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From: alan@pdn.UUCP (Alan Lovejoy)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Why can't my cat talk?
Message-ID: <1705@pdn.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Nov-87 13:47:09 EST
Article-I.D.: pdn.1705
Posted: Mon Nov  2 13:47:09 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Nov-87 22:07:19 EST
References: <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> <12400006@iuvax> <4337@well.UUCP> <1699@pdn.UUCP> <568@russell.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy)
Organization: Paradyne Corporation, Largo, Florida
Lines: 25

In article <568@russell.STANFORD.EDU> goldberg@russell.UUCP (Jeffrey Goldberg) writes:
>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.
>
>Do you have any reason to believe this?

Sure, having studied Linguistics extensively, and having seen the
grammars of numerous third-world and/or American Indian languages,
I feel quite justified in saying what I said.  

Your question implies doubt.  Why do you doubt?  If the examples I gave
from English did not suffice to convince you, how about Russian? (I
*know* that language). 

"Igor' lyubit svoyu s'istru" and "Svoyu s'istru lyubit Igor'" both mean the
same thing (Igor loves his sister).  Word order is irrelevant, except 
to signal whether Igor or his sister are the topic of conversation.
This is not an isolated example, but is paradigmatic of Russian
sentential sytax.

--alan@pdn