Re: V2 languages

At 11:50 am +0200 29/5/99, Irina Rempt-Drijfhout wrote:
>On Sat, 29 May 1999, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
>> Both Breton & Welsh BTW can also front, i.e. focus, the verb.  They do this
>> by having the verbnoun (roughly 'infinitive') first and having the verb "to
>> do" as the finite verb in seconf position.
>
>My Welsh needs a good airing, but I seem to remember that it's
>straight OSV:
I assume from the example below that that is a typo for VSO
>
>   ennillodd Dafydd  y  goron
>   won       Dafydd the crown
>   "Dafydd won the crown"
>
>If you want to front something else than the verb (i.e. use it as
>focus), *then* you need something to resume it, such as the relarive
>pronoun:
>
>   Dafydd  a  ennillodd  y  goron
>   Dafydd REL won       the crown
>   "It was Dafydd who won the crown"
Yes, in literary Welsh.  In spoken Welsh the relative particle (which
varies according to what is fronted) is omitted (except, of course, in the
relative form of "to be", 'sy(dd)' = "who is").

>I don't remember how to say "It was the crown that Dafydd won", alas.
Y goron (a) ennillodd Dafydd.

[How do you know it doesn't mean "The crown won David?"  Firstly, it
doesn't make sense & secondly the direct object object of an inflected verb
causes soft mutation - Dafydd ain't mutated :)    ]

And if you want to focus on the verb then it's:
Ennill y goron (a) wnaeth Dafydd.

Dafydd _won_ the crown.
("Winning of the crown is what Dafydd did").

But you're right; Welsh is not a V2 language and I'm sorry if I gave the
impression I considered it was.  The normal, unfocussed word order is
indeed VSO; but in sentences where there is focussing, the the finite verb
is put as the 'second idea' as one would expect in a V2 language.

On the other hand, its sister language, Breton, is a V2 language.  Like
German the basic word order is SVO and, also like German, other parts of
the sentence can be fronted but the verb must remain the second idea.
However, whereas German fronts the topic, Breton (like Welsh) fronts the
focus.

Ray.