Re: languages without verbs?

In article <42f1ee3d$0$742$5fc3050@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Artem Baguinski 2015922135 <artm@xxxxx> wrote:

> Nathan Sanders wrote:
> > In article <42f12838$0$714$5fc3050@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> > Artem Baguinski <artm@xxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >>Would a scientist call this class verbs and comment "they use verbs to
> >>express what we need adjectives for", or would he call them adjectives
> >>(and invert the phrase)?
> >
> > The former, most likely, especially if the words in question combine
> > with tense and aspect markers.
>
> In my example it sounded:
>
> WORKSKI MANO YESTERDAYLY.
>
> here tense is shown by the adjective YESTERDAYLY. Is this a tense marker
> combined with the verb WORKSKI?

Not quite what I had in mind; I was thinking more along the lines of
an affix (like English -ed or -ing), rather than a separate adverbial
word or phrase.

But even in a language with no tense/aspect affixes, you can explore
whether adjectives and verbs are in the same category by replacing
verbs with adjectives, and vice versa.

For example, does SICKSKI MANO YESTERDAYLY mean "the man was sick
yesterday"?

If RUNSKI SICKSKI MANO means "the sick man runs", then does RUNSKI
WORKSKI MANO mean "the working man runs"?

Bottom line: if you can systematically interchange two words, without
changing the morphology, syntax, or grammaticality (though of course
the semantics can change), in a variety of sentence types, then the
two words likely belong to the same category.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program nsanders@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Williams College http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders
Williamstown, MA 01267
.