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Rex: > on 4/29/02 6:18 PM, And Rosta at a-rosta@hidden.email wrote: > > > This is not the only alternative. A better alternative is to have > > a clause-initial particle that tells you which arguments are present > > and which order they occur in. This has all sorts of added side > > benefits. For one thing, it automatically distinguishes between > > 'nouns', 'verbs' and 'clauses': every clause begins with one of > > these particles, and within the clause -- "man bite dog", say -- > > you know that the 2nd element is the verb because the clause-initial > > particle tells you so. > > Could you illustrate with an example? "1P2 me tooth brush" = "I bite the brush" "12P me tooth brush" = "I brush (my) teeth" -- this illustrates how the initial particle could be used to disambiguate between nominal and verbal readings of words. I am here bearing in mind your example of verbal 'hammer' meaning 'hit with a hammer'. Let me know if I need to give more examples to illustrate other points I made above. --And.