>if it did, they'd follow the noun. The only SOV language in Campbell
>where the adjective regularly follows the noun is Tibetan (which has
>both head first and head last compounds).
And then:
>You'll be pleased to learn that I've found one more natural language
>with this quality - Akkadian. I'd like to read the article abstracted
>at the top of the underlinked page, although I probably wouldn't
>understand it
http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~gd116/abstracts.html
>Interestingly, I've noted that there seem to be quite a lot of SVO
>languages with adjectives that precede the noun, as opposed to only
>these two SOV langs with adjectives that follow the noun. My research > has
>been less than systematic, though.
You can add another! Persian is SOV and adjective-follows-noun as well.
From the UCLA Language Materials Project - Persian Profile at
http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profp01.htm :
"Word order in Persian is Subject-Object-Verb although modifiers follow the
nouns they modify and the language has prepositions."
By the way, that UCLA site is really cool. Have a look at it: "Teaching
resources for less commonly taught languages." It's got "Language Profiles"
that describe the structure etc. of lots of languages. I'll be absolutely
strip-mining this one for grammatic concepts.
Anyone know of other sites like this?
Nihil Sum
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