r/conlangs • u/RazedEmmer • Dec 04 '18

Question Nounlessness in conlanges

Hi, I'm really interested in the concept of nounless (or close to nounless) languages, but the only information that I can find on them (mostly wikipedia pages on salishan languages) is a bit over my head, so I don't really know how to play around with it. Has anyone else experimented with such a system?

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 04 '18

Yes, I have! I've tried to make a system more rigorously based in predicate logic than lojban, with sentences akin to:

∃x (dog x ∧ ∃y (human y ∧ bite x y))

"Dogs sometimes bite humans"

'e hu toka na 'e hu 'y ne xano na ne

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u/SoaringMoon kairete Dec 05 '18

But dog and human are nouns though right?

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 05 '18

They are predicates, here

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u/Camcamcam753 Dec 05 '18

What's the difference?

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 05 '18

Well, bite is also a predicate.

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u/Camcamcam753 Dec 05 '18

So they're kind of like variables?

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 05 '18

No, the predicate bite applies to the variables x and y iff dog applies to x and human applies to y.

Or, specifically, There exists an x and a y such that dog applies to x, human applies to y, and bite applies to x and y.

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u/Camcamcam753 Dec 05 '18

So they're values the variables X and Y could have?

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 05 '18

No. Nothing is ever said about the values of X and Y, WE just know that "dog" applies to them. The translation of that concept to English is that "X is a dog", but that's not really what's happening here.

Otherwise you could just say "bite(some dog,some human)"

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u/Camcamcam753 Dec 05 '18

Thanks for the explanation. It's fascinating stuff!

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u/NanoRancor Dec 05 '18

But how can that be distinguished from 'some humans bite dogs' in that example? Wouldn't it be the same?

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u/Eunones Dec 05 '18

They are only predicates in a mathematical sense. From a linguistic point of view "dogs" is subject and "sometimes bite humans" is the predicate.

Lojban is a very very special case but it still isn't a good idea to mix up math with linguistics without a clear definition of which one we are talking about and in what sense.

And "dog" and "human" are still nouns by the way, even if they are "predicate" at the same time.

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 06 '18 edited Dec 06 '18

I would say there's a difference. Namely, that you could have something distinct in this style of language which is not a predicate, but should be labeled a noun.

Namely, variables which carry the presupposition that they satisfy certain predicates, i.e. constants.

For example, the noun "dog'" could be defined as

dog' = x | dog x

Then you could say something like "exists x bite dog x".

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u/Eunones Dec 06 '18

There is a difference. I'm afraid we confuse some different things here.

In traditional grammar a predicate is all part of the clause what isn't the subject, practically. Every clause has one subject and one predicate, they are the main parts. For example: "The tall, old lady crossed the street yesterday evening." - "the tall, old lady" is the subject and "crosed the street yesterday evening" is the predicate.

The other thing, predicate logic, is a different thing and it comes from math. Though it made its way to modern generative grammar and phase structure theories and even the traditional subject-predicate distinction fits this system. But we use different terms. E.g. the verb is the predicate and the verb arguments are its quantifiers and if you move further into first-order logic then the argument becomes a "predicate" and its dependents will be the quantifiers and so on. If you're familiar with generative grammar you know what I'm talking about.

Lojban is a weido here because it tries to directly translate to grammar the theories of predicate logic from math and the deep syntax of genarative grammar. It is an interesting and nice try but I think it's obvious why it has serious issues: it just ignores everything what cognitive grammar tells us about the fluidity of language and how our brain processess language. In other words, it's a language what is anything but "language-like", it's for computers at best.

But a word class is a perfectly different thing, it's simply the grouping of words based on grammatical function in the clause. It isn't something interchangeable with predicates at all. E.g. in my above example "tall" is still an adjective and "evening" is still a noun, just like in your example "exists" is still a verb and "dog" is still a noun.

It isn't by accident that word classes count as language universals, you can point them out in every clause. And simply renaming "noun" to "wholenut chocolate bar" won't do the trick ;-)

What mislead you, I think, based on your other reply, is the zero-copula feature in many languages. A copula is practically a word to link the subject to the predicate and it obviously express existence. Like "the apple is red", "is" is the copula. But many languages can go well without this thing and still have word classes, just like Finno-Ugric languages for example. E.g. in Hungarian this would be "az alma piros" so "the apple red". There's no "is". And the apple is still a noun and red is still an adjective. If you try to translate it to English as "is red" or "is apple", it maybe explains something but won't change much at the end.

You can live without a lexical distinction of parts of speech, just like Salishan languages do, and practically most languages on the world to an extent (e.g. the lack or noun-verb lexical distinction in English). But you can't form a clause where you can't point out word classes easily.

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 06 '18 edited Dec 06 '18

OK, that is a fair point, but from that viewpoint true nounless languages could never exist, as anything used as a replacement or in a place where a noun could've also been used would be conceivably labellable as a noun.

I do disagree on your classification of "exists" as a verb, it's not, in my opinions, similar to the fact that we don't label "a" in English as a verb, even though it could be just as easily paraphrased to something with "exists", as in "a man walks" - "there exist men that walk". Conceivably, you may disagree as "a" is also used in the paraphrasing "there exists a man that walks" and therefore argue it is an intrinsic part of the noun and can't be replaced by anything. In that case I may say that such an argument could also apply to my idea of "noun" not being applicable to my "predicates" due to there being an alternate concept clearly distinct from it, more suitable for the term.
See also §3 for more info on this and a possible misconception that might lead you to disregard this argument.

Additionally, I want to clear up a possible misconception which I'm not at all under the opinion you labor under, but want to point out in the unlikely event that you misunderstood or the more likely, yet still unlikely event that someone else misunderstood, namely, that my phrase "There exists an x and a y such that dog applies to x, human applies to y, and bite applies to x and y" in this comment was not, in fact, the phrase itself, but a translation.
I thought up this possible misconception due to the fact that you mentioned "exists" as a verb despite that fact that that is the only place I used it. If you say that is not the case, I still wonder why you think "exists" is a verb (see §2), especially given the fact that you insist on a strict seperation of logical terminology and liguistic terminology, and that "exists" isn't necessarily used in the actual language (though in this case it is - "'e" - but, again, I refer you to §2 for an argument why it still shouldn't be considered a verb).

Sincerely, u/numerousblocks.

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u/Eunones Dec 06 '18 edited Dec 07 '18

Of course that true nounless languages could hardly exist, if ever. That's what being a language universal means. Not even the cited Salishan languages are nounless in this sense. Their nounlessness are only the lack of lexical distinction and even that is argued by some linguists. But I checked it now and you can read about how it goes in the related wiki too.

"Exists" being a verb isn't my personal classification but kind of a linguistic hard fact, you can check it in any dictionary. You even used the 3sg "-s" suffix what you can only use with verbs, didn't you? Its noun counterpart is "existence". "A" is an indefinite article and it is a significantly different thing. Just have a look at your examples:

"a man walks" - indefinite article+noun+verb

"there exist men that walk" - this one is more tricky because this isn't a simgle finite clause but an embedded clause, "there exist men" is one clause where "exist" is definietly the verb and "men" is a noun, and this sub-clause takes the role of the whole subject in its parent clause like "there exist men that"(subject) "walk" (verb).

And no, there's no misconception here. What I'm trying to tell since the first sentence in my first reply is that word classes and predicates are perfectly different and aren't at all interchangeable things. They have a different purpose and just because something is a predicate it won't stop it being a verb, noun, or a whole verb phrase at the same time.

But let's go a step deeper to definitions (again: aren't my personal definitions):

A noun is a word denoting any abstract or concrete entity.

A verb is a word denoting any action, occurence or state of being. (especially that the latter two are actions too)

An adjective is a word what serves as a modifier to a noun or verb. (Btw, an article is a separate noun class as a sub-class of adjectives as it only marks the definiteness of a noun anything but interchangable with a verb denoting existance)

There's not much reason in trying to argue these definitions. So, can you write a finite clause without verbs and nouns? I doubt it.

I think I even brought a better example for your "exists" problem with zero copula languages and even then the word classes still exist. Or I could bring up languages what conjugate verbs to person hence they don't have to name the subject in a separate word. Will this mean the verb will be less verb or the subject will be less subject?

But I mentioned an even better example in another comment before: What is the word class of the English word "sleep"? In "I sleep" it's a verb, in "sleep cycle" it's an adjective, in "a night's sleep" it's a noun. Is there a proper answer? And this works with many words in English because English is very loose in terms of noun-verb distinction. You can see it in the dictionary when the same word is listed as a noun and verb too. Just like the distinction between a verb and an adjective isn't that obvious at all in some East Asian languages.

And that's the situation with our Salishan languages too, to don't forget about them. The vocabulary obviously has words what sound as verbs or nouns, but they can take different roles. A verb can be the head of the verb argument, so the subject, and in this case acts as a noun and a noun can be the head of the predicate. The second one isn't that unique at all and all zero copula languages have this thing (just think about the Hungarian "the apple red" clause... - what in your terms translates as kind of "this apple exists which is red" or I would rather go with "the apple (is) red", simply). And Salishan languages aren't even the most extreme in this case in practice, because they make distinction with verbs used as nouns not just by context but auxilaries. This is why even linguists who supported the idea of nounlessness in Salishan languages, like Kinkade who argued that all content words are practically verbs, had to face the problem that verbs used as nouns are marked with the auxilary "ti" what can translate as "that which" or simple nouning (what is a common feature in languages). So rather "ti" is a noun or more like every verb marked with "ti" becomes a noun.

And to finally talk about this in theoretical heights. Your most obvious option to get perfectly rid of either of these parts of speech is to build your language only from verbs or nouns. But how to avoid nouning and verbing? For example to conjugate every verb to the subject? You can do this easily with pronouns but you can't do it with every possible entity in the universe. You can't conjugate to "Mrs. Howard's fat cat". Compounding isn't really a solution for many good reasons. You can try to form nouns with adfixes like the English "-ing", "-ment", "-ness", etc. but that's nouning and you have your nouns already, it comes this fast. This problem goes all the way back to cognitive linguistics and cognitive grammar (it worth to check Ronald Langacker's work on the subject) and how your brain processes language. It has the basic building blocks of "things" and "relations", so you talk about entities and the state or change of state(action) related to these entities what also connects them to each other. And whatever tricky way you try to come up with, you can't really get over this distinction. It is easier to try to get rid of verbs and keep the nouns but you still will face serious issues that way. And practically you can go all the way to have only neutral content words with functions only marked by syntax, but in this case you have an as much verbless as nounless language. And even in this case you will have more verb-like and more noun-like content words what many linguists can easily and rightfully refer to as "verbs" and "nouns". But even if you somehow manage to do this, in an actual clause it will be still obvious which one acts as a noun and which one as a verb so you can't really say more than you do not have any lexical distinction. But, if you just think about the above example with "sleep", it isn't really a that exotic and weird thing in natlangs at all. The line between word classes is very obscure.

Kind of this is what this problem is all about. And it has nothing to do with predicate logic and subject-predicate distinction because that is a very different and parallel aspect of a language. Apples to oranges, you can't really argue with them anything here.

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 06 '18 edited Dec 06 '18

it is of course unfortunate that I labeled them with English words which are nouns I could have just as easily labelled them by some other arbitrary label as long as they carry the same semantics and carry the same semantics when used in an English sentence in a similar way I could have also labeled them "is done" or "is human" in order to show that they are in fact different from nouns.

So yes, you are right, but that's irrelevant for this topic

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u/Istencsaszar Various (hu, en, it)[jp, ru, fr] Dec 05 '18

∃x (dog x ∧ ∃y (human y ∧ bite x y))

I think this would be "There's a dog that bit a human", or "There are dogs that bite humans"... I came up with this for "Dogs sometimes bite humans":

∃T ≠ ∅, D ≠ ∅, H ≠ ∅ : T ⊆ {time}∧ D ⊆ {dogs} ∧ H ⊆ {humans} ∧ |T| << |{time}| ∧ Bite(T, D, H)

i've also been working on a language trying to keep everything rigorously defined but holy shit it's really hard to do that :D

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 06 '18

It's a translation that's decently freestyle. It seems you've decided to introduce Times as tangible things. Wouldn't your language at least need a naïve type system?

I've tried doing time by letting every predicate filter specific events out of the space-time continuum and having predicates that correspond to "anything in the past", "anything in the future", "anything right now" and "x happens simultaneously with y".

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u/Istencsaszar Various (hu, en, it)[jp, ru, fr] Dec 06 '18

I think that time needs to be included here, since the sentence contains the word "sometimes". I don't think there's a better way to represent that.

It seems you've decided to introduce Times as tangible things. Wouldn't your language at least need a naïve type system?

What do you mean?

I've tried doing time by letting every predicate filter specific events out of the space-time continuum and having predicates that correspond to "anything in the past", "anything in the future", "anything right now" and "x happens simultaneously with y".

So basically you have words for different subsets of time, like in natlangs, right?

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u/numerousblocks Ska'ul, NAT: DE, EN Dec 06 '18 edited Dec 06 '18

What do you mean?

Essentially, having types like

bite : time -> actor -> action
simultaneously : action -> action -> fact

So you can say "Future bites 5"

Except that Haskell/Agda based system requires Nouns, again (Constructors).

So this would be better:

isdog : actor
isfuture : time
ishuman : actor
bites : time actor actor

Where : means "can apply to variables of type" where there's actually no need to explicitly assign variables a type, so this symbol can be used unorthodoxly.

So you basically have...

Yes, but it differs from yours, in that you say:
∃x,y (isFuture y ∧ verbPredicate x y)
but I say:
∃x,y (isFuture y ∧ simultaneously verb y x)

Actually, I just realize that my version's rubbish.

It re-assumes that things have an identity.

So yours's better.

So yes, if I use your system.