Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27

Quoting Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>:

> Danny Wier wrote:
>
> >More than one-third voted for VSO? DAMN THOSE TECHIANS!! I mean, it
> does
> >seem like a logical word order, with the verb first.
> >
> And SVO seems like a logical word order, I mean: the subject *does
> something* to the object. How more logical can you get than that? A
> causes B. Those diagrams for cause-and-affect one of our Psych
> lectures
> had had the symbol for cause in the middle, so A->B. *And* it keeps
> the
> two nouns apart.
>
> I'm not sure that one word order is any more logical than another.
>
> (BTW: How is having the verb first particularly 'logical'? I can
> understand why someone might say SVO (or ever OVS) was logical, but I
> have trouble with understand any logicalness in VSO (or OSV ).
See the verb as an operator, with subject and object as arguments.

That's, at any rate what I'd say to justify why I thought VSO to be the most
logical word-order (claiming that the subject is the more basic argument if I
need to fend of claims for VOS being more logical). However, subject-initial
word order feels more natural to my brain (surprise, surprise), so I won't!

                                                      Andreas