Re: What would you call this?

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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