Re: R: Re: Greenberg's universals

On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> "SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, J Matthew Pearson wrote:
> >
> > I think this stems from a misunderstanding of a previous conversation. I
> > mentioned that SVO languages tend to have *definite* articles (ie,
> > distinct from demonstratives), while the others often have no articles or
> > use the demonstratives for this role.
>
> If by "the others" you mean all other word order types, I don't think that's a valid
> tendency.  The language groups I mentioned in my previous post, with verb-initial
> order, all have definite articles lexically distinct from demonstratives.  Moreover,
> it's not hard to think of languages (Indonesian) and language groups (Slavic,
> Chinese, Bantu, perhaps Algonquian) with verb-medial order and no articles.
But that's typology for you.  No such thing as a solid universal -- that's
why I used the words "tend" and "often".  What I stated was a
generalization that was given to me in a typology course.  I have very
little exprience with VSO languages, and the one's I have looked at do, in
fact, lack definite articles: Eyak, Haida, Tlingit, and I can't recall
seeing a definite article in any Athabaskan languages either.

Have to agree with you about Algonquian.  I'm not sure I would call them
verb medial -- especially considering they are often analyzed as
non-configurational (a la Jelinek)

> The only generalization I would hazard is that verb-final languages tend not to have
> articles--and even that is just a guess on my part, based on casual observation.
I'd have to agree with that -- based on casual observation as well.

Marcus