> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Peters
> >From Chris:
>
> One source I've read -- I can't recall title or author
> offhand (it was in an
> English-language linguistics book I browsed a bit in an Osaka
> bookstore) --
> claims that all OVS natlangs in existence claim their origins
to one
> specific region of South America. (This one apparently fits
> that same
> pattern.) Apparently there are several distinct, non-related
> language
> families that somehow all converged on OVS word order. And
> only in that
> region of the world.
I was researching some numbers once and they showed that OVS,
OSV and VOS accounted for less than 5% of the languages, and it
appeared that none of those were very popular.