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From: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.lang
Subject: Re: words order in English and Japanese
Message-ID: <3579@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 88 16:09:23 GMT
References: <1671@russell.STANFORD.EDU> <275@draken.nada.kth.se> <975@klipper.cs.vu.nl> <23431@cca.CCA.COM>
Reply-To: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik)
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 18
Summary: Nouns and verbs are distinct classes in all languages

In article <23431@cca.CCA.COM> bobcoe@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Robert K. Coe) writes:
>I have to wonder what Nakashima would make of the Polynesian languages
>(Hawaiian et al), in which the very distinction between nouns and verbs is at
>most weak and unconvincing.

One needs to be careful in making claims like this.  English also has
ways of converting nouns into verbs and vice versa.  For example, any
verb can be used in its progressive participial form as a gerundive or
gerund: "John's opening the door", "John's opening of the door".  We can
also take nouns into verbs, as in "Your statement impacted our report"
and "They proxmired us again".  Some languages appear to tolerate this
kind of functional shift more freely than English does.  This has to do
with rules of word formation in the language, not its failure to make a
distinction between nouns and verbs.
-- 

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Rick Wojcik   rwojcik@boeing.com