Information

[Heike Bödeker]

At 19:23 12.12.02 -0500, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
>In Nahuatl verbs are a way to satisfy the English palate for adjectives.

I must say I'd regard the formal preference for verbs vs. nouns
(substantives, adjectives), or expressions involving one or the other, only
as one side of the coin.

As for adjectives, as Dixon had pointed out long ago, many languages have
only a not too large and closed class of true adjectives, while the rest of
adjectival *concepts* is denoted by (lexical) verbs. In the Old World e.g.
Dravidian could serve as an example. So this would be a systemic constraint
that leaves little room for choices or preferences.

As for nouns, so far it mostly seems to have been about a combination with
some kind of predicative suffix. In so far this could be regarded as
functionally equivalent to the copula in an Aristotelean predication (say
as opposed to conversion as with English hammer).

At the same time about nouns and verbs there could be many more aspects
mentioned. E.g., do verbs constitute a larger lexical class than verbs?
could one then say that there are much more concepts denoting events than
there are concepts denoting entities involved in such events? (In such a
case it again wouldn't be a preference but just what one reasonably might
have expected anyway). Similar with verbal vs. nominal grammatical
categories (also language families like Algonquian come to mind which have
a lot to offer in *both* departments).

Not to speak of the classical problem of lacking or weakly developed
noun-verb-distinctions and the question whether such words from a typology
& universals perspective could (should) be said to display more of noun- or
verb-like properties.

Also, what happens in discourse? Do larger sentences packed with nominal
terms for actants and circumstants make a language "nouny"? etc. etc.

And probably still many facets more...

All the best,

Heike