Friday, July 17, 2015

Detail #184: Head-Marking Taken a Step too Far

In a rather materially limited culture where also some form of incorporating polysynthesis operates, it is imaginable that some verbs may develop suppletive forms for certain verb-object or verb-subject combinations. For certain things, it might even be possible that there never was a noun, or that the noun has been lost, and the only way to refer to some thing or class of thing is by a limited set of verbs that mark that class by suppletion.

Would we notice if this already has happened in the languages we speak?

No comments:

Post a Comment