<HTML><BODY STYLE="font:10pt verdana; border:none;"><DIV>Your point is well taken. But at the risk of perhaps sounding too "Whorfian," I can't help but wonder if there is a different concept at work in many Native American languages which display this type of grammatical construct. I hark back to Whorf's example from Hopi in which he says that the English version of <EM>rehpi</EM>, "flashed," must be translated into English as "It flashed" or "a light flashed" as if there is a separate entity doing the flashing, even though the English "it," "light," and "flash" are one and the same. And this is only because we MUST have a noun and a verb for a "complete" English sentence, forced by English grammar, which is obviously not true in many of these Native languages. There seems to be ample evidence from several Native languages that there is a much more "fluid" thought process going on, including a story I heard that a Mikmaq speaker, when translating from English into his own language, did not utter a single noun in his translation, even though the English version was full of them! The crux of my proposed article is that there may indeed be a different thought process among many Native American speakers in which they think in a more verby way, with the grammars of their languages permitting an implicit sense of a perceiver-perceived relationship and process/systems thinking not grammatically permitted in Indo-European languages where we tend to ignore fluidity and process and focus more on concrete "objects." I keep wondering if this indeed could lead to a different "thought" process based on the inherent differences in grammar.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Perhaps I'm too "out there" with this, but it is an interesting question and debate and might make for good reading!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Dave</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px"> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt Arial">----- Original Message -----</DIV> <DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; COLOR: black; FONT: 10pt Arial"><B>From:</B> Rgraczyk@aol.com</DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt Arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, December 13, 2002 11:55 AM</DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt Arial"><B>To:</B> siouan@lists.colorado.edu</DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt Arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Information</DIV> <DIV> </DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT face=Arial lang=0 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF">In a message dated 12/12/2002 1:45:29 PM Mountain Standard Time, dvklinguist@hotmail.com writes:<BR><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px" TYPE="CITE">I know Hidatsa, for instance, has a grammatical construct which essentially makes any noun into a verb by adding a sentence final </FONT><FONT color=#ff0000 face=Arial lang=0 size=2 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" FAMILY="SANSSERIF">-c</FONT><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial lang=0 size=2 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" FAMILY="SANSSERIF">, which is also a sentence-final marker. Thus, I think the word </FONT><FONT color=#ff0000 face=Arial lang=0 size=2 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" FAMILY="SANSSERIF">wacawiri </FONT><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial lang=0 size=2 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" FAMILY="SANSSERIF">"bowl" can become </FONT><FONT color=#ff0000 face=Arial lang=0 size=2 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" FAMILY="SANSSERIF">wacawiric</FONT><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial lang=0 size=2 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" ILY="SANSSERIF" FAM!>, which, as best I can tell, would literally mean something like "It is bowl-ing."</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial lang=0 size=2 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><BR><BR></FONT><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial lang=0 size=2 style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" FAMILY="SANSSERIF"><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px" TYPE="CITE">In constructions like these, Hidatsa and Crow simply lack a copula. I don't think it's accurate to say that this construction transforms a noun into a verb; perhaps it would be better to say that the noun functions as a predicate. Wacawiric is best translated 'it is a bowl', not 'it is bowl-ing.'<BR><BR>Randy</BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></BODY></HTML>