Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27

----- Original Message -----
From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 12:48 PM
Subject: Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27


> On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 08:07:23AM +0100, Joe wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Tristan McLeay" <kesuari@...>
> > To: <CONLANG@...>
> > Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 7:54 AM
> > Subject: Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27
> [snip]
> > > (BTW: How is having the verb first particularly 'logical'? I can
> > > understand why someone might say SVO (or ever OVS) was logical, but I
> > > have trouble with understand any logicalness in VSO (or OSV ).
> >
> > Easy, *something is done by the subject to the object*.  The emphasis is
> > on the something.  I mean, surely what is done is more important than
> > the things themselves.
>
> That's just so Ebisedian! :-P
>
> > The verb is the central concept of the sentance, and to show that, it
> > should be placed first.
>
> Hmm, actually, that brings up an interesting question. In accusative
> languages where sentence structure is subject + predicate, it seems that
> the subject is most important, and so it appears first, followed by the
> verb and object. So you get either SVO or SOV (i.e., predicate is either
> VO or OV). But how would you explain other word orders like VSO? Does that
> mean the sentence structure is verb + "predicate" instead of subject +
> predicate?
I'd call it verb+actors.  I don't know if that's right or common, but it's a
reasonable guess.

Reply