is it possible generally, an artifical language without verbs? any suggestion?
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Anonymous2009-02-25 22:52
Not only can I not picture a language without any form of verb whatsoever, but I wouldn't be motivated to research it either. The verb seems like one of those things you just need to have. But check out this page:
Some Frenchie wrote a book with no verbs, and stated: "The verb is like a weed in a field of flowers," he said. "You have to get rid of it to allow the flowers to grow and flourish."
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Anonymous2009-02-26 6:24
there was an artificial language without verbs, yes
I think I saw it on omniglot
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Anonymous2009-02-27 1:40
>>2
>but I wouldn't be motivated to research it either
is it possible generally, an artifical language without verbs?
Yes, it's possible. I know a way to do it.
First, let's take a sentence, translate it into a random imaginary language, and then assign meanings for each of its components:
"My husband ate figs yesterday."
For clarity's sake, we're not going to make the language completely foreign. Let's say it's based on Romance languages and English and has the phonology of Italian/Japanese.
Thus the sentence is
"Eosband meos mange ta te fegum iestarde."
Here,
eosband = husband meos = my mange = food ta = a particle that indicates that the noun it follows acts as the "verb" of the sentence, or a "verbal noun" (not used in its usual sense here) of sorts, ta indicates the past tense (for the present tense, we could use re, for example). The Japanese noun + suru (=to do) construction is analogous, only in this case a particle does the dirty work te = indicates object in the sentence, put before the noun it modifies fegum = figs iestarde = yesterday
Analysis:
subject - first person singular possessive - "verbal noun"+PAST - object particle - object - adverb
>>5
Not calling verbs "verbs", that's a smart way of going around the problem, yes, but I think we are looking for something sliiightly different here.