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Re: V2 languages

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Saturday, May 29, 1999, 1:34
Tom Wier wrote:
> "*Him* I know" > > where pronouns indicate case.
Not necessarily, one can also say "That much I know" or "John I know" (well, that sounds a bit awkward, but is acceptable, in my dialect at any rate), it's the fact that SOV is illegal that disambiguates. Only two word orders are legal in Modern English, SVO and OSV, so if you have noun-noun-verb, only OSV is a possible interpretation, never SOV. And, of course, in questions object is regularly fronted, "Who did you see?" -- "It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father was hanged." - Irish proverb http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-name: NikTailor