Re: Zireen language typology; introducing "Zircon"

Stone Gordonssen wrote at 2003-07-15 08:49:48 (-0700)

 > >OSV - rare in Zireen languages, nonexistent in Human languages?
 > >   examples: (Yoda's language)
 >
 > Supposedly there are three: two in South America and one in
 > Ausralia.
 >

A draft entry for the _Atlas of World Language Structures_ [1] lists
Nadëb, spoken in Brazil, Warao, spoken in Venezuela, and Wik Ngathana,
spoken in northeastern Australia.  It also lists Hurrian as an extinct
example of this order.  Rick Morneau's essay on syntax [2] gives
Jamamadi, also spoken in Brazil.

I'm not sure that Yoda's speech can really be analyzed as OSV -
predicate nominals tend to come first, but I'm not sure about objects
proper.  But then, I never got around to properly analyzing the corpus
of Yoda utterances.

[1]
http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/atlas.sov.pdf

[2]
http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/syntax.html

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