OSV Italian Particles

I offer the following from some notes I got from a linguist;

Languages can be broadly classified into VO (verb before the object) and OV
(verb after the object).

Generally speaking ...

"VO languages have prepositions;   OV languages have postpositions.
VO languages have wh movement;   OV languages do not.
In VO languages, the order is N-Adj;   in OV languages, ADJ-N.
In VO languages, the order is head-noun relative clause;   in OV languages,
rel-N.
In VO languages, the AUX precedes the verb;  in OV languages it is V-AUX."

Jim here, again, with this commentary:

Deviation from these tendencies is NOT necessarily unnatural.  English, for
example, is VO, but has ADJ-N.    Generally, the more of the above
generalizations a language violates, the stranger (typologically) it looks.
However, a conlang should not be dismissed as a picture of an impossible
language merely because its grammar doesn't conform to tendencies listed
above.

Other listers may want to let us know about any cognitive or aesthetic
reasons to make one's conlang conform to the above generalizations.

Jim




> Sally Caves wrote:
> > In an OSV or an SOV language, where do the "wh" or question words go?
>
> IIRC, Japanese, a SOV lang, places question words right before the verb.
>
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