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Nouns vs. verbs | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5767 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 1 of 13 15 March 2009 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is there any reason to assume verbs are more important in a language than nouns - as I tend to think ? (Does for example Chinese have verbs in facts in the strict sense of the word or ... ?)
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| wetnose Groupie United States Joined 6978 days ago 90 posts - 98 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 13 16 March 2009 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I've just read "The Geography of Thought" by Richard Nesbitt, which researches cultural cognitive differences, and it does remark on how Western infants learn nouns faster than verbs. East Asian infants learn them at about the same speed or even verbs faster, pointing at both linguistic and 'manner of thinking' differences.
I think it's safe to say this sort of thing is language dependent. What do you mean by verbs 'in the strict sense of the word'? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5808 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 3 of 13 16 March 2009 at 4:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Michel Thomas mentioned verbs as being the back bone of a language and I found this an
interesting statement especially remembering how much I studied verb conjugations in highschool for Spanish and French. I am far from being a linguist or grammatician but... I don't think its a matter of being more important rather than that they carry more information relative to the rest of the sentence structures. I can tell you in Neo-Latin languages (aka "Romance" languages)verbs are "inflected" or change form according to tense, mood and person. So their form conveys: when something occurred, if it was ongoing, if we are speaking in the hypothetical, if the object performing the action is the speaker(s), the one(s) spoken to or a third party... (anything else?) In English if you consider the helper words as part of the word form then they do the same: I ATE an apple. I WAS EATING an apple when she arrived. I USED TO EAT an apple every morning. I EAT an apple. I WILL EAT an apple. In Latin and Russian the nouns are inflected according to "case" which I think refers to what role they play (subject, object, more?) so nouns carry more information in these languages. I'd love to know how Asian languages function. I think Hindi is similar to western languages (its part of the Indo in Indo-European right?) but I don't think Mandarin or Japanese inflect any words, but I don't know. Wow, I feel smart. I've actually learned some things. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5767 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 4 of 13 16 March 2009 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Gentlemen (yes ?), thanks !
You know, my feeling is that it is not simply language-dependent, strictly speaking: I think every sentences has a predicate structure containing at least a noun and a verb, the verb being a little more important as one can have sentences with just a verb, but no noun (not talking about ellipses). The noun is often a name, which is - I think - not a lexical item as such. The verbs are indeed the backbone then. The relevance of inflection is not that clear to me in this respect. The N/V learning: I am quite surprised, but it might have to do with... materialism: nouns often refer to matter, verbs to energy ! (Just a thought !!!) The Chinese for example attach lots of importance to relational words because relations and the group itself are that important (in Confucianism, I believe). On the other hand: the number of (root) verbs is probably a lot smaller than the number of nouns. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| null Groupie China Joined 6125 days ago 76 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 5 of 13 16 March 2009 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
Isn't this true for most languages? Chinese verbs are not inflected, but they are by no means smaller (compared to any IE language) in number. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5898 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 6 of 13 16 March 2009 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think that verbs are more important at all. Nouns are very important also. I think that it depend of which level: for people who can speak only little bit of a language, the nouns are more important, but the verbs are important when you want to have some more details in your sentences.
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| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5767 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 7 of 13 16 March 2009 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just guessing, folks ! I know this is hard and even dangerous, and indeed might vary according to circumstances.
@null: everything depends on how you count, I suppose. @jar-ptitsa: don't you think that we simply do not know many verbs at first,and thus refer to basic nouns and names and add movements ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6034 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 8 of 13 16 March 2009 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Verbs convey more information, because people are affected by what's happening/changing (verbs) and not what *is* and doesn't change ( described with nouns and adjectives).
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