: Shifting of title + name in English.

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Steven Williams <feurieaux@Y...>
wrote:

>Having peeked at a grammar of Old English more than once and having
>laboriously worked over the passages, I see that the order of title
>and name are reversed from that seen in modern English and German.
>For example, 'King Aethelred' would be 'Aethelred Cyning'.
<snip>

>The same thing goes on in Mandarin and Japanese, where the order is
>name + title (Li-laoshi, Tanaka-san, and so on). Both of these
>languages are postpositional; is there a universal for titles to
>come after names in these sorts of languages?
>What about Old English? While the language had a larger number of
>postpositional usages than modern English, it was still largely
>prepositional. When did the shift take place to require title to
>precede name?
Before my hard drive crashed last June, I had a site that described
language universals.  I have not needed it since then, so haven't
bothered to relocate it.  There must be someone on the list who can
give us the URL.  In any case, one of the universals states that in
an SOV language postpositions are used and titles are postposed.  I
don't remember whether OE is SOV or not.  Senjecan is strictly SOV,
so postpositions are used and titles are postposed.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur


	

	
		
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