LING 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Marcus Terentius Varro, Linguistic Inquiry, Mbira
25 Jan 2015
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: new words can be created, for example, making verbs out of proper names. We are using various words for time as verbs. Using time verbs only works if there is a specific thing that always happens at that time. Note: sentences with a * before them are weird and just should not happen in the english language. Sentences with a ? before them are possible but still weird. For example; saying the kids four o"clocked in the park makes no sense because we have no idea what happens at 4 o"clock. It is not a free for all, there are rules behind creativity. The same applies with bigger and smaller units. These could be english words: frib, strarfle, klim. These could not: slkar, dzow, mbira. (but the latter are real words in other languages) A language must be able to encode any message, even if nobody has ever needed to encode such a message before.
