Re: Armenian, Sumerian, Burushaski, and Turkic languages

On Jun 18, 9:52 am, Xabi <jser...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 17, 11:05 pm, Darkstar <darkstar...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Jun 17, 10:43 pm, Xabi <jser...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 16, 1:47 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 16, 1:43 am, Xabi <jser...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

(Of course, what counts as a word is still murky---is a Chinese
disyllabic verb more like one-word disyllabic verbs like "cancel" or
two-word phrasal verbs like "call off"?)
From a functional viewpoint, both are disyllabic; the space between

"call" and "off" is just a convention: is "unclear" one word or two
words? Would it be two words if by accidents of historical ortography
it would be written "un clear"? My feeling is that it is one word,
just like "call off".

"Unclear" is inseparable, vs. "Call the dogs off!!"

Ok, then what about "to put up with"? But it is not so clear that
separable vs. inseparable play a determinat role in deciding what is a
word; for instance, in Portuguese the simple future 1º sg is
"falarei" (I shall speak), and it is considered one word, but it can
separated: forms as "falar-vos-ei" (I shall speak to you), "falar-lhes-
ei" (I shall speak to them) and so on, are grammatical and not
uncommon; in ancient Spanish it also happened. I know that
diacronically this future come from infiniteve+haber; but its forms
are considered one word, though optionally separable; some German
verbs can also be separated and probably there some other languages
were this is also possible.

Maybe the concept of "word" is not useful in Linguistics? Maybe there
should be different definitions of "word" for different languages?

Drop this murky subject... Because the truth is prbbly that such
concepts as word and sentence are written only. The laws of spoken
speech might in fact be entirely different.

But the comparative method is basically based on the concept of
"word"; if we throw it away, what do we have?

Javi- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Um, no. In oral speech, we have a "syntagm" (Greek and Russian
terminology) or "phrase" (or "utterance") (English terminology) which
is in fact the minimal fragment in practice. When you're refering to
cases like comparative method, you basically assume that oral phrases
temporarily coincide with written words, because these words are
enunciated as separate oral fragments.

For instance, "I'm going to the movies" in Am. English are 5 or 6
words (also "I am...") in written speech depending on the way you
write it, but just 1 or 3 phrases or utterances in oral speech,
depending on the contextual meaning, and intonation. and the way you
say it: "umgoin tothemovies" or "umgoingtothemovies". So it's often
one single utterance in real speech, not 5 or 6 "words"! That's what I
mean. Word is probably a written concept only. Or at least it should
somehow be reformulated for oral speech cases.

Don't talk about that, it's gonna drag on for ages until we kill each
other.

.