Timeline for Does any linguist honestly believe that nouns and verbs are not universals?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
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| Dec 1, 2016 at 20:30 | comment | added | user6726 | The question impugns the intellectual honesty of the position that some languages have no such distinction. I show that while the distinction can actually be motivated in some languages, a premise (regarding burden of proof) underlying the question is flawed. There are only two possible interpretations of the claim, unless one invoked a mystical third force. If you have a proposal whereby the distinction can be learned without reference to either form or meaning, you could post it as an answer. | |
| Dec 1, 2016 at 20:00 | comment | added | brass tacks | I'm not saying every language has the distinction. I'm saying that the position you argue against in the first paragraph ("a necessarily-universal presence of the distinction" on "all words") is a straw man that nobody has argued for. The position outlined in the question argues for a distinction that is "universally" present in the sense that it exists in all languages, not necessarily in all words. | |
| Dec 1, 2016 at 19:50 | comment | added | user6726 | @sumelic, I can't figure out the import of your comments. Just because English has words like "fun" yet does have nouns vs. adjectives doesn't mean that every language has a difference between verbs and adjectives, nouns and verbs, and so on. It hasn't been established that noun vs. verb (for example) is a necessarily-present distinction. If you insert "putatively" in that clause, does that make my point easier to understand? That is, one can beg the question by asserting that the distinction is mandatory, but you can't reduce that to an empirical claim. | |
| Dec 1, 2016 at 19:41 | comment | added | brass tacks | Just because English has words like "fun" that are ambiguous between noun and adjective, doesn't mean that English has no distinction between nouns and adjectives. Similarly, there could be plenty of ambiguity between verbs and nouns in some languages, but the language would still have a distinction if some words were verb-only, and some words were noun-only. | |
| Dec 1, 2016 at 19:40 | comment | added | brass tacks | The question asks if "some languages have no distinction between verbs and nouns", not if "all languages have clear distinctions between verbs and nouns for every word". Given that, I think it's irrelevant to say ", a necessarily-universal presence of the distinction would mean either (a) category membership can be deduced from the meaning of the word or (b) there are formal markers which identify category membership, and all words must have one of these formal markers." | |
| Feb 15, 2015 at 22:53 | comment | added | john lawler in exile | The distinction between entities and events is a semantic distinction, not a lexical one. It doesn't hafta be the case that specific lexical items are required for the distinction. | |
| Feb 15, 2015 at 16:21 | comment | added | user6726 | "Freedom" is a noun, but not an entity, a thing. A semantic distinction doesn't replicate the noun/verb distinction. | |
| Feb 15, 2015 at 7:11 | comment | added | user8144 | Sorry, but the distinction is necessary in all languages, as one needs to distinguish entities and events/processes. (See the answer by john lawler.) That distinction is a fact of nature, not a cultural one... | |
| Feb 15, 2015 at 1:04 | history | answered | user6726 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |