🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <12471@sorley.ed.ac.uk>
iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
 
>
>express their failure to occur in natural languages in the form of a
>universal?  Such as the brackets and subscripts of Lojban?
>
>>-- in how many Romance languages would _Esperanto_
>>in "he speaks Esperanto" naturally appear as an adverb?
>
>In none, unless we manage to prove that Hungarian is a Romance language
>(which shouldn't be too difficult: to begin with, the `flea' words are
>obviously related, so everything else follows).
>
 
Solely in the interest of "le sport", let's consider first the Latin sentence
"Loquitur latine."  (This is a good sentence, as can be seen from the initial
capital letter and the final period.)  Any Latin grammar will tell you that
the form "latine" is an adverb:  it tells the manner, the how, of the speaking,
and its ending is not that of any of the cases (to save everyone from rushing
for his handy Latin grammar):  the history and prehistory of the ending are
not at issue here, of course.  Aha, you cry, Latin is not a Romance language.
This could get us into a quibble about the definition of Romance languages,
but we could weasel out of that somehow, I suppose.
 
But suppose I take a language often claimed to be Romance, say French.
Let's take a sentence like, "Il parle franc,ais."  (By the by, I used
"latine" in the above example as my Latin reference works do not indicate
to which declension "Esperanto" belongs in Latin.)  I continue.  Having
noted that Latin uses an adverb in sentences the equivalent of "He speaks
x", I shall expect that it might be that modern descendants of Latin do
likewise until I find contrary evidence.  Is there anything in the sentence
"Il parle anglais" (avoiding the discomfort of slipped cedillas) to suggest
modifying or supporting the claim that French likewise is using an adverb.
I'm still specifying how the speaker speaks, and an adverb will do well.
Further, I shall be reluctant to make a silly claim that "anglais" is a
noun, since as any school child knows, French nouns require articles or
similar determiners.
 
This argument must be wrong, however, since English is using a noun, not an
adverb, in "He speaks English", and English grammar underlies all grammars.
Oh, well, it was amusing while it lasted. Now let's go back to serious topicx.