Re: Some Thoughts on Word Classes
Rob Zook 
Thu, 20 Aug 1998 22:12:45 -0500

At 08:06 PM 8/20/98 -0500, Saul Epstein wrote:
<snip>
>So, entities are characterized by qualities, and a state seems to be
>the characterization of one entity in terms of another entity's
>qualities. And since using a word to modify another in this way
>doesn't currently involve any marking (as with affixes, etc.) there
>doesn't seem to be a need to put words so used in a separate class.
>Although... It just occured to me that we could go the other way,
>lumping qualities and states together as 4, and making 1 consist only
>of actions. That would eliminate a need to come up with a label
>grouping actions with states...

Hmmm, the whole way you're regarding states now seems very foreign
to me though, how are you defining states?


>> I'm not sure however, that I see the difficulty in describing
>> a relation as distinct from an entity.
>
>Relation is not a satisfactory label, I'm afraid. Having thought of
>this, I find the prospect of separating actions from states as
>"major" classes very appealing. In any case, everything you say here
>pretty well illustrates the difficulty of description in terms other
>than those of entity...

Then we need to talk about what we both mean by states and relations.


>> So, if I understand your proposed grammar additions,
>> th'dhahqte would be roughly, "my song" as an entity, as
>> opposed to the action, so th'dhahqte'aq would mean roughly,
>> "my song (that you're experiencing right now)".
>
>Mmm, I'm not sure. <th'dhahqte> would represent... ah... the class of
>lyric compositions or performances possessed by me. So, my "complete
>works," also my skill or style, perhaps, as a lyricist or singer.
>This is an entity. (Not to be confused with <th'dhahqe>, the
>more-than-ten plural of <th'dhahq>, a particular composition or
>performance.)

Well, then maybe we need to have a class of instatiating affixes
to pin down the exact meaning of a root.


>So here's another possible set of classes...
>
>    1. Action
>    2. Entity
>    3. Deixis
>    4. Quality (or State)
>    5. Quantity
>    6. Operation

Hmmm, I was actually thinking that we could better roll
state into relations, maybe we should discuss this a little more :)


Rob Z.