Re: If you were inventing CoBOL...

From: Chuck Stevens (charles.stevens_at_unisys.com)
Date: 09/22/04 

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:06:44 -0700

In all seriousness, consider as a model for comparison an "inflected"
language like Latin.

The way the Eskimaleut languages were described to me was that it was sort
of like the form of the part of the utterance that served as the "subject"
was dependent not only on the tense of the verb phrase but also the gender
of the direct object, the number of the indirect object if any, the sort and
location of conjunctions used anywhere in the utterance, and the presence of
a negative in any prepositional phrase. This may be a gross exaggeration,
but it gives the general idea.

In such an environment, the concept of "word" or even "word stem" doesn't
really work in describing the language or its grammar.

    -Chuck Stevens

.
<docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:cin5fh$741$1@panix5.panix.com...
> In article <cin2nb$28u6$1@si05.rsvl.unisys.com>,
> Chuck Stevens <charles.stevens@unisys.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >I agree. See the "Language and Literature" section of the Encarta
article
> >on Inuit at http://encarta.msn.com/ . In many cases the distinction
> >between a "word" and a "sentence" in that language disappears.
>
> Really? Interesting.
>
> DD
>

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