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

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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