Re: why the -s in English verbs?

In message <f0f9b811-2222-4c78-875b-54f5e217d52b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, ekkilu@xxxxxxxxx writes
On Feb 27, 7:37 am, Joachim Pense <s...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John Atkinson wrote:
> "Joachim Pense" <s...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>>> Probably well-known, well-talked, but anyways. From Wikipedia

>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_verbs

>>> "...The third person singular present indicative in English is
>>> notable
>>> cross-linguistically for being a morphologically marked form for a
>>> semantically unmarked one.

>> I'd like to hear about other example languages to support
>> the "cross-linguistically".

> Here's a random few:

...

> All illustrate the general tendency that, if any form is unmarked, 3Sg
> will be.

But ekkilu claimed the opposite.

Joachim-

I did not claim it. It's a fact for English: 3Sg is more complicated
than other persons. So, English is an exception in the scale of world
languages. I am only trying to understand why.

I am not fully happy, but my take is:

(a) Third-person verbal forms are the primary goal of a language

Since when did languages have "primary goals" or any kind of directed purpose?

(since a language like Vietnamese shows that 1st and 2nd persons are
unnecessary.)

Non sequitur. Languages like Vietnamese show that _all_ person distinctions are unnecessary. They don't say anything special about the third.

(b) English may have fewer markers than other languages. (Reminds me
of the book titled "Eats, Shoots and Leaves.") Parsing verbs from
nouns would be difficult (statistically speaking) without the -s
ending for 3Sg. (3Pl is less a problem because subject nouns are
already marked with -s.) English chooses to mark verbs, instead of
nouns (e.g: the case of Spanish, where articles like "el/la" are
ubiquitous.)

I guess other languages come in from other angles. So, they focus on a
verb as an entity separate from its neighborhood nouns in sentences,
and hence choose the simplest form for 3Sg.

Anyway, I think English's 3Sg -s ending will never disappear. It
cannot disappear, because the language would become too confusing.
That is, the primary role of the -s ending is a "verb marker," not
conjugation.

It can't be all that important. In the whole of what you typed above, I can only see three instances of a regular verb so marked.

--
Richard Herring
.

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