Re: THEORY: two questions

From: "Matt Pearson"

> For example, in a verb-final head-marking language,
> "The boy gave me the books" might come out:
>
>    boy   books  3sS-1sIO-3pDO-gave
>
> with no case marking on the nouns, covert pronouns, and
> extensive agreement on the verb ("3sS" = 3s subject
> agreement, "1sIO" = 1s indirect object agreement, and
> "3pDO" = 3p direct object agreement).
>
> In a verb-final dependent-marking language, the same
> sentence might come out:
>
>    boy-NOM   me-DAT   books-ACC   gave
>
> with case marking on the nouns (and overt pronouns), and
> no agreement (or impoverished agreement) on the verb.
Thanks Matt. That means Géarthnuns is like Japanese (which is what I
thought), that is, verbal final, dependent marking (sub-verb agreement does
not exist). Funny thing is, though, Géarthnuns took its shape long before I
knew squat about Japanese. And as with other classifications like SVO, etc.,
I imagine there must be degrees of 'tween examples; I mean, Latin seems to
have a mix of  both worlds (more dep than head, but less dep than Japanese,
say). Hungarian? Fortunately, Géarthnuns fits neatly into a category (phew).

Kou