Re: V2 languages

At 5:24 pm -0500 29/5/99, Carlos Thompson wrote:
>B.Philip Jonsson skrev:
......
>
>> BTW it never occurred to my conscious mind that Swedish and English was
>> different in this respect.  Are they really?
English is not a V2 language; so if Swedish is, and I believe this is so,
then there is a difference.

>In the natlangs I know there is a difference in this point.  I can put any
>number of objects (adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc.) before the verb in
>Spanish, and I can put the subject after the verb as longer as agreement
>will disambiguish.
Like it's Latin ancestor  :)

None of the Romancelangs are V2 langs.

>In English I can only put one object before the verb,
>you should avoid direct or indirect object (acusative or dative) but is not
>a must: (John I gave the book),
I don't know about American, Indian or Antipodean English, but in Brit
English if the two objects are dislocated so that one preceeds the subject,
we must have the prep. 'to', e.g.
To John I gave the book. [Answering the question: What did you give John?]
The book I gave to John. [Answering the question: Who did you give the book
to?]

(Yes, I know some pedants will say the last question should begin 'Whom' or
even 'To whom'.  But we actually say 'who'.   :)

>and subject must always be just before verb.
Yep - generally so.  But the older form of verb-subject when actual speech
is quoted - "I'll do it later", said John - was quite common earlier this
century and is still heard in colloquial English, more particularly, I
think, in rural speech than urban speech: "Then," says I, "you should
see....." etc.

>In Swedish you can also put ONE object before verb, direct and indirect
>object should be avoided and verb must be the second position (if there is
>an object before the verb, subject must be after the verb).
Yep - that, as I understand it, is what's meant by a V2 language.

In modern English the usual word order is: SVO, but if anything is fronted
- except direct speech - the subject still stays before the verb which is
then, so to speech, shunted into 3rd position.  Similarly we can say Welsh
is a verb first language, but if anything is fronted the verb gets shunted
into 2nd place.

Both English & Welsh, it seems to me, are examples of languages with a
preferred word order but which do allow one 'idead' to be fronted - but in
both cases it means the finite verb is shunted one place along.

But V2 languages must _keep_ the finite verb in second so that any fronting
will force the subject to follow the verb.  I agree that Swedish is a
better example of a V2 language than German, since German is verb last in
subordinate clauses and V2 only in (co-ordinate) main clauses.

Ray.