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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Tendency of Inflections to Disappear - Why?
In-Reply-To: kriha_p@actrix.gen.nz's message of Wed, 24 Jul 96 14:18:09 GMT
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.96Jul25094652@netcom16.netcom.com>
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References: <4suk93$pob@carrera.intergate.bc.ca> <ant2214571cbQ4vE@ccsware.demon.co.uk>
	<4t1m6s$fq4@news.xs4all.nl> <4t5bb1$3v8_004@actrix.gen.nz>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 16:46:52 GMT
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In article <4t5bb1$3v8_004@actrix.gen.nz> kriha_p@actrix.gen.nz (Paul J. Kriha)
writes:

>As you say most of the European languages today are SVO.  However, there are
>many European languages with basic SVO which can and do use _all_ six above
>orders quite freely for different purposes, for stress and to express
>emotional relationship betw the speaker and object/subject.  (for example the
>questions would use VOS, OVS, or OSV depending on what is being asked)

The question is not whether different orders occur, but which order occurs in
whose sentences which a native speaker would judge to be unexceptional.  You
yourself note that certain orders are somehow marked ("for stress and to
express emotional...").  When a linguist states that a language "is" VSO or SOV
or whatever, the linguist is making a statement about the *unmarked* order for
that language.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
