Nouns Verbs and Adjectives
Now that I have gotten the high flown theory out of the way, it's time to begin at the beginning. But going back for just a second, to the question of 'what is a word?' this is actually very clear. And I think it would still be clear even in the absence of a written language, that there are individual words. Interestingly, in the first written languages, up until even 500 AD, no one used spaces, they had not been invented yet, nonetheless, people still I'm sure had a sense of what a 'word' was. However I'm now discussing, in this 2nd note, the first spoken words.
THERE ARE ONLY THREE CLASSES OF WORDS
....contrary to what the grammarians say. In English the grammarians say there are 7 classes of words, which can be subdivided even further into 39 types of words, etc etc say the grammarians. But I think there are only 3, which can then be 'subdivided' into another 3 types of words, for 6 types of words total. In any case, the NOUNS clearly are the first type of word, and of the words spoken by animals, they are almost exclusively all nouns. 'Hawk!' 'loveydovey' 'hello' 'getlost'. A noun is most basically of course an object that has been given a name, but the concept can also include ideas and various other fixed notions of one type or another, and the grammarians agree this is the most basic and straightforward type of word, in all languages.
The second class of words, and I think this applies to the evolution of language as well, the second type to be invented by people, and thus a critical step. Previously humans merely spoke animal language, but with an ever increasing vocabulary, but then someone invented VERBS, which are actually the most complex type of word, all the grammarians agree on this. A verb described an event taking place in time, but otherwise does not refer to any particular trait that could be described by a noun. 'growing' can refer to both plants, and an ideological movement, or in fact to an infinite amount of situations that evolve through time in the particular manner we have defined as 'growth'. 'growth' is actually a pseudo-noun, clearly a verb, but which has been utilized in the form of a noun. This mutability of words is characteristic of language, something which resembles bacterial growth much more than the steel skeleton of a skyscraper, which is the normal analogy used for language, 'the structured utterances giving form to what is unformed and unnamed' to speak like a philosopher. But it could be seen as the other way around, a bacterial-fungal like growth on top of the skyscraper or tree, which is not shaping or giving form to the tree in any way, but wrapping itself around physical objects that exist in the real world, and in this way 'describing' them.
The third class is of course ADJECTIVES, which is a rather strange type of word. Some theoretical grammarians, like Alan Gardiner in his speculative writings, suggests that adjectives might actually be a total class that encapsulates all words, but thats just an interesting idea to put on the backburner for now. Adjectives, in every language, are actually very limited, perhaps just 10 or 15 words total, in English and in some Peruvian tribal language as well. An adjective describes relationships between words, and in this way undergirds all grammar. 'all' 'and' 'of' 'not' are all adjectives, as I see it in my personal grammatical system. They are in fact logic. However, every noun and verb can be turned into an adjective with the suffix -y, in English. 'Filthy' 'grimly' 'madly' and so forth, and which are sometimes called nisbys, a term used by Arab grammarians, but which is universally applicable. However, the core group of pure adjectives is very small. 'fat' is a noun, which unusually can be an adjective in its root form.
So, we have 3 classes of words. Why are these 3 classes enduring and solid in all languages, whereas the grammarians keep insisting there are still 'particles' which they claim are a 4th class. But the way I see it is that most of these particles are actually adjectives, but sometimes nouns as well. More on this later. What is the framework that elevates these 3 classes in the Universal Grammar? Well, I would suggest they are actually such solid and real classes, they are above even Universal Grammar, and in fact are describing SPACE , TIME and LOGIC, which the grammarians call adjectives, ad-ject-ives, additions of invective. Logic is basically ideas, and ideas as Plato rightly says, exist outside of time and space, but Plato goes further and says they are some sort of mystical thing that we tap into with language. But this is going too far, because clearly animals understand, even though they cannot articulate it, the ideas of 'fatness' 'danger' 'world struggle' 'existence' 'the eternal beyond' which is a hazy and frightening notion even for us, not to mention animals, who so called cannot think. So animals have ideas, to me that is clear, but most people insist they do not. But clearly they have cognition, and as Chomsky says, talking again about the retarded human imbecile who outperforms genius animals with language, well, this imbecile and even in fact very smart and educated people, are as a general rule, far inferior to animals in their ability to care for themselves, raise families, support themselves with productive labor, and generally exist in the world. The animals are all doing the totality of civilized work all by themselves, and they learn this and become productive adults in often only 2 or 3 months, whereas it takes us at least 15 years to learn how to cook an egg, build a house, and be civilized members of a community, not to mention the proper use of toilet paper and or a bidet, how to properly pick ones nose without causing a nosebleed, or how to properly shut off a light switch. Nonetheless, the human imbecile outperforms all these otherwise very smart animals in one critical domaine, language.