Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27

On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 08:07:23AM +0100, Joe wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tristan McLeay" <kesuari@...>
> To: <CONLANG@...>
> Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 7:54 AM
> Subject: Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27
[snip]
> > (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 ).
>
> Easy, *something is done by the subject to the object*.  The emphasis is
> on the something.  I mean, surely what is done is more important than
> the things themselves.
That's just so Ebisedian! :-P

> The verb is the central concept of the sentance, and to show that, it
> should be placed first.
Hmm, actually, that brings up an interesting question. In accusative
languages where sentence structure is subject + predicate, it seems that
the subject is most important, and so it appears first, followed by the
verb and object. So you get either SVO or SOV (i.e., predicate is either
VO or OV). But how would you explain other word orders like VSO? Does that
mean the sentence structure is verb + "predicate" instead of subject +
predicate?


T

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If you compete with slaves, you become a slave. -- Norbert Wiener

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