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

From:Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...>
Date:Saturday, September 6, 2003, 16:30
In a message dated 9/6/2003 11:15:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
trinsic@EARTHLINK.NET writes:


>However, there are some universals, especially >9 and 10 that I have yet to quite understand. All of this came about >quite naively, as I have never had any formal education in linguistics >(above basic college-level english). While I have always assumed the >existance of such universals, I had never seen them until now.
Let me try rephrasing them. #9 is about question particles that come at the beginning or end of a sentence to indicate it's a question. E.g., in Esperanto, a yes/no question begins with "C^u" (or cxu or chu or however you want me to represent c-with-circumflex). Esperanto conforms to this universal -- its question particle is initial, and Esperanto is prepositional. If a prepositional language has a sentence-final question particle, that's a violation. If a postpositional language has a sentence-initial question particle, that's a violation. For #10 here's a hypothetical example. If in langauge X, the rule is "The particle 'ha' BEFORE the main verb indications a question", that's a violation. The rule "The particle 'ha' AFTER the main verb indicates a question" is OK with this universal Doug

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Herman Miller <hmiller@...>