Like verbs, which build sentences, fasteners make our connections, building our explanations and theories. The fasteners of our languages are the same. Linking verbs are connections, gluing disparate nouns and forming the weakest link between them. Transitive verbs are relations, requiring an object noun as well as a subject noun to produce a match. And intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, are in effect transformations of the subject noun.
Connections maintain the differences between artifacts.
Relations match artifacts. And transformations make two artifacts the same, changing two into one. There are three fastening artifacts and three kinds of verbs, because there are three forms of uniqueness and thus three ways to fasten anything. The connection between thought and language . The connection between language and knowledge, touched on so lightly here, has significant ramifications in the ongoing controversy between language and thought.