich
habe in Erwägung gezogen, eine Messung durchzuführen" (I took into
consideration to perform a measurement). This example is from
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalstil where you also find a number of
other transformations to accomplish nominal style.
Well, this is a question not of language but of style. However, it could
be that different languages are to different extent open for nominal
style, probably German more than English (because both the cases and the
construction of long compounds are very useful for combining nouns with
not so many intervening verbs). I have never learnt Sanskrit but was told
that a similar nominal style was used in classical philosophical works in
Sanskrit.
It becomes a question of language proper and not only of style when a
langauges makes regular use of such constructs. One could imagine a
language which has no or very few verbs, and these serve only as glue,
i.e. as purely functional particles, between the nouns. In such a
language, you do no longer speak and laugh but you perform a speaking and
laughing, or you are a speaker or laugher. The other way round is harder
to imagine: a language where you have no table or chair but only things
that are tabling or chairing. This is so at least for us Europeans who
have in their languages lots of noun-making devices (for "to train" a
training, a trainer and a trainee) but very few verb-making devices --
even though people say that in English every noun can be verbed.
I do not know a natural language that makes everything a noun but there is
a constructed language along these lines, AllNoun by Tom Breton
(http://www.panix.com/~tehom/allnoun/allnoun8.faq).
Adjectives are easier to get rid of than either nouns or verbs. For
instance Hebrew, in particular Classical Hebrew, has lots of verbs that
translate into English as "be ..." or "make something ..." where "..."
stands for an adjective, thus using verbs instead of adjectives, and of
the remaining adjectives, there are probably some that are frozen
participles of such verbs with adjective meaning. Swahili, on the other
hand, uses nouns for many adjectives using constructs like "having
strength" instead of "strong" in many instances.
> (though it usually conveys
> the tense of the sentence, so it isn't completely meaningless). I
> guess one could argue that the existential "be" in there-existentials
> doesn't add any information that the "there" doesn't already add,
> except again the tense, of course. Likewise for the "be" used in
> passives, and maybe the aspectual helping verbs "be" and "have".
> There may be a few more, but nearly all verbs add something to the
> meaning of an utterance, even if it's just the tense.
call it a verb-free language even if some verbs are left that have no
meaning other than to combine nouns, such as "is", "has", "is part of",
"has property", etc.
The interesting question is what happens when new words for new things
have to be coined: will the speakers of the language coin only new nouns
which they then use in sentences with the old verbs, or will they coin new
verbs as well? Perhaps the noun-heavy texts which David Kleinecke noticed
in engineering magazines come from the dilemma that new English terms are
mainly new nouns.
--
Helmut Richter
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 10, 2012, 4:07:41 PM4/10/12
to
On Apr 10, 10:39 am, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2012-04-09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Apr 8, 8:30 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns, of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> >> I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> >> The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via verbs.
>
> >> Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies are not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
>
> > The "Basic English" experiment had ca. 18 verbs and close to 800 nouns
> > (850 words total).
>
> Well, you can get a lot of different things out of "do", "make", &
> "have" in English anyway.
That was one of the main problems. They pretended that the zillions of
> On 2012-04-09, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Apr 8, 8:30 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> There are languages in which utterances are mostly verbs. There are nouns, of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> >> I am curious to what extent there are languages in which utterances are mostly nouns. There are verbs, of course, but they are few and far between.
>
> >> The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via verbs.
>
> >> Are there any useful statistics in the literature? Most corpus studies are not focused enough. How about other languages than English?
>
> > The "Basic English" experiment had ca. 18 verbs and close to 800 nouns
> > (850 words total).
>
> Well, you can get a lot of different things out of "do", "make", &
> "have" in English anyway.
idioms formed from empty verbs + particle didn't count separately,
even though they had to be learned individually.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Apr 10, 2012, 5:25:32 PM4/10/12
to
On Apr 11, 6:46 am, Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Apr 2012, Nathan Sanders wrote:
> > DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> > > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> > > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > > verbs.
>
> > Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> > frequency!
>
> > And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> > There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
> > the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions [...]
>
> In German (I do not know whether the same phenomenon exists in English as
> well) there is a writing style which is called nominal style: replace
> verbs by "meaningless" or "generic" verbs and insert the previous verb as
> a noun. "Meaningless" does not mean they do not convey any meaning, they
> just do not convey a meaning that is relevant for the meaning of the
> sentence. Popular verbs for the purpose are "durchführen" (perform,
> execute), "beinhalten" (comprehend), "darstellen" (constitute), and other
> longish verbs that can easily be made part of any sentence. Instead of
> "Ich habe erwogen, zu messen" (I considered measuring) you might say "Ich
> habe in Erwägung gezogen, eine Messung durchzuführen" (I took into
> consideration to perform a measurement). This example is fromhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalstilwhere you also find a number of
> On Mon, 9 Apr 2012, Nathan Sanders wrote:
> > DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> > > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> > > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > > verbs.
>
> > Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> > frequency!
>
> > And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> > There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
> > the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions [...]
>
> In German (I do not know whether the same phenomenon exists in English as
> well) there is a writing style which is called nominal style: replace
> verbs by "meaningless" or "generic" verbs and insert the previous verb as
> a noun. "Meaningless" does not mean they do not convey any meaning, they
> just do not convey a meaning that is relevant for the meaning of the
> sentence. Popular verbs for the purpose are "durchführen" (perform,
> execute), "beinhalten" (comprehend), "darstellen" (constitute), and other
> longish verbs that can easily be made part of any sentence. Instead of
> "Ich habe erwogen, zu messen" (I considered measuring) you might say "Ich
> habe in Erwägung gezogen, eine Messung durchzuführen" (I took into
> other transformations to accomplish nominal style.
There is a similar distinction made by linguists analyzing style in
English, beginning with Rulon S.Wells 'Nominal and verbal style', in
Sebeok (ed) Style in Language (1960). Nominal style is associated with
formality, and with genres such as scientific writing. This was
pursued by M.A.K.Halliday and various others (some references at
pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Formality.pdf ).
DKleinecke
Apr 11, 2012, 12:07:22 AM4/11/12
to
DKleinecke
Apr 11, 2012, 12:24:54 AM4/11/12
to
As to Whorf - I can't get over the suspicion that we have dismissed him too easily. Maybe his specific suggestions can be ignored - but the basic idea that the nature of one's language effects the nature one's thought remains interesting. I suppose it cannot be reconciled with Chomskian speculations about an inane linguistic capability - but must it?
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 11, 2012, 8:01:20 AM4/11/12
to
On Apr 11, 12:24 am, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 10, 2012 2:25:32 PM UTC-7, benl...@ihug.co.nz wrote:
> > On Apr 11, 6:46 am, Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 9 Apr 2012, Nathan Sanders wrote:
> > > > DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> > > > > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> > > > > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > > > > verbs.
>
> > > > Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> > > > frequency!
>
> > > > And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> > > > There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
> > > > the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions [...]
>
> > > In German (I do not know whether the same phenomenon exists in English as
> > > well) there is a writing style which is called nominal style: replace
> > > verbs by "meaningless" or "generic" verbs and insert the previous verb as
> > > a noun. "Meaningless" does not mean they do not convey any meaning, they
> > > just do not convey a meaning that is relevant for the meaning of the
> > > sentence. Popular verbs for the purpose are "durchführen" (perform,
> > > execute), "beinhalten" (comprehend), "darstellen" (constitute), and other
> > > longish verbs that can easily be made part of any sentence. Instead of
> > > "Ich habe erwogen, zu messen" (I considered measuring) you might say "Ich
> > > habe in Erwägung gezogen, eine Messung durchzuführen" (I took into
> > > consideration to perform a measurement). This example is fromhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalstilwhereyou also find a number of
> On Tuesday, April 10, 2012 2:25:32 PM UTC-7, benl...@ihug.co.nz wrote:
> > On Apr 11, 6:46 am, Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 9 Apr 2012, Nathan Sanders wrote:
> > > > DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > The most noun-heavy texts I have ever examined are English (American to be
> > > > > precise) engineering magazines. Not only are they filled with nouns but what
> > > > > verbs do appear are generic and bland. Almost nothing is communicated via
> > > > > verbs.
>
> > > > Communicative content is another matter altogether from noun/verb
> > > > frequency!
>
> > > > And I'm not sure I agree with you that verbs don't communicate much.
> > > > There are very few meaningless or redundant verbs in English. There's
> > > > the "do" that shows up in yes-no questions [...]
>
> > > In German (I do not know whether the same phenomenon exists in English as
> > > well) there is a writing style which is called nominal style: replace
> > > verbs by "meaningless" or "generic" verbs and insert the previous verb as
> > > a noun. "Meaningless" does not mean they do not convey any meaning, they
> > > just do not convey a meaning that is relevant for the meaning of the
> > > sentence. Popular verbs for the purpose are "durchführen" (perform,
> > > execute), "beinhalten" (comprehend), "darstellen" (constitute), and other
> > > longish verbs that can easily be made part of any sentence. Instead of
> > > "Ich habe erwogen, zu messen" (I considered measuring) you might say "Ich
> > > habe in Erwägung gezogen, eine Messung durchzuführen" (I took into
> > > other transformations to accomplish nominal style.
>
> > There is a similar distinction made by linguists analyzing style in
> > English, beginning with Rulon S.Wells 'Nominal and verbal style', in
> > Sebeok (ed) Style in Language (1960). Nominal style is associated with
> > formality, and with genres such as scientific writing. This was
> > pursued by M.A.K.Halliday and various others (some references at
> > pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Formality.pdf ).
>
> Thank you. This is precisely what I was seeking - for English. But the real thrust of my question was cross linguistic. It was intended as a broad impressionistic question where most of the details that have bothered people are trivia.
>
> As to Whorf - I can't get over the suspicion that we have dismissed him too easily. Maybe his specific suggestions can be ignored - but the basic idea that the nature of one's language effects the nature one's thought remains interesting. I suppose it cannot be reconciled with Chomskian speculations about an inane linguistic capability - but must it? -
>
> > There is a similar distinction made by linguists analyzing style in
> > English, beginning with Rulon S.Wells 'Nominal and verbal style', in
> > Sebeok (ed) Style in Language (1960). Nominal style is associated with
> > formality, and with genres such as scientific writing. This was
> > pursued by M.A.K.Halliday and various others (some references at
> > pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Formality.pdf ).
>
> Thank you. This is precisely what I was seeking - for English. But the real thrust of my question was cross linguistic. It was intended as a broad impressionistic question where most of the details that have bothered people are trivia.
>
The problem with Whorf is that all sorts of nonsense that he (let
alone Sapir) never suggested has become attached to the so-called
"Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis."
Do you remember the late Dan Alford, who was a fixture here (or maybe
at LINGIST List, back when it served as a vehicle for conversation and
communication) many years ago? He led the crusade to rehabilitate
Whorf and I met him at a couple of LSAs when he gave papers on the
subject. (He insisted it be called "Whorf's Principle of Linguistic
Relativity."
Adam Funk
Apr 11, 2012, 11:05:17 AM4/11/12
to
them widely doesn't even economize on learning inflections.
--
English has perfect phonetic spelling. It just doesn't have phonetic
pronunciation. [Peter Moylan]
DKleinecke
Apr 11, 2012, 10:39:57 PM4/11/12
to
On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 5:01:20 AM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> The problem with Whorf is that all sorts of nonsense that he (let
> alone Sapir) never suggested has become attached to the so-called
> "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis."
>
> Do you remember the late Dan Alford, who was a fixture here (or maybe
> at LINGIST List, back when it served as a vehicle for conversation and
> communication) many years ago? He led the crusade to rehabilitate
> Whorf and I met him at a couple of LSAs when he gave papers on the
> subject. (He insisted it be called "Whorf's Principle of Linguistic
> Relativity."
I don't remember Alford but I would never attempt to go as far as reading a paper about Whorf. I think every linguist should be aware of his ideas though. It should be part of a linguistic education. Knowing them will save you time if you have Whorf-like thoughts of your own and there is always the possibility of stumbling over something that argues for or against them.
> The problem with Whorf is that all sorts of nonsense that he (let
> alone Sapir) never suggested has become attached to the so-called
> "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis."
>
> Do you remember the late Dan Alford, who was a fixture here (or maybe
> at LINGIST List, back when it served as a vehicle for conversation and
> communication) many years ago? He led the crusade to rehabilitate
> Whorf and I met him at a couple of LSAs when he gave papers on the
> subject. (He insisted it be called "Whorf's Principle of Linguistic
> Relativity."
That is, science does not proceed by collecting data and deriving ideas from the collected data. It proceeds by forming hypotheses and checking them against available data. Even hypotheses one does not entertain are useful - having no hypotheses, however, is a waste of time.
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 11, 2012, 11:23:30 PM4/11/12
to
On Apr 11, 10:39 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 5:01:20 AM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > The problem with Whorf is that all sorts of nonsense that he (let
> > alone Sapir) never suggested has become attached to the so-called
> > "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis."
>
> > Do you remember the late Dan Alford, who was a fixture here (or maybe
> > at LINGIST List, back when it served as a vehicle for conversation and
> > communication) many years ago? He led the crusade to rehabilitate
> > Whorf and I met him at a couple of LSAs when he gave papers on the
> > subject. (He insisted it be called "Whorf's Principle of Linguistic
> > Relativity."
>
> I don't remember Alford but I would never attempt to go as far as reading a paper about Whorf. I think every linguist should be aware of his ideas though. It should be part of a linguistic education. Knowing them will save you time if you have Whorf-like thoughts of your own and there is always the possibility of stumbling over something that argues for or against them.
So you refuse to know what Whorf actually said, but will denigrate him
> On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 5:01:20 AM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > The problem with Whorf is that all sorts of nonsense that he (let
> > alone Sapir) never suggested has become attached to the so-called
> > "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis."
>
> > Do you remember the late Dan Alford, who was a fixture here (or maybe
> > at LINGIST List, back when it served as a vehicle for conversation and
> > communication) many years ago? He led the crusade to rehabilitate
> > Whorf and I met him at a couple of LSAs when he gave papers on the
> > subject. (He insisted it be called "Whorf's Principle of Linguistic
> > Relativity."
>
> I don't remember Alford but I would never attempt to go as far as reading a paper about Whorf. I think every linguist should be aware of his ideas though. It should be part of a linguistic education. Knowing them will save you time if you have Whorf-like thoughts of your own and there is always the possibility of stumbling over something that argues for or against them.
on the basis of that lack of knowledge?
> That is, science does not proceed by collecting data and deriving ideas from the collected data. It proceeds by forming hypotheses and checking them against available data. Even hypotheses one does not entertain are useful - having no hypotheses, however, is a waste of time.
languages, etc.?
yangg
Apr 12, 2012, 9:44:40 AM4/12/12
to b.s...@csuohio.edu
Le jeudi 12 avril 2012 15:21:55 UTC+2, Franz Gnaedinger a écrit :
> On Apr 11, 2:24 pm, "pauljk"
> wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, sure. The Christians never behave like that. :-)
>
> One would hope that the Muslims could arrive
> in modernity without repeating the horrible mistakes
> we Europeans made over the past centuries.
>
***
What do you think you gaggithaler möngi asshole can say on that topic??
You shit the same shit as Brian Maynard Scott, the Absolute Asshole of All Assholes.
We have got: Tavi, the Lord of All Trolls, and Brian Maynard Scott, the Absolute Asshole of All Assholes,
The latter protecting the former...
Arnaud
***
> On Apr 11, 2:24 pm, "pauljk"
> wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, sure. The Christians never behave like that. :-)
>
> One would hope that the Muslims could arrive
> in modernity without repeating the horrible mistakes
> we Europeans made over the past centuries.
>
***
What do you think you gaggithaler möngi asshole can say on that topic??
You shit the same shit as Brian Maynard Scott, the Absolute Asshole of All Assholes.
We have got: Tavi, the Lord of All Trolls, and Brian Maynard Scott, the Absolute Asshole of All Assholes,
The latter protecting the former...
Arnaud
***
DKleinecke
Apr 12, 2012, 9:47:21 PM4/12/12
to
On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 8:23:30 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> So you refuse to know what Whorf actually said, but will denigrate him
> on the basis of that lack of knowledge?
Ypu're reading me too hard. I have read what Whorf wrote (and Sapir) and found it less than convincing. Suggestive and worth remembering but not something I would espouse. I am not sure exactly how a young linguist today should familiarize themself with Whorf.
> So you refuse to know what Whorf actually said, but will denigrate him
> on the basis of that lack of knowledge?
> > That is, science does not proceed by collecting data and deriving ideas from the collected data. It proceeds by forming hypotheses and checking them against available data. Even hypotheses one does not entertain are useful - having no hypotheses, however, is a waste of time.
>
> So there's no point in doing fieldwork, in "rescuing" endangered
> languages, etc.?
To be precise when one goes out into the field to work on an endangered language one carried with them the hypothesis that this language will conform to one's expectations of linguistic structure.
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 12, 2012, 10:50:38 PM4/12/12
to
On Apr 12, 9:47 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 8:23:30 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > So you refuse to know what Whorf actually said, but will denigrate him
> > on the basis of that lack of knowledge?
>
> Ypu're reading me too hard. I have read what Whorf wrote (and Sapir) and found it less than convincing. Suggestive and worth remembering but not something I would espouse. I am not sure exactly how a young linguist today should familiarize themself with Whorf.
>
> > > That is, science does not proceed by collecting data and deriving ideas from the collected data. It proceeds by forming hypotheses and checking them against available data. Even hypotheses one does not entertain are useful - having no hypotheses, however, is a waste of time.
>
> > So there's no point in doing fieldwork, in "rescuing" endangered
> > languages, etc.?
>
> If I thought field work could be done without a good solid bag of tools already in hand I might be troubled with this question.
> But we know - because it has been tried so many times - amateur records of languages are pretty much a wast of time.
Splork!
> On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 8:23:30 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > So you refuse to know what Whorf actually said, but will denigrate him
> > on the basis of that lack of knowledge?
>
> Ypu're reading me too hard. I have read what Whorf wrote (and Sapir) and found it less than convincing. Suggestive and worth remembering but not something I would espouse. I am not sure exactly how a young linguist today should familiarize themself with Whorf.
>
> > > That is, science does not proceed by collecting data and deriving ideas from the collected data. It proceeds by forming hypotheses and checking them against available data. Even hypotheses one does not entertain are useful - having no hypotheses, however, is a waste of time.
>
> > So there's no point in doing fieldwork, in "rescuing" endangered
> > languages, etc.?
>
> If I thought field work could be done without a good solid bag of tools already in hand I might be troubled with this question.
> But we know - because it has been tried so many times - amateur records of languages are pretty much a wast of time.
People like Ives Goddard and the late Karl Teeter were doing what they
called "New World philology" throughout the second half of the 20th
century. Should the vast Harrington archives, for instance, simply be
ignored?
> A man like Gilij might rise above his peers but the old Spanish missionaries who only had Latin and Spanish grammar as tools missed a lot. The Herrenhutter missionaries in Guyana knew Hebrew too and did much better work.
>
> To be precise when one goes out into the field to work on an endangered language one carried with them the hypothesis that this language will conform to one's expectations of linguistic structure.
And from Gallatin or Hale or, at the latest, Boas, one went with few
"expectations."
(Horatio Hale was the link from Jefferson to Boas.)
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Apr 12, 2012, 11:53:17 PM4/12/12
to
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 13, 2012, 8:47:44 AM4/13/12
to
On Apr 12, 11:53 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz>
wrote:
> ?? Which of these people do you consider 'amateurs'?-
Goddard and Teeter used whatever scraps of information were recorded
in the 17th(-18th) century about long-dead languages. An astonishing
amount about Powhatan has been resurrected (though nothing like a full
or adequate account, of course).
Are you suggesting that such 17th(-18th)-c. "amateurs" had studied the
grammatical literature of their day? That they knew their Kircher or
Reuchlin or Lowth or Tooke? I think not.
The Massachusett grammar of Eliot was very much the exception.
wrote:
Goddard and Teeter used whatever scraps of information were recorded
in the 17th(-18th) century about long-dead languages. An astonishing
amount about Powhatan has been resurrected (though nothing like a full
or adequate account, of course).
Are you suggesting that such 17th(-18th)-c. "amateurs" had studied the
grammatical literature of their day? That they knew their Kircher or
Reuchlin or Lowth or Tooke? I think not.
The Massachusett grammar of Eliot was very much the exception.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Apr 13, 2012, 5:49:14 PM4/13/12
to
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 13, 2012, 6:33:28 PM4/13/12
to
The pre-Gallatin/Jefferson notators of "Indian words" did not, in
fact, "go[ ] out into the field to work on an endangered language."
The concept of doing so did not exist until Jefferson instructed Lewis
& Clark to gather data on the languages they encountered. He drew up
data sheets for them to use, and they brought back quite a few.
Unfortunately almost all of them were lost when his boat(s) carrying
his stuff home from Washington to Monticello in 1809 were attacked by
pirates.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Apr 13, 2012, 7:44:13 PM4/13/12
to
worthless...
Of course these were vocabularies only -- Jefferson gave them a kind
of basic vocabulary checklist to try and collect from as many tribes
as possible. DK seems to be interested mainly in grammatical
information.
I doubt that there was any concept of these languages being
"endangered". Jefferson wanted to add American data to the kind of
languages-of-the-world comparative vocabularies that were being
produced at the time by people like Pallas and Adelung.
I tend to agree that even data collected by incompetents and amateurs
is of some value, at least if it's all you've got from a given place
and time.
DKleinecke
Apr 13, 2012, 8:46:43 PM4/13/12
to
What you might call forensic linguistics is sometimes a failure. Consider the case of what is called Taino - the native language of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. We have a lot of tiny pieces from a lot of sources. But they cannot be put together in a way everybody agrees on. You will read in the literature that Taino was related to Arawak (spoken in Guiana) but that is hardly more than an urban legend (actually an early 19th century guess).
In the US we have what presents itself as an actual grammar of Timucua (spoken in Florida) but it is pretty much a failure. I am aware that this grammar has been worked over in recent years but I haven't seen the results.
But to what extent do mere word lists (often with incomprehensible phonetics) really tell us about a language ?
For example, the list of "Crimean Gothic" words collected in Turkish times?
Yusuf B Gursey
Apr 13, 2012, 9:35:59 PM4/13/12
to
On Apr 13, 8:46 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For example, the list of "Crimean Gothic" words collected in Turkish times?
"Ottoman times"
> For example, the list of "Crimean Gothic" words collected in Turkish times?
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Apr 13, 2012, 11:38:30 PM4/13/12
to
(though I work with languages that have fairly simple phonologies).
Even a short word list is usually enough to identify a language to a
reasonable degree of precision. Jacob Le Maire collected, I think, 37
words from an island called Niuatoputapu in northern Tonga in 1616
>
> For example, the list of "Crimean Gothic" words collected in Turkish times?
the Crimea as late as the 16th century! Isn't that enough?
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Apr 13, 2012, 11:51:44 PM4/13/12
to
Jacob Le Maire, in 1616, collected something like 37 words from
Niuatoputapu. Le Maire died before he got back to Holland, his word
lists got scrambled by whoever sorted out his papers, and were
attributed to the wrong islands, but they did survive, and in the 20th
century scholars sorted out the confusion, and we can see that in 1616
the Niuatoputapu people spoke a Polynesian language which was not
Tongan. Today they speak Tongan. Thus language replacement has
occurred. A very small fact, but of interest to some people anyway.
The word lists may also give evidence of sound changes and lexical
changes that have taken place in the interim since they were collected
(or the lack thereof).
Just another example: William Mariner was one of two survivors when
the Tongans massacred the crew of his ship in 1806. He lived in Tonga
for four years under the protection of a high chief. Although he was
only in his teens, and not particularly literate, when he got back to
England he told his story to a Dr.John Martin, and the published
account is not only an extremely valuable account of pre-missionary
life in Tonga, but also includes a very full and very credible
description of the Tongan language. Here I guess you could say Mariner
was playing the role of a proxy native speaker, and the description
should be credited to Martin, an educated man, though he had never
been near Tonga.
Brian M. Scott
Apr 14, 2012, 6:37:35 AM4/14/12
to
On Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:44:13 -0700 (PDT),
"benl...@ihug.co.nz" <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in
<news:c551655f-3d47-4298...@iu9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:
[...]
> I tend to agree that even data collected by incompetents
> and amateurs is of some value, at least if it's all
> you've got from a given place and time.
E.g., Crimean Gothic.
Brian
"benl...@ihug.co.nz" <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in
<news:c551655f-3d47-4298...@iu9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>
in sci.lang:
[...]
> I tend to agree that even data collected by incompetents
> and amateurs is of some value, at least if it's all
> you've got from a given place and time.
Brian
yangg
Apr 16, 2012, 9:31:26 AM4/16/12
to
Le vendredi 13 avril 2012 03:47:21 UTC+2, DKleinecke a écrit :
> On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 8:23:30 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > So you refuse to know what Whorf actually said, but will denigrate him
> > on the basis of that lack of knowledge?
>
> Ypu're reading me too hard. I have read what Whorf wrote (and Sapir) and found it less than convincing. Suggestive and worth remembering but not something I would espouse. I am not sure exactly how a young linguist today should familiarize themself with Whorf.
>
> > > That is, science does not proceed by collecting data and deriving ideas from the collected data. It proceeds by forming hypotheses and checking them against available data. Even hypotheses one does not entertain are useful - having no hypotheses, however, is a waste of time.
> >
> > So there's no point in doing fieldwork, in "rescuing" endangered
> > languages, etc.?
>
> If I thought field work could be done without a good solid bag of tools already in hand I might be troubled with this question. But we know - because it has been tried so many times - amateur records of languages are pretty much a wast of time. A man like Gilij might rise above his peers but the old Spanish missionaries who only had Latin and Spanish grammar as tools missed a lot. The Herrenhutter missionaries in Guyana knew Hebrew too and did much better work.
***
> On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 8:23:30 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > So you refuse to know what Whorf actually said, but will denigrate him
> > on the basis of that lack of knowledge?
>
> Ypu're reading me too hard. I have read what Whorf wrote (and Sapir) and found it less than convincing. Suggestive and worth remembering but not something I would espouse. I am not sure exactly how a young linguist today should familiarize themself with Whorf.
>
> > > That is, science does not proceed by collecting data and deriving ideas from the collected data. It proceeds by forming hypotheses and checking them against available data. Even hypotheses one does not entertain are useful - having no hypotheses, however, is a waste of time.
> >
> > So there's no point in doing fieldwork, in "rescuing" endangered
> > languages, etc.?
>
> If I thought field work could be done without a good solid bag of tools already in hand I might be troubled with this question. But we know - because it has been tried so many times - amateur records of languages are pretty much a wast of time. A man like Gilij might rise above his peers but the old Spanish missionaries who only had Latin and Spanish grammar as tools missed a lot. The Herrenhutter missionaries in Guyana knew Hebrew too and did much better work.
Despite citing Hebrew as a kind of screen smoke, looks like you are nothing but a nazi, Mr Kleinecke.
A.
***
DKleinecke
Apr 16, 2012, 9:43:22 PM4/16/12
to
On Monday, April 16, 2012 6:31:26 AM UTC-7, yangg wrote:
> Le vendredi 13 avril 2012 03:47:21 UTC+2, DKleinecke a écrit :
> > If I thought field work could be done without a good solid bag of tools already in hand I might be troubled with this question. But we know - because it has been tried so many times - amateur records of languages are pretty much a wast of time. A man like Gilij might rise above his peers but the old Spanish missionaries who only had Latin and Spanish grammar as tools missed a lot. The Herrenhutter missionaries in Guyana knew Hebrew too and did much better work.
> ***
>
> Despite citing Hebrew as a kind of screen smoke, looks like you are nothing but a nazi, Mr Kleinecke.
>
> A.
> ***
>
Because I said something complementary about some Germans? Do you really know who the Herrenhutters were ?
> Le vendredi 13 avril 2012 03:47:21 UTC+2, DKleinecke a écrit :
> > If I thought field work could be done without a good solid bag of tools already in hand I might be troubled with this question. But we know - because it has been tried so many times - amateur records of languages are pretty much a wast of time. A man like Gilij might rise above his peers but the old Spanish missionaries who only had Latin and Spanish grammar as tools missed a lot. The Herrenhutter missionaries in Guyana knew Hebrew too and did much better work.
> ***
>
> Despite citing Hebrew as a kind of screen smoke, looks like you are nothing but a nazi, Mr Kleinecke.
>
> A.
> ***
>
Germans like Nicolas Federmann were no better than the Spaniards in the New World. The Herrenhutters were, so far as I know, the only other German presence in the colonial New World (I am unsure about German migrations to what is now the US. My branch of the Kleinecke family came over in 1848.)
About all the French contributed in South America was grabbing French Guiana and utilizing Devil's Island (the devils were there before the prison),
I offer my service in WW II as evidence that I am no Nazi,
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 17, 2012, 1:57:05 AM4/17/12
to
DKleinecke
Apr 17, 2012, 9:48:47 PM4/17/12
to
But he doesn't fit my definition of troll. I think of a troll as someone who comes along and tosses in controversies then just sits back and enjoys seeing people flame each other. (Or maybe he just goes away dreaming of the fights he has started without ever checking whether fighting actually started.). This guy sticks around and replies to things. I am anticipating seeing some choice obscenities aimed at me.
António Marques
Apr 18, 2012, 7:32:02 AM4/18/12
to
> This guy sticks around and replies to things. I am anticipating seeing
> some choice obscenities aimed at me.
arsenal of 3-4 ridiculous obscenities plus the word 'fraud'? Is there any
evidence he isn't some early automaton?
Adam Funk
Apr 18, 2012, 8:48:39 AM4/18/12
to
> Is there any
> evidence he isn't some early automaton?
--
It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by
first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste
of the nation. (David Sarnoff, CEO of RCA, 1939; in Stoll 1995)
DKleinecke
Apr 18, 2012, 8:18:01 PM4/18/12
to
António Marques
Apr 18, 2012, 8:39:17 PM4/18/12
to
other author and the overall information content of the book.
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 19, 2012, 2:17:32 AM4/19/12
to
The other author (whose soundness can also be questioned) repudiated
the book. (To determine its informational content would require
studying it.)
Trond Engen
Apr 19, 2012, 4:08:41 AM4/19/12
to
Peter T. Daniels:
> António Marques:
>
>> DKleinecke:
>>
>>> António Marques:
>>>
>>>> [On Arnaud Fournet] Is there any evidence he isn't some early
English 'Hurry up!' and 'Rest Assured!' are descended from the cries of
the Hurrian audience at qualifiers for the Sumer Games.
--
Trond Engen
> António Marques:
>
>> DKleinecke:
>>
>>> António Marques:
>>>
>>>> [On Arnaud Fournet] Is there any evidence he isn't some early
>>>> automaton?
>>>
>>> An automaton that co-authored a book on the Indo-European nature of
>>> Hurrian ?
>>
>> That may be evidence, but there are independent variables there - the
>> other author and the overall information content of the book.-
>
> The other author (whose soundness can also be questioned) repudiated
> the book. (To determine its informational content would require
> studying it.)
Of course they're connected, as can be gleaned from the fact that Modern
>>>
>>> An automaton that co-authored a book on the Indo-European nature of
>>> Hurrian ?
>>
>> That may be evidence, but there are independent variables there - the
>> other author and the overall information content of the book.-
>
> The other author (whose soundness can also be questioned) repudiated
> the book. (To determine its informational content would require
> studying it.)
English 'Hurry up!' and 'Rest Assured!' are descended from the cries of
the Hurrian audience at qualifiers for the Sumer Games.
--
Trond Engen
DKleinecke
Apr 19, 2012, 8:48:38 PM4/19/12
to
I don't think I learned anything I would trust about Hurrian and the Indo-European part has been disowned by its author which was a very wise move on his part and he may be able to live it down.
pauljk
Apr 20, 2012, 3:43:28 AM4/20/12
to
"Trond Engen" <tron...@engen.priv.no> wrote in message
news:jmoh3v$dde$1...@dont-email.me...
Magdalenian makes all this very hard to believe.
pjk
yangg
Apr 20, 2012, 5:43:39 PM4/20/12
to
> > >
> > > I offer my service in WW II as evidence that I am no Nazi,
> >
Depends on which side you were?
A.
***
> > Please don't feed the troll.
>
> I agree that feeding him is probably a bad idea.
Maybe I'm a bit overweighed, so it is indeed not the best idea,
A.
***
>
> But he doesn't fit my definition of troll. I think of a troll as someone who comes along and tosses in controversies then just sits back and enjoys seeing people flame each other. (Or maybe he just goes away dreaming of the fights he has started without ever checking whether fighting actually started.). This guy sticks around and replies to things. I am anticipating seeing some choice obscenities aimed at me.
And what are your favorite obscenities?
A.
yangg
Apr 20, 2012, 5:48:58 PM4/20/12
to
Le vendredi 20 avril 2012 02:48:38 UTC+2, DKleinecke a écrit :
> On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 11:17:32 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Apr 18, 8:39 pm, António Marques <ento...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 19 Abr, 01:18, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > An automaton that co-authored a book on the Indo-European nature of Hurrian ?
> > >
> > > That may be evidence, but there are independent variables there - the
> > > other author and the overall information content of the book.-
> >
> > The other author (whose soundness can also be questioned) repudiated
> > the book. (To determine its informational content would require
> > studying it.)
>
> I read it a couple of times and thought it sounded very philogistic. Kind of like truthiness. It has the ring of a genuine philological work - but didn't quite hold together.
***
> On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 11:17:32 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Apr 18, 8:39 pm, António Marques <ento...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 19 Abr, 01:18, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > An automaton that co-authored a book on the Indo-European nature of Hurrian ?
> > >
> > > That may be evidence, but there are independent variables there - the
> > > other author and the overall information content of the book.-
> >
> > The other author (whose soundness can also be questioned) repudiated
> > the book. (To determine its informational content would require
> > studying it.)
>
> I read it a couple of times and thought it sounded very philogistic. Kind of like truthiness. It has the ring of a genuine philological work - but didn't quite hold together.
And for what reasons??
It can be improved but it certainly does hold together, as it was.
A.
***
If it was the work of an automaton it was an extremely clever one. Certainly the Turing test should be applied.
>
> I don't think I learned anything I would trust about Hurrian and the Indo-European part has been disowned by its author which was a very wise move on his part and he may be able to live it down.
No it was not a wise move,
As it appears that Hurrian is even more indo-european-based that what we investigated at that time.
A.
***
DKleinecke
Apr 20, 2012, 8:52:05 PM4/20/12
to
DKleinecke
Apr 20, 2012, 8:57:27 PM4/20/12
to
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 21, 2012, 1:34:02 AM4/21/12
to
Well, this is a kind of fallacy.
Differences with other scholars does not mean worthlessness and other scholars happen to follow a number of practices or ideas that I consider unacceptable. Anyway so far my approach does not block my papers from being reviewed, published and sometimes complimented. So there's in fact no issue at all as far as other scholars are concerned.
As regards grammar proper I don't think I have any particularly idiosyncratic approach. I tend to think that the ergativity of Hurrian should not be dealt with too dogmatically as Hurrian has a kind of optional ergative case and a much rarely used optional accusative case at the same time, a feature that is overlooked. For the rest, I'm ok with most "standard" stuff.
My main point of *absolute* disagreement is about the phonology of the language. It's impossible to reach an agreement with people who reject the testimony of Ugaritic data because it refutes their fancies. The standard approach of the phonology, which Laroche *never* followed, is in my opinion refuted by a huge body of data. To some extent it's unscientific.
As regards my good friend, Allan, who initially was the co-author, I'm sorry that he finally "shyed out". I suppose he has received too many private mails that had become an embarassment for his other projects. Allan is in my opinion too "soft" with conventional ideas and this in fact blocks him from making more significant advances in Nostratic studies. He's trying to gain respectability by assembling existing theories, but in my opinion this does not work. I don't think he really gained any extra respectability and it hampers him.
We co-authored a book but it was always clear that we had one disagreement: I consider Hurrian to be the *closest* relative of PIE whereas Allan considered Hurrian to be some deep and far-off relative of PIE, a PoV, which I suppose was coherent with his stance about "Caucasic" in general, that is to say "Caucasic", whatever that really means as a node or bunch of nodes, is only remotely connected with PIE and Nostratic. The wording of the book is somewhat ambiguous on this issue so that both of us could agree on that wording.
I suppose Allan got scared when people understood our book as proving my PoV, that is to say a close relationship. This puts all his Nostratic construction into jeopardy. I suppose that's why he repudiated his support, but I'm afraid he was wrong. Hurrian is even more related that what we had already found. In the meantime I've understood additional sound-laws that make nearly all the vocabulary of Hurrian etymologizable with PIE.
A.
DKleinecke
Apr 21, 2012, 11:23:47 PM4/21/12
to
Dating Common Astro-Asiatic seems to more difficult. I cannot see how it could be later than around 4000 BCE. But if the hypothetic ancestor of both IE and Afro-Asiastic was earlier than a PIE of about 10,000 BCE then you aee dating Nosttatic to before around 12,000 BCE.
This is too Magdalanian for comfort.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 22, 2012, 1:00:01 AM4/22/12
to
Such a low dating as 3000BCE is really nonsense,
I indeed tend to think that the split of PIE into dialects predates Neolithic,
There's in fact no neolithic vocabulary that is **really** shared by a significant number of IE languages. There's a very clear-cut divide between western IE and eastern IE languages which indicates that Neolithic intruded into a dialectal space that was already cut in at least two major components.
This feature is constantly denied by the orthodoxists but facts are stubborn.
A.
***
>
> Dating Common Astro-Asiatic seems to more difficult. I cannot see how it could be later than around 4000 BCE. But if the hypothetic ancestor of both IE and Afro-Asiastic was earlier than a PIE of about 10,000 BCE then you aee dating Nosttatic to before around 12,000 BCE.
I suppose you mean Afrasian not A[u]stro-Asiatic, or is this a pun for Astro-Klingon?
In my opinion "Nostratic" is more or less synonym with Proto-Exo-African so the dating would be 50000BCE.
A.
***
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 22, 2012, 7:29:58 AM4/22/12
to
agriculture-related common vocabulary at all. (Location most likely in
what is today the eastern Sahara, which then was not a desert.)
Semitic alone has to be older than 4000. It's so coherent only because
it's attested so early, and even then fitting together Akkadian with
West Semitic hasn't really been satisfatorily done yet.
> This is too Magdalanian for comfort. -
DKleinecke
Apr 22, 2012, 9:00:52 PM4/22/12
to
On Sunday, April 22, 2012 4:29:58 AM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Dating Common Astro-Asiatic seems to more difficult. I cannot see how it could be later than around 4000 BCE. But if the hypothetic ancestor of both IE and Afro-Asiastic was earlier than a PIE of about 10,000 BCE then you aee dating Nosttatic to before around 12,000 BCE.
>
> A date most often seen for AA is ca. 15,000 BCE, because there is no
> agriculture-related common vocabulary at all. (Location most likely in
> what is today the eastern Sahara, which then was not a desert.)
> Semitic alone has to be older than 4000. It's so coherent only because
> it's attested so early, and even then fitting together Akkadian with
> West Semitic hasn't really been satisfatorily done yet.
I am inclined to the idea that 15,000 BCE is too early. I only mention 4.000 BCE as a lower limit and I believe it is much too late - but the mere existence of Old Egypt, without any other evidence, forces 4,000 BCE. When it comes to uncertain methods of dating things I would prefer glottochronology to other methods.
> > Dating Common Astro-Asiatic seems to more difficult. I cannot see how it could be later than around 4000 BCE. But if the hypothetic ancestor of both IE and Afro-Asiastic was earlier than a PIE of about 10,000 BCE then you aee dating Nosttatic to before around 12,000 BCE.
>
> A date most often seen for AA is ca. 15,000 BCE, because there is no
> agriculture-related common vocabulary at all. (Location most likely in
> what is today the eastern Sahara, which then was not a desert.)
> Semitic alone has to be older than 4000. It's so coherent only because
> it's attested so early, and even then fitting together Akkadian with
> West Semitic hasn't really been satisfatorily done yet.
I remain unconvinced that Nostratic is any more real than Magdalenian.
I agree that proto-Semitic remains a work in progress. And I have not seen anything more than indicative for any other branches.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 24, 2012, 1:55:29 PM4/24/12
to
On 23 avr, 03:00, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, April 22, 2012 4:29:58 AM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > Dating Common Astro-Asiatic seems to more difficult. I cannot see how it could be later than around 4000 BCE. But if the hypothetic ancestor of both IE and Afro-Asiastic was earlier than a PIE of about 10,000 BCE then you aee dating Nosttatic to before around 12,000 BCE.
>
> > A date most often seen for AA is ca. 15,000 BCE, because there is no
> > agriculture-related common vocabulary at all. (Location most likely in
> > what is today the eastern Sahara, which then was not a desert.)
***
> On Sunday, April 22, 2012 4:29:58 AM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > Dating Common Astro-Asiatic seems to more difficult. I cannot see how it could be later than around 4000 BCE. But if the hypothetic ancestor of both IE and Afro-Asiastic was earlier than a PIE of about 10,000 BCE then you aee dating Nosttatic to before around 12,000 BCE.
>
> > A date most often seen for AA is ca. 15,000 BCE, because there is no
> > agriculture-related common vocabulary at all. (Location most likely in
> > what is today the eastern Sahara, which then was not a desert.)
Or maybe western as regards Berber and Semitic, which are very close
in fact.
A.
***
> > Semitic alone has to be older than 4000. It's so coherent only because
> > it's attested so early, and even then fitting together Akkadian with
> > West Semitic hasn't really been satisfatorily done yet.
>
> I am inclined to the idea that 15,000 BCE is too early. I only mention 4.000 BCE as a lower limit and I believe it is much too late - but the mere existence of Old Egypt, without any other evidence, forces 4,000 BCE. When it comes to uncertain methods of dating things I would prefer glottochronology to other methods.
>
> I remain unconvinced that Nostratic is any more real than Magdalenian.
The concept of Nostratic is certainly better...
A.
***
>
> I agree that proto-Semitic remains a work in progress. And I have not seen anything more than indicative for any other branches.
I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
than to the rest.
A.
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 24, 2012, 4:45:06 PM4/24/12
to
On Apr 24, 1:55 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
> groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
> than to the rest.
That's the position of some Afroasiaticists. Others make Egyptian
> I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
> groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
> than to the rest.
closest to Semitic.
A popular approach is that those three are the Northern branch and
Cushitic-Omotic-Chadic are the Southern branch.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 24, 2012, 6:40:52 PM4/24/12
to
On 24 avr, 22:45, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Apr 24, 1:55 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
> > groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
> > than to the rest.
>
> That's the position of some Afroasiaticists. Others make Egyptian
> closest to Semitic.
***
> On Apr 24, 1:55 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
> > groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
> > than to the rest.
>
> That's the position of some Afroasiaticists. Others make Egyptian
> closest to Semitic.
That's clearly not tenable from the morphological PoV.
Berber and Semitic verbal morphemes are nearly the same.
A.
***
>
> A popular approach is that those three are the Northern branch and
> Cushitic-Omotic-Chadic are the Southern branch.
***
> A popular approach is that those three are the Northern branch and
> Cushitic-Omotic-Chadic are the Southern branch.
Chadic is much, much closer to Semito-Berber than is usually assumed,
although some "Chadic" languages probably should not be classified as
AA in the first place.
Besides most of these Chadic languages are in fact spoken in
Nigeria...
Omotic is not a clear AA member.
A.
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 24, 2012, 10:25:01 PM4/24/12
to
On Apr 24, 6:40 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> On 24 avr, 22:45, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:> On Apr 24, 1:55 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
> > > groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
> > > than to the rest.
>
> > That's the position of some Afroasiaticists. Others make Egyptian
> > closest to Semitic.
>
> ***
>
> That's clearly not tenable from the morphological PoV.
> Berber and Semitic verbal morphemes are nearly the same.
Come back when you've written the Comparative Afroasiatic Grammar.
> On 24 avr, 22:45, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:> On Apr 24, 1:55 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
> > > groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
> > > than to the rest.
>
> > That's the position of some Afroasiaticists. Others make Egyptian
> > closest to Semitic.
>
> ***
>
> That's clearly not tenable from the morphological PoV.
> Berber and Semitic verbal morphemes are nearly the same.
> > A popular approach is that those three are the Northern branch and
> > Cushitic-Omotic-Chadic are the Southern branch.
>
> ***
>
> Chadic is much, much closer to Semito-Berber than is usually assumed,
> although some "Chadic" languages probably should not be classified as
> AA in the first place.
> Besides most of these Chadic languages are in fact spoken in
> Nigeria...
>
> Omotic is not a clear AA member.
Yusuf B Gursey
Apr 25, 2012, 1:23:57 AM4/25/12
to
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 25, 2012, 2:26:48 AM4/25/12
to
It's also possible that the word Chadic used to have a different
meaning.
For example I've read books where the word "Soudan" (Sudan) rather
means (west african) sahel, not Sudan as we currently know it.
A.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 25, 2012, 2:29:09 AM4/25/12
to
On 25 avr, 04:25, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Apr 24, 6:40 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > On 24 avr, 22:45, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:> On Apr 24, 1:55 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > > I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
> > > > groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
> > > > than to the rest.
>
> > > That's the position of some Afroasiaticists. Others make Egyptian
> > > closest to Semitic.
>
> > ***
>
> > That's clearly not tenable from the morphological PoV.
> > Berber and Semitic verbal morphemes are nearly the same.
>
> Come back when you've written the Comparative Afroasiatic Grammar.
***
> On Apr 24, 6:40 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > On 24 avr, 22:45, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:> On Apr 24, 1:55 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > > I'm trying to make some advances with Semito-Berber as these two
> > > > groups are obviously closely related and more related to each other
> > > > than to the rest.
>
> > > That's the position of some Afroasiaticists. Others make Egyptian
> > > closest to Semitic.
>
> > ***
>
> > That's clearly not tenable from the morphological PoV.
> > Berber and Semitic verbal morphemes are nearly the same.
>
> Come back when you've written the Comparative Afroasiatic Grammar.
My modest target is Comparative Semito-Berber,
then we'll a better picture of which languages are really related to
that node.
A.
***
>
> > > A popular approach is that those three are the Northern branch and
> > > Cushitic-Omotic-Chadic are the Southern branch.
>
> > ***
>
> > Chadic is much, much closer to Semito-Berber than is usually assumed,
> > although some "Chadic" languages probably should not be classified as
> > AA in the first place.
>
> Then they're not Chadic.
Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
A.
***
>
> > Besides most of these Chadic languages are in fact spoken in
> > Nigeria...
>
> > Omotic is not a clear AA member.
>
> Oh, now you're an "expert" in AA as well.
Sort of
A.
***
Yusuf B Gursey
Apr 25, 2012, 2:45:30 AM4/25/12
to
any region immediately south of Egypt or the Maghreb, so it included
the region of the Republic of the Sudan (pre-2011) and West Africam
Sahel as well. Mali and Senegal were known as French Sudan (in
contrast to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), it briefly became the Sudanese
Republic before splitting up into Mali and Senegal
>
> A.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 25, 2012, 2:51:18 AM4/25/12
to
ok
This is exactly what I've indirectly understood,
thanks for providing an explanation.
A.
Ruud Harmsen
Apr 25, 2012, 4:58:46 AM4/25/12
to
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> schreef/wrote:
>Then they're not Chadic.
>
>> Besides most of these Chadic languages are in fact spoken in
>> Nigeria...
>>
>> Omotic is not a clear AA member.
>
>Oh, now you're an "expert" in AA as well.
With all his fine knowledge and insights, Arnaud Fournet could have
been world famous, if only he had some decency, politeness and tact.
A pity.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com/new
>Then they're not Chadic.
>
>> Besides most of these Chadic languages are in fact spoken in
>> Nigeria...
>>
>> Omotic is not a clear AA member.
>
>Oh, now you're an "expert" in AA as well.
been world famous, if only he had some decency, politeness and tact.
A pity.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com/new
Ruud Harmsen
Apr 25, 2012, 6:16:13 AM4/25/12
to
> bila:d al-su:da:n means "land of the blacks" in Arabic, and included
>> any region immediately south of Egypt or the Maghreb, so it included
>> the region of the Republic of the Sudan (pre-2011) and West Africam
>> Sahel as well. Mali and Senegal were known as French Sudan (in
>> contrast to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), it briefly became the Sudanese
>> Republic before splitting up into Mali and Senegal
Arnaud Fournet <fournet...@wanadoo.fr> schreef/wrote:
>> any region immediately south of Egypt or the Maghreb, so it included
>> the region of the Republic of the Sudan (pre-2011) and West Africam
>> Sahel as well. Mali and Senegal were known as French Sudan (in
>> contrast to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), it briefly became the Sudanese
>> Republic before splitting up into Mali and Senegal
>ok
>
>This is exactly what I've indirectly understood,
>
>thanks for providing an explanation.
So you CAN be polite and gentle sometimes!
>
>This is exactly what I've indirectly understood,
>
>thanks for providing an explanation.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 25, 2012, 6:37:28 AM4/25/12
to
On 25 avr, 12:16, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
> > bila:d al-su:da:n means "land of the blacks" in Arabic, and included
> >> any region immediately south of Egypt or the Maghreb, so it included
> >> the region of the Republic of the Sudan (pre-2011) and West Africam
> >> Sahel as well. Mali and Senegal were known as French Sudan (in
> >> contrast to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), it briefly became the Sudanese
> >> Republic before splitting up into Mali and Senegal
>
> Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> schreef/wrote:
> > bila:d al-su:da:n means "land of the blacks" in Arabic, and included
> >> any region immediately south of Egypt or the Maghreb, so it included
> >> the region of the Republic of the Sudan (pre-2011) and West Africam
> >> Sahel as well. Mali and Senegal were known as French Sudan (in
> >> contrast to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), it briefly became the Sudanese
> >> Republic before splitting up into Mali and Senegal
>
>
> >ok
>
> >This is exactly what I've indirectly understood,
>
> >thanks for providing an explanation.
>
> So you CAN be polite and gentle sometimes!
> --
> Ruud Harmsen,http://rudhar.com/new
***
> >ok
>
> >This is exactly what I've indirectly understood,
>
> >thanks for providing an explanation.
>
> So you CAN be polite and gentle sometimes!
> --
> Ruud Harmsen,http://rudhar.com/new
Yusuf seems to be a nice guy,
This is not the case with a number of other persons...
A.
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 25, 2012, 8:36:53 AM4/25/12
to
progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
the question.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 25, 2012, 10:51:31 AM4/25/12
to
On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
>
> > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> the question.
>
***
> On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
>
> > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> the question.
>
Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
Besides, indeed, it's a question, not an answer.
A.
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 25, 2012, 11:56:16 AM4/25/12
to
On Apr 25, 10:51 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> > Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> > progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> > the question.
>
> ***
>
> Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
If you can't even name anyone from two+ generations of
> On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> > Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> > progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> > the question.
>
> ***
>
> Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
Afroasiaticists, how can you claim to be even "sort of" an expert in
the field?
> Besides, indeed, it's a question, not an answer.
Hal Fleming
Joe Pia
Zygmunt Frajzyngier
M. Lionel Bender
Paul Newman
David Appleyard
Hermann Jungraithmayr
etc. etc. etc.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 25, 2012, 12:14:58 PM4/25/12
to
On 25 avr, 17:56, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Apr 25, 10:51 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> > > Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> > > progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> > > the question.
>
> > ***
>
> > Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
>
> If you can't even name anyone from two+ generations of
> Afroasiaticists, how can you claim to be even "sort of" an expert in
> the field?
>
> > Besides, indeed, it's a question, not an answer.
>
> I. M. Diakonoff
***
> On Apr 25, 10:51 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> > > Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> > > progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> > > the question.
>
> > ***
>
> > Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
>
> If you can't even name anyone from two+ generations of
> Afroasiaticists, how can you claim to be even "sort of" an expert in
> the field?
>
> > Besides, indeed, it's a question, not an answer.
>
> I. M. Diakonoff
worth reading, but quite not recent.
A.
***
> Hal Fleming
***
About worthless.
Arrogant, bigoted, incompetent, too american,
A.
***
> Joe Pia
> Zygmunt Frajzyngier
> M. Lionel Bender
Never heard of them
A.
***
> Paul Newman
> David Appleyard
***
Bof.
A.
***
> Hermann Jungraithmayr
***
Not that recent either.
Still alive?
A.
***
> etc. etc. etc.
***
like whom?
A.
***
Peter T. Daniels
Apr 25, 2012, 3:59:44 PM4/25/12
to
On Apr 25, 12:14 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> On 25 avr, 17:56, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 25, 10:51 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > > On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > > > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> > > > Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> > > > progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> > > > the question.
>
> > > ***
>
> > > Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
>
> > If you can't even name anyone from two+ generations of
> > Afroasiaticists, how can you claim to be even "sort of" an expert in
> > the field?
>
> > > Besides, indeed, it's a question, not an answer.
>
> > I. M. Diakonoff
>
> ***
> worth reading, but quite not recent.
You asked "progressed thanks to whom?" No one else has even
> On 25 avr, 17:56, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Apr 25, 10:51 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > > On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > > > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> > > > Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> > > > progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> > > > the question.
>
> > > ***
>
> > > Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
>
> > If you can't even name anyone from two+ generations of
> > Afroasiaticists, how can you claim to be even "sort of" an expert in
> > the field?
>
> > > Besides, indeed, it's a question, not an answer.
>
> > I. M. Diakonoff
>
> ***
> worth reading, but quite not recent.
_attempted_ a grammatical sketch of PAA. (And he knew more about
Hurrian in 1971 than you ever will.)
you're bigoted against Americans; it was Fleming and Pia who first
inspected "East Cushitic" and decided it wasn't a part of Cushitic but
named it for the Omo River. Lionel Bender also dealt with Nilo-
Saharan.
Jungraithmayr hasn't come to an AOS meeting in the last few years (he
may be in Nigeria continuing his fieldwork during March), but since
he's an Honorary Member, if he had died I would have heard of it.
Yusuf B Gursey
Apr 25, 2012, 4:23:09 PM4/25/12
to
prestige is a written and trade language. looking at Ethnologue there
are East Chadic languages in Central Chad and N. Cameroons, so the
language family is indeed centered around Lake Chad.
Arnaud Fournet
Apr 25, 2012, 6:23:28 PM4/25/12
to
On 25 avr, 21:59, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Apr 25, 12:14 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 25 avr, 17:56, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > On Apr 25, 10:51 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > > > On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > > On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > > > > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> > > > > Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> > > > > progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> > > > > the question.
>
> > > > ***
>
> > > > Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
>
> > > If you can't even name anyone from two+ generations of
> > > Afroasiaticists, how can you claim to be even "sort of" an expert in
> > > the field?
>
> > > > Besides, indeed, it's a question, not an answer.
>
> > > I. M. Diakonoff
>
> > ***
> > worth reading, but quite not recent.
>
> You asked "progressed thanks to whom?" No one else has even
> _attempted_ a grammatical sketch of PAA. (And he knew more about
> Hurrian in 1971 than you ever will.)
***
> On Apr 25, 12:14 pm, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On 25 avr, 17:56, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > On Apr 25, 10:51 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > > > On 25 avr, 14:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > > On Apr 25, 2:29 am, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > > > > > Yes, and Greenberg was therefore wrong.
>
> > > > > Greenberg was "wrong" about many things. Afroasiatic studies have
> > > > > progressed mightily during the half-century since he last addressed
> > > > > the question.
>
> > > > ***
>
> > > > Progressed mightily??, thanks to whom?
>
> > > If you can't even name anyone from two+ generations of
> > > Afroasiaticists, how can you claim to be even "sort of" an expert in
> > > the field?
>
> > > > Besides, indeed, it's a question, not an answer.
>
> > > I. M. Diakonoff
>
> > ***
> > worth reading, but quite not recent.
>
> You asked "progressed thanks to whom?" No one else has even
> _attempted_ a grammatical sketch of PAA. (And he knew more about
> Hurrian in 1971 than you ever will.)
Rubbish,
Diakonov was more a specialist of Urartean than of Hurrian.
Incidentally in 1971, Diakonov did not know that the words earth and
sky were inverted...
Got it, idiot?
Stop being overwheeningly arrogant when it's obvious you don't master
the issues,
A.
***
Then it's not AA, or is it??
A.
***
>
> Jungraithmayr hasn't come to an AOS meeting in the last few years (he
> may be in Nigeria continuing his fieldwork during March), but since
> he's an Honorary Member, if he had died I would have heard of it.
Ok
We'll rely on you, as far as obituaries and necrology is concerned,
maybe this is a field where you can be relevant,
A.
***
0 new messages