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Re: What would you call this?

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Monday, June 16, 2003, 11:15
Quoting Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...>:

> I have an idea for a language that achieves free word order by inflecting > the verb according to whether the subject or object occurs first. In the > default form, the following word orders are possible > VSO > SVO > SOV
Usually, there will be only *one* default order, if there is any evidence for a basic order at all. (Some languages have no such basic order.)
> In the marked form, these are possible > > VOS > OVS > OSV > > If the verb is marked, and only one unmarked noun is present, the verb > becomes passive. > > What would the terminology be for such an inflection?
It sounds like what you have is a system that is sensitive to discourse functions like topic and focus. The study of such languages is always "fuzzy", since topic means little more than "what the utterance is about", while the focus refers to new information in the sentence. Examples: topicalized argument: "_John_, I know." focused argument: "_Who_ did Mary see last night?" Many, many languages treat these discourse function differently from one another in the syntax. In your case, that would boil down to verb agreement with what is presumably the topic (you don't actually say here). ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637

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Peter Bleackley <peter.bleackley@...>