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From: goldberg@SU-Russell.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Artificial Language
Message-ID: <187@SU-Russell.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 10-Jan-86 14:53:48 EST
Article-I.D.: SU-Russe.187
Posted: Fri Jan 10 14:53:48 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 13-Jan-86 07:58:20 EST
References: <2685@sjuvax.UUCP> <886@rlgvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: goldberg@SU-Russell.UUCP (Jeffrey Goldberg)
Distribution: net
Organization: Center for Study of Language and Information, Stanford
Lines: 36

In article <886@rlgvax.UUCP> jack@rlgvax.UUCP (Jack Waugh) writes:

...

>A nice feature of Loglan is its lack of distinction between
>nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  One part of speech --
>the predicate word -- takes care of all these functions.  Since
>I became acquainted with Loglan, the idea of distinguishing
>between nouns and adjectives (which Esperanto seems to) in
>artificial language seems superfluous to me.  In a recent article
>here, someone gave an example context in a creole language where
>an adjective or verb could be inserted.  That example encourages
>the hope that grammatical distinctions among words with extrlingual
>import (nouns, verbs, etc.) are not necessary.
>
>Jack  (la Djek in Loglan)

There are languages in which the distinction between adjectives and
verbs, or adjectives and nouns is very fuzzy.  Some linguists argue
that in at least some of these languages the category Adjective doesn't
exist [R.M. W. Dixon, 1977. `Where have all the adjectives gone?'.
_Studies in Language_, I.19--80.].  Others disagree, but Dixon's case
is fairly strong.  There has been only one claim as far as I know of a
language that didn't distinguish nouns and verbs:  (Nootka by Sapir).
More recent work has called that claim into serious doubt.  The point
is simply that Loglan is appearenntly trying to do away with something
that is an intrinsic part of natural language.

Categories such as Noun and Verb are no accident in the languages of
the world, and while a language without the distinction might be easier
to learn, I suspect that it would be nearly impossible to use.

-jeff goldberg

-- 
Jeff Goldberg (best reached at GOLDBERG@SU-CSLI.ARPA)