tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post2815250211638376645..comments2023-09-24T05:45:23.811-05:00Comments on Paleoglot: On the computational nature of syntaxGlen Gordonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-86339412182801498092012-05-24T00:52:14.592-05:002012-05-24T00:52:14.592-05:00Perhaps he's thinking of "nouny" ver...Perhaps he's thinking of "nouny" verbs in Cree, as in <i>noocih-acaskw-ii-w</i> 'He hunts muskrats'. In <a href="https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/majohnson25/web/Root%20and%20Noun%20Incorporation.pdf" rel="nofollow"><i>Word formation in Plains Cree: Root incorporation and noun incorporation</i></a> (2011), Johnson sketches out a grammatical structure of this formation into nicelyGlen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-64774933958081759792012-05-22T20:23:46.134-05:002012-05-22T20:23:46.134-05:00"What point are you responding to and to whom..."What point are you responding to and to whom?"<br /><br />I was criticizing the linguist I mentioned in my post. He, a poster at the ZompistBB site at the time, claimed in a thread about polysythetic languages that Proto-Algonquian did not even have "noun-like things" as a concept and expressed everything as a kind of process (a "verb-like thing"). I was skeptical Taylor Selsethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01053859319436082574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-90616874753421050272012-05-21T01:22:42.771-05:002012-05-21T01:22:42.771-05:00We should remember the fact that Mandarin zài can ...We should remember the fact that Mandarin <i>zài</i> can be interpreted both as a verb (eg. <i>wo zai</i> "I'm here") and a preposition (ie. <i>zai tushuguan</i> "at the library"). <i>Dào</i> is simultaneously a noun meaning "path", a verb meaning "to go towards", and a preposition meaning "towards". The distinction we make between these Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-84133990624522687682012-05-21T00:44:01.156-05:002012-05-21T00:44:01.156-05:00"It makes sense that even in a verb-y languag...<b>"It makes sense that even in a verb-y language one can still contast 'object' lexemes and 'morphism' lexemes"</b><br /><br />What point are you responding to and to whom?Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-39789627104331050602012-05-20T23:25:15.144-05:002012-05-20T23:25:15.144-05:00In contrast to languages like Jingulu, some of the...In contrast to languages like Jingulu, some of the highly polysythetic languages of the Americas (such as Algonquian) are very "verb-y". In the Algonquian languages' case I have heard that most of the noun lexemes those languages (such as Ojibwe and Cree) are derived from verbal roots. Note that I do not know if that is actually true or not, It's something I read in several Taylor Selsethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01053859319436082574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-51899539677131361552012-05-14T16:00:46.471-05:002012-05-14T16:00:46.471-05:00"I agree with much of what you say, but the i...<b>"I agree with much of what you say, but the issue here is different, and in fact simpler, I think."</b><br /><br />While you oppose a verb-centric position, what is this "simpler" position of your own exactly? I suspect you may only believe my view is complicated due to a lack of familiarity with information theory and its relationship to structural linguistics.<br /><br />Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-27580124926207024312012-05-14T13:51:52.159-05:002012-05-14T13:51:52.159-05:00I agree with much of what you say, but the issue h...I agree with much of what you say, but the issue here is different, and in fact simpler, I think. <br />Many if not most traditional syntactic models, including Chomskyian generativism, are intensely "verb-centric", by which I mean that verbs are considered paramount in some specific way.<br />For example, in the Minimalist program, if you "eat" and "food" as "Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-74412357962203600442012-05-12T17:16:42.866-05:002012-05-12T17:16:42.866-05:00Does it necessarily though, Ezr? All I know is tha...Does it necessarily though, Ezr? All I know is that if we lay structural linguistics beside <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_theory" rel="nofollow">category theory</a>, let's say, we see "verbs" being relabeled as "morphisms" and "nouns" as "objects". A morphism is also equivalent to a "function" in a computer program with input Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-33956649130904559612012-05-11T20:40:48.060-05:002012-05-11T20:40:48.060-05:00This is quite interesting and really flies in the ...This is quite interesting and really flies in the face of 50 years of Chomskyian "verbocentrism" in generative Syntax.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-17889112722851184662012-05-05T21:49:55.989-05:002012-05-05T21:49:55.989-05:00I agree with you on that, Connor. Redundancy is li...I agree with you on that, Connor. Redundancy is like "breathing room" and if a system is too tightly designed, it just doesn't have the room to adapt well if at all. However we know that language adapts and adapts quite well. I like to think of language as hovering between order and chaos, not too hot and not too cold, always rebalancing itself after every tiny change to its system.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202150793869184289.post-8291171173492519962012-05-03T09:54:09.387-05:002012-05-03T09:54:09.387-05:00Redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing. I have ...Redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing. I have a colleague from Serbia that complains that English has entirely too many nouns. "Stove, range, oven, grill, in Serbia we have one word," he explains, "it is like that with everything here." This kind of redundancy allows us to be extremely specific. Other times, redundancy provides a form of error checking. If something cjohnson318https://www.blogger.com/profile/00710696274788748676noreply@blogger.com