Re: Never violate a universal unless it seems like a good idea at the time

On Thu, 4 Sep 2003 10:11:52 +0100, Peter Bleackley
<Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:

>Reading Greenberg's list of universals
>
>http://angli02.kgw.tu-berlin.de/Korean/Artikel02/Appendix3.html
>
>I've discovered that Khangaþyagon violates universals 2,3,6,10,12, and
>possibly 23 although I'm not sure of his terminology. This is mainly
>because Khangaþyagon is based on what seemed plausible to me without
>reading the list.
>
>I'd be interested to know how many universals other people's conlangs
>violate, and whether this came about naively or deliberately.
"Zircon" (still unnamed conlang made by Zireen) and Vizaki (one of the new
Zireen languages) are predominantly VOS. I got the idea after someone on
the list suggested looking at Tzotzil (http://www.zapata.org/Tzotzil/),
which is VOS and ergative. At the time I was working on Lindiga, which is
either VSO or VOS based on other considerations (topic relevance and/or
definiteness). Lindiga doesn't allow SVO unless you count clefts, so it
might violate universal 6, although whether it has dominant VSO order is
debatable.