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Nouns vs. verbs | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 13 16 March 2009 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you analyse complete sentences in Indoeuropean languages (things may be different in for instance native American languages or those of New Guinea) then you will find that the choice of the verb decides whether you can have for instance a direct or indirect object. These can be represented by pronouns, but also by nominal phrases. Inside such a phrase the choice of noun decides the gender and number of articles and adjectives. So the whole thing simply add up to a structure where all nominal phrases seem to be subordinated the finite verb of the sentence. In my view of grammar this also is the case for the subject, but I'm aware that Mr.Chomsky divided the sentence structure in a NP and a VP (Nominal phrase and verbal phrase), - luckily we don't always have to agree.
Whether you learn verbs or nouns first is quite another matter. Here it plays a role how much morphology there is for different word classes, but also whether you learn the language by being shown things or by imitating or reacting to orders or whishes. Edited by Iversen on 16 March 2009 at 10:57pm 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 10 of 13 17 March 2009 at 5:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I do not quite agree, I think: the choice of the verb is based on the 'relational concept' you want to express, isn't it, and when three 'parties' are involved (me, an interview and questions) you get S, DO, IO, don't you? I do not know whether the S/O are subordinated to the verb really, but they depend on it.
The starting point of my question is that I started focussing on verbs while teaching Dutch to foreigners, because so many other words derive from it. So this is in fact also an etymological issue. Is for example 'sign' as a noun the root word or some verb ? Or is 'to die' the main word or 'death' ? Can one speculate on that ? In idg. lists I only (?) find references to verbs, I think. Edited by JanKG on 28 March 2009 at 12:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| wetnose Groupie United States Joined 6978 days ago 90 posts - 98 votes Studies: Mandarin, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 11 of 13 17 March 2009 at 5:56am | IP Logged | ||
Oh, I see. You are saying for all languages in general. There's a guy who listed a bunch of extremely uncommon languages (most I've never heard of) in the 'true polyglot' thread; they all had some significant linguistic difference. We should get him/her in here. You've basically hit it on the head. The posited theory is cultural/philosophical (relational vs categorical), but does this shape the language or vice versa? It's a classic chicken and egg problem. As Iverson (and this book) notes, the ways we teach the language to infants is a big part of that. Japanese is highly inflected, especially on verbs. 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 12 of 13 28 March 2009 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Someone told me nouns are concrete, verbs are abstract (well: refer to abstract things). So I guess we shall end up saying that the relations are what verbs introduce, whereas the nouns are the actors and 'victims', subjects and objects. But of course the verb category might be a category typical of Idg. languages.
I'll start a new thread. Thanks, janG 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 13 of 13 28 March 2009 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think using "more important" here is misleading.
If I want to tell you your dog has worms i could point to your dog and say "worms!" If I didn't have your dog available I could say "dog... worms!" You couldn't do the same just using the verb "has" so in this case you could say the noun or nouns were more important. Inflection is relevant to the amount of information words carry. A good example is how in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese they subject pronoun is rarely used: You can say that verbs in Neo-Latin language sentences carry more information: time, place, relation between subject and object. English: I eat Spanish: como you don't have to say "yo como" because the verb "comer" (to eat) has been conjugated for first person singular so it carries that information. English: I have fleas Spanish: Tengo pulgas "Tengo" is the first person singular conjugation of the verb "Tener" (to have) so, again it communicates that information. In languages where nouns are inflected they will carry more information because they change with what part they are playing in the sentence. [Disclaimer: I do not have fleas and no animals were harmed in the making of these examples] Edited by ChiaBrain on 28 March 2009 at 7:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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