Re: why the -s in English verbs?

"ekkilu" == ekkilu <ekkilu@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

ekkilu> Maybe it will help if I give you a list of nouns in
ekkilu> English:

I can't see how that helps.

Most of the nouns you gave can be pluralized by appending -s or -es.
And these plural forms are indistinguishable from the 3p sg. present
forms of the corresponding verbs. So, how can that help?


ekkilu> phone light house handle pen seat pocket staple clip pin
ekkilu> tape fish water fire book lock plant hand foot nail mail
ekkilu> wire cap oil sign plug wave branch vote picture plot board
ekkilu> archive card key bag screen map xerox...

ekkilu> Actually, I just gave you a list of verbs, too.

So what? I can give you thousands of Chinese nouns, and they are all
verbs, too. There are more Chinese speakers in the world than any
other languages. Why?


ekkilu> Virtually all nouns in English can be used as verbs,

So what?


ekkilu> AS IS, without any modification. (Trust me, I have seen
ekkilu> enough odd nouns used creatively as verbs.)

Why do you think I'll not trust you on this? I can name other
languages that have this characteristic. Just find a list of
isolating languages and you'll easily find more examples.


ekkilu> This is not the case of Chinese. (Try to translate the
ekkilu> above list into colloquial Chinese and see you can get
ekkilu> some of them to work as verbs, remember, unchanged. I
ekkilu> would say you can probably get only 10% to work. Chinese
ekkilu> just doesn't have the same verb/noun confusion problem as
ekkilu> English.) Matter of fact, I personally don't know any
ekkilu> other language where nouns translate into verbs so easily.

Are you going to tell us that English is an isolating language?


ekkilu> Verb/noun confusion is a reality in English.

No more a reality than it is in Chinese.


ekkilu> As I said elsewhere, pretending the problem does not exist
ekkilu> does not make it go away.

I never pretended that this phenomenon does not exist. I just don't
think that's a problem at all.

You just sound like a person coming from a landlocked country, first
seeing a sea, discovering that sea water is salty, worrying that
fishes can't survive under such situations, and hence trying hard to
find a way to desalinate the water in the whole sea.


ekkilu> Statistically, the -s ending helps to "mark" the verb.

"marks" can be a verb or a noun. The -s doesn't help me tell them
apart.


ekkilu> It's not the only device, positional information is the
ekkilu> primary clue, but it sometimes is not enough a clue. If
ekkilu> the 3Sg -s ending has survived, there is a reason.

So, could you explain how this device helps in the following pair of
sentences?

Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.


ekkilu> Perhaps I can put it another way. In long sentences or
ekkilu> paragraphs (written or spoken), often the reader/listener
ekkilu> would get distracted and miss out a few words, and then
ekkilu> loses the positional clue.

Only bad readers do.


ekkilu> That's the moment when additional grammatical markers
ekkilu> come to help to "re- synch" our mental parsing
ekkilu> mechanism.

Tell me how that works on the pair of example sentences above.


ekkilu> It's a bit like how German's Großschreibung works:

No. With Großschreibung, I always know which word is noun (except at
the beginning of a sentence, or with words spelled in ALLCAPS). With
the English -s, no. The -s is both be a plural marker (on nouns) and
a 3p sg. present marker (on verbs). The -s alone cannot let me tell
nouns and verbs apart.


ekkilu> not strictly a necessary feature, but people have found it
ekkilu> useful enough that it is still being used.

Do people keep it because they FIND it useful? Are they CONCIOUS
about it?



--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
.

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