title_body: Can Kēlen truly be considered verb-free?
upvoted_answer: Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as a good baseline of what a human language can communicate, there are several core verbs:
  
  
  Mental predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
  Speech: SAY
  Actions, events, movement: DO, HAPPEN, MOVE
  Location, existence, specification: BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING)
  
  
  LA is clearly polysemous for THERE IS, BE (SOMEWHERE), BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING), and probably also marks PART in reverse.
  
  NI probably covers DO and MOVE.
  
  SE is even higher level, expressing the verb of give, as well as primes like FEEL and SAY.
  
  So the claim that Kēlen does not have verbs is patently false.
  
  There are in fact natural languages with even more restricted verb inventories than Kēlen, such as Jingulu, which has been analysed as only have verbs for go, come, and do. (I haven't seen an NSM style analysis of Jingulu, I wonder how they would see the verbs like THINK etc being expressed in Jingulu?)