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Re: Standard Average European

From:Campbell Nilsen <cactus95@...>
Date:Sunday, April 20, 2008, 16:37
I think that French word order works like this:

If the object is a regular noun, then there is SVO word order.
If it's a pronoun, Latin word order comes in, and you have SOV.


"Define 'cynical'."-M. Mudd





----- Original Message ----
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <christophe.grandsire@...>
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 5:40:16 PM
Subject: Re: Standard Average European

Selon Tristan McLeay :
> > Hello again Christoph! I did indeed know that was your opinion --- > well, kinda, I was pretty sure that was the argument you had, but > wasn't entirely sure if it was *your* argument (that you held) or that > it was one someone else held, that you reported. >
I've never seen anyone else describe French that way. But then, I've never seen a description of French which correctly described the spoken language. All descriptions I've seen seem to focus on the written language, which is quite a different beast.
>> - It features a rather free topic-comment-oriented word order. > > This is one point I'd forgotten you'd said! How free can the word order > be in a polysynthetic language, without it just being a regular > synthetic language? If you can move elements of words around, then what > is the case that they are words? >
That depends what you call "words". What I meant is that phrases (nominal and verbal) can be reorganised in a very free way in the sentence (main order is topic-comment, with SVO being a common manifestation of that order but hardly the only one). Within the phrases though, the order is very strict. Moreover, those "phrases" I personally think are better analysed as "words", since they feature a single stress, and are phonological units. I've started writing a blog post on this subject. I'll warn you when I've published it. -- Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets. http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com http://www.christophoronomicon.nl You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <christophe.grandsire@...>