Or more precisely, they differ in their nature and applicability in different language groups. See for example Bantu languages, which do conjugation and declension but against a list of typically a dozen noun classes, rather than 2 or 3 genders.
Meanwhile Semitic languages don't have the notion of an adjective and use instead different phrase stuctures.
So I think if you are going to try and identify language primitives at this kind of level, you are right into Chomsky territory, trying to find a universal set of abstractions from which to specialise for different language groups.
Here you will find the bones of philosophers who have gone before.
Mike
On 7/22/2020 12:29 PM, Charles Matthews via Abstract-Wikipedia wrote:
On 22 July 2020 at 17:08 Grounder UK grounderuk@gmail.com wrote: I'm loving all these emails but I find it hard to keep track of the different topics. Someone find me a Wiki!
So, your question, Adam: " What do you think about conjugation and declension functions?"
In general, I'm against them. (Well, I'm English. What would you expect?)
In general, surely, they reflect Indo-European languages? Doubtless they are on topic, but three of the top ten Wikipedias, by visits, are not from that language group.
Charles
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