Re: SVO vs SOV and A lot of other questions

On Tuesday, October 14, 2003, at 09:04 , Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à Ray Brown :
>
>
>> All - AFAIK. Unfortunately, I don't have to hand info about minor Romance
>> langs like Ladin, Friulan, Romauntsch etc.; but from what I remember,
>> they
>> follow the common Romance system of
>> having oblique forms of the personal pronouns (object & indirect object)
>> as clitics attached to the verb.  The normal position with finite verbs,
>> except imperatives, is as proclitics (i.e. before the verb).
>
> In this matter, Romance languages can give surprises though. For instance,
>  Spanish is quite straightforward with object pronouns in front of finite
> forms, but cliticised behind infinite forms (infinitive, participle,
> gerund) and the imperative. On the other hand, in French object pronouns
> are *always* in front of the verb, even in the infinitive and other
> infinite forms,
Yep, I know - that why I said "finite verbs, except imperatives"   :)

It's some time since I got involved with the diachronics of the
Romancelangs, so I'd hesitate to speculate how Vulgar Latin of the late
Empire was cliticizing personal pronouns with infinitives and gerunds.

> and in the imperative affirmative the pronouns do indeed go behind the
> verb, but take the full forms moi, toi, etc... instead of me, te, etc...
Yep - as French puts a slight stress on the last element in a phrase we
can't have the unstressed 'me' at the end, but if we have two suffixed
personal pronouns the first is still a clitic:
donne-le-moi!

> In other words, the extent to which pronouns go in front of verbs is
> different in different Romance languages :) .
But with non-imperative finite verbs there's a remarkable degree of
uniformity, I think

>> The innovation in French is to have have the subject forms as proclitics
>> also; this developed, of course, as some 50% or so of personal endings
>> fell silent.  The other major Romancelangs have not done this but IIRC
>> proclitic subject forms have developed in Friulan and related Romance
>> dialects/langs.
>
> http://www.eirelink.com/alanking/modals/documents/do-g-frl.htm for an
> excellent grammar of Friulan. Indeed, in Friulan (as well as in every
> Rhaeto-Romance tongue IIRC)
Thanks - interesting site   :)

> the original subject pronouns have become proclitic forms which are
> mandatory even if the full subject pronouns are used (French is slowly
> going this way IMHO).
I've noticed that too.
Zut! L'ordinateur il ne marche pas!

Ray
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