Re: V2
| From: | Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, November 13, 1999, 16:10 |
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At 5:21 pm -0600 12/11/99, Matt Pearson wrote:
[...]
>English are V2. The Celtic language Breton is also allegedly V2,
I can confirm that Breton is indeed V2.
This marks it out from Welsh & the Gaelic langs, which are all essentially
VSO langs.
as is the
>Indic language Kashmiri.
>
>To give some examples, if English were V2, then each of the following
>sentences would be grammatical (here square brackets are used to indicate
>constituents):
>
> [ John ] GAVE [ the book ] [ to Daniel ] [ yesterday ]
> [ the book ] GAVE [ John ] [ to Daniel ] [ yesterday ]
> [ to Daniel ] GAVE [ John ] [ the book ] [ yesterday ]
> [ yesterday ] GAVE [ John ] [ the book ] [ to Daniel ]
>
>In other words, V2 languages can be SVOX, OVSX, or XVSO.
And Breton also allows the verb to fronted by having "to do" as the finite
verb in second place, thus:
[give] [DID] [John] [the book] [to Daniel] [yesterday]
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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
[J.G. Hamann 1760]
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