Which came first, the noun or the verb?

It is possible to run a language without adjectives by using verbs instead; Korean has adjectives but uses a verb quite often where English hasn't such a verb. But although in The Languages of Pao a verbless language is proposed, it does not seem that anyone regards Vance as really succeeding. I've often wondered, which came first, the noun or the verb?

For instance in Faust: "In the beginning was the deed."

There are null subject languages, such as Spanish, where the subject needn't be explicitly stated. This is called valency, a verb may be avalent, monovalent, divalent or trivalent. English does not allow zero-valence; all the Germanic languages including French require dummy pronouns to be attached to impersonal verbs, i.e. it snows. It is debated whether the Romance and Slavic languages are truly avalent as they conjugate subjectless verbs to the third-person singular.

This brings us into metaphysics; the mystics sometimes describe, to use Hegel's expression, "pure, undifferentiated being." In the Existentialist mantra "existence precedes essence" it seems to me that we are told something similar; the verb is prior to the noun. What does this mean in terms of Lordship and Bondage? The master tames the wild verb? Subject-verb-object: farmer-horse-plow? Even to speak about a verb, and not just in English, we need to move it from the verb place, gerund-ify it, or modify it into its full infinitive form.



Is language always masterly and slavish? Is English? Has it become this way?

Old English is not the promised land. O.E. was less ridged than modern English with respect to word-order typology. But this is neither here nor there however as every language spoken or constructed on Earth is and must be either SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OSV or OVS in all of its major sentences.

Of course O.E. had gerunds. And this is not especially remarkable as there are also gerundives and many numerous ways of converting a word from one lexical category to another by agglutination.

Whether or not "noun/verbs" existed in the Proto-World language is maybe not exactly the right question. Instead, what are the natures of the S-slot and the V-slot? The noun is the easiest to attack, for instance see Geach's, or also The Iconicity of the Universal Categories ‘Noun’ and ‘Verbs’. But thought is syntactic. Animals think grammatically. Human language did not evolve, but burst onto the scene; over the pre-existing order of cognition.

The verb is only static once it is used, like Schrödinger's cat. I murder; but I am sentenced for a murder; nouns are authoritarian. But be careful, it is the 'slot' in word order and not the word that should be questioned: Swimmingly swim a swimmable swim. (Adverb, verb, adjective, noun.)

Is any answer just lorem ipsum? We need a sentence that answers itself, like, "This sentence contains three a's, three c's, two d's, twenty seven e's, four f's, two g's, ten h's, eight i's, thirteen n's, six o's, ten r's, twenty five s's, twenty three t's, three u's, three v's, six w's, three x's, and four y's."

Human language was probably verbal first and did not self-reference, so there were no nouns.

But the question you pose is rather moot. How can you differentiate between verb and noun without self-reference??? That was probably the case, so 'verb' would not even have any conceptual meaning.

It gets very tricky, to say the least...

I'm not sure where you will get by trying to find an answer to this. Though if I had to guess, I'd guess 'nouns' came first. Babies babble nouns like 'mommy' before they say anything else...though I don't know if this would have much meaning.

babelbell wrote:

I'm not sure where you will get by trying to find an answer to this. Though if I had to guess, I'd guess 'nouns' came first. Babies babble nouns like 'mommy' before they say anything else...though I don't know if this would have much meaning.

You are an essentialist then, not an existentialist?

"In the beginning was the Word."

-John 1:1

babelbell wrote:

I'm not sure where you will get by trying to find an answer to this. Though if I had to guess, I'd guess 'nouns' came first. Babies babble nouns like 'mommy' before they say anything else...though I don't know if this would have much meaning.

My guess is also that the first words were nouns - names for food and them pointing in a direction, for example.

I will begin by saying that nomenclature designations probably began with words directly related to tonal communication. Degrees of alarm would right up there. As would degrees of friendship. After that at your technical level, I confess, the subject is Greek to me.

I will, however, try to stay with you in a more general sense regarding the relationships between language and the evolution of human consciousnesses.

MagnetMan wrote:

I will begin by saying that nomenclature designations probably began with words directly related to tonal communication. Degrees of alarm would right up there.

I think you don't mean something about tone in speech. I think you mean to say something about mood?

"Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal modality."

"In linguistics, modals are expressions broadly associated with notions of possibility and necessity."

I think, all this grammar must exist already in the heads of animals. I suspect that grammar appeared on the world almost readymade when speech did. It didn't need to evolve or develop with speech because it was already there as the rules of thought.

In other words, there never was a 'grunt'-language. Or to pervert Wittgenstein, 'If a lion could speak, his grammar would be excellent.'

Taras wrote:

[
"Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal modality."

"In linguistics, modals are expressions broadly associated with notions of possibility and necessity."[/color]

So? Verb first?

Quote :

I think, all this grammar must exist already in the heads of animals. I suspect that grammar appeared on the world almost readymade when speech did. It didn't need to evolve or develop with speech because it was already there as the rules of thought.

In other words, there never was a 'grunt'-language. Or to pervert Wittgenstein, 'If a lion could speak, his grammar would be excellent.'

I am in general agreement with all that. I would add that body language expresses mood more subtly. and that intuitive (ESP) communication preceded all and remains the most direct form of unambiguous communication.

ESP?

Serge wrote:

ESP?

In this context. Knowing what another is thinking.
Projecting a mood thought the house and feeling it in another room.
Having a feeling of instinctive like or like.
Having "hunches".
Being subliminally conscious of an endless stream of incoming information.
Walking into a dark room and feeling afraid.
De jevu
Feeling happy or sad for no reason

The list is endless.

The verb - denotes action.

Consider wild animals. Apes and lions for example. Watch them [safely, on a Wildlife show of course].

They see food, and commence fighting or co-operating to get it.

You may be tempted to think "the noun came first, the animal saw the food and thought 'food'"

But language is communication. They communicate actions "that food is mine" or "lets get that food".

Of course, it may be argued the noun still preceded the verb via self communication - the animal sees food first. But would the animal not, in a sense, be thinking "I see food/I want that food"?

Forgive me I had to do it:

"Hungry"

"Hungry" is an intermediate term that is predicated on the subject-verb division. Therefore, it was created after-the-fact.

Before the individuation of the human specie, verb-noun predicates were physically-undetermined (by non-definition).

"mama"

Perhaps the notion of God is an extension of that primordial concept?

The letter A (original/capital/base-form) precedes all words and verbal syntax, even "God".

"ama"

Actually, more like this maryshelley:

"Aaaaaaaaa!"

aurevoirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I was wondering if God extends from the concept of 'mama'.

Also, do you have anything to back up your claim of the chronological sequence of A beyond its alphabetical sequence?

-Psychonaut wrote:

Also, do you have anything to back up your claim of the chronological sequence of A beyond its alphabetical sequence?

You can start with Egyptian hieroglyphics if you want.

And the Ox was the first hieroglyph?

Did the Egyptians pronounce the Ox's head in the same way that we now pronounce 'A'?

-Psychonaut wrote:

And the Ox was the first hieroglyph?

Did the Egyptians pronounce the Ox's head in the same way that we now pronounce 'A'?

Studying the answers to those questions will take years of research.

There is a definitive reason why "A" is the first letter of the alphabet.

wikipedia wrote:

When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the glottal stop that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, so they used the sign for the vowel /a/

It seems I have somehow compressed years of research into a matter of moments

Quote :

There is a definitive reason why "A" is the first letter of the alphabet.

And this definitive reason is that it came chronologically first?
Sorry, but 'that shit does not fly with me'.
Do not inhabit the darkness with your own imaginings.