Re: R: Re: Greenberg's universals
| From: | SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY <smithma@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, September 13, 2000, 20:45 |
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On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, J Matthew Pearson wrote:
> > >Yesterday I borrowed Greenberg's 'Language Universals' (1966 by Mouton &
> > >Co.) from Como's library. I read it all yesterday evening, but there were no
> > >hints to word-order universals (those like 'VSO langs generally do not have
> > >articles'). Were these universals published only in 'Universals of Language'
> > >(1963)?
>
> Just a quick footnote to this thread: Who says that VSO languages generally do
> not have articles? That's clearly false.
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.
Marcus