Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec,sci.lang
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From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Languages in the EC
Message-ID: <D3ovsz.C5M@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <3feev2$4df@news.INbe.net> <MATTHEW.95Feb7113419@baloo.cpd.ntc.nokia.com> <792181956snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 16:14:57 GMT
Lines: 42

In article <792181956snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk> philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk writes:
>It's (I imagine) easy to get [Esperanto word order] wrong enough that
>it doesn't sound natural, harder to get it wrong enough so it is hard
>to understand.

And what does it mean for Esperanto speech to sound natural?

>Most languages put the object after the subject (I can't think of any
>exceptions);

There are a few OS languages (all of them Amerindian, I think), but SO
is nevertheless a statistic universal.  For Terran languages, that is.
Klingon is rigid OVS.  And, btw, I'm not sure why some people seem not
to be aware of the obvious fact that Klingon is the best candidate for
a common EC language.  By its sound, vocabulary and phraseology it is
admirably suited for just the kind of communication that the _tlhIngan_
(EC) politicians are likely to have with one another, as well as with
the _vulqangan_ (Eastern European) and _verengan_ (US) ones.

>They are thus either SVO, VSO, or SOV.

Okay, seriously ... these are entirely different issues.  There's the
basic order, which in nearly all languages is either VSO, SVO or SOV,
and there's discourse-driven deviations from the basic order such as
topicalisation and focussing.

>The suffix -n for objects in Esperanto is one of its features I like least.

It also seems to be one of the features that even enthusiastic learners
have the hardest time with. The traditional apology for it is that it
is meant to make deviations from the basic SVO order possible, either
for topic/focussing purposes or in poetry and the like.  Which does not
account for the fact that many languages mark discourse relations by
means other than word order and/or have considerably free word order
without morphological case marking.  That's what happens when people
believe that Latin grammar is all there is.

-- 
`I'm sendin a flood tae pit an end tae it aw.  But dinny worry yersel, Noah.'
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk)    (J Stuart, _Auld Testament Tales_)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
