Re: Skälansk - History and Babel text

On Tuesday, December 7, 2004, at 07:36 , Philip Newton wrote:

> On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 19:14:07 -0500, Pascal A. Kramm <pkramm@...>
> wrote:
>> There are some other nifty features, like VSO syntax (which is pretty
>> rare),
>
> It's used in at least some Polynesian languages -- e.g. Niuean is
> arguably VSO (if you don't consider it ergative, in which case it's
> VAP).
it's also used in Welsh as well as in Irish & Scots Gaelic. For example in
Welsh:
Bwytodd Ifan yr  cinio.
Ate     John the dinner  = "John ate the dinner"

I was under the impression that this was also the normal word order in the
Semitic languages (tho I am not sure about modern Hebrew). I am fairly
certain there other natlangs also with this feature.

>>     * It was decided to put the verb at the beginning, followed by
>> subject
>> and object, since this structure was not found in any other known
>> languages.
Presumably this means "not found in the structure of in language known to
the creators of Skälansk" because it was certain found in known European
languages of the time.

> I think OSV is the rarest word order, with few known natlangs using it.
Yes, I think it is. Somewhere I have some statistics on this but I can't
find them. From what I remember OS order languages are far less common
than the SO langs, irrespective of where the verb is. IIRC the most common
words orders are SVO and SOV (and I cannot remember which comes 'top') -
but in 3rd place comes VSO languages.

Ray
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