Re: Standard Average European

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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