Re: V2 languages

At 18:01 -0700 28.5.1999, JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:

>Secondly, ANYTHING can
>appear in front of the verb in a V2 language, so long as
>it consists of a single constituent.  Consider German,
>a classic V2 language.  'Normal' word order in German main
>clauses is S-V-O-X (Subject-Verb-Object-Everything Else):
>
>        [John] GAVE [the book] [to Alice] [yesterday afternoon]
>
>However, it's also possible to stick other things besides the
>subject in front of the verb, as long as you limit yourself to
>one constituent only:
Matt, while reading this and the other excamples you gave, I was more or
less unconsciously translating them word-by-word into Swedish, and apart
from the instances of object-first the word-order felt mostly "right" in
Swedish.

        [Johan] GAV [boken] [till Allis] [ig=E5r eftermiddag]

is completely natural Swedish.  It would seem that Swedish is a V2 language
with a main-clause WO very similar to German (but more comsistently so than
German, without that verb-last-in-sub-clause rule that makes all
non-Germans hate their German-techers...)

Do you agree?

BTW it never occurred to my conscious mind that Swedish and English was
different in this respect.  Are they really?

/BP

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)