Re: topic/compliment & Sanskrit script

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of Eric Christopherson
> Sent: Monday, 29 January, 2001 9:03 AM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Re: topic/compliment & Sanskrit script
> What's Russian's usual word order? Is there a correspondence between (say)
> VSO order and emphasized-last?
The usual word order of modern Russian is SVO, but because of it's elaborate
case system in which accusatives are marked (except for inanimates), it can
use any word order. Like Latin, you know.

When emphasizing a certain grammatical element, which would thus set the
"topic" for the clause, you move it to the end. So the sentence "I love my
cat" would be:

ja ljublju moi kos^ki "I love my cat", "it's my cat that I love"
moi kos^ki ja ljublju "it is my cat that I love"
moi kos^ki ljublju ja "it is I that loves my cat" (not sure about this one)

Not sure I got this right, but that's the general idea.


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