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From: murrayw@utai.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
Message-ID: <4141@utai.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Nov-87 00:37:34 EST
Article-I.D.: utai.4141
Posted: Tue Nov  3 00:37:34 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Nov-87 04:46:22 EST
References: <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> <12400006@iuvax> <4337@well.UUCP> <1699@pdn.UUCP>
Reply-To: murrayw@ai.UUCP (Murray Watt)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 18
Summary: 

In article <1699@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes:

>Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in
>suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and
>transformations.  The more primitive the culture which uses the
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>language, the more likely this is to be true.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    RE: "Primitive culture"  If such a term can even be applied to 
        a culture then it is at best highly subjective. (e.g. 
        Western Culture is very primitive but has a superficial gloss.)

    RE: "the more likely....."
        I think you'll have a hard time trying to show that language is 
        evolving in a particular syntactic and morphological direction.

                                                     Murray